“Well, well, I am mate o’ this craft, sure enough,” laughed the old sailor, “but it ain’t such a bad job alongside o’ being a d----d, shad-bellied, thieving shipmaster. As for room, you’ve got the whole ocean and can change your course as easy as my skipper can change his--but you was always a hard man to reason with.” And old Garnett began to walk fore and aft on his deck, chuckling audibly. “I might have known it,” repeated the skipper to himself. Then turning to me: “I’ve had Garnett with me as mate six voyages, Mr. Gore, and I’ve never seen a more unreasonable critter in my life. What do you suppose he’s doing on that Englishman, anyway? She looks mighty light for the India trade.” “I don’t know why he should be on her, except for the pay,” I replied. “Garnett’s a rough mate and would just as soon sail under one flag as another. He’s been under about all. The vessel does look uncommonly light.” The skipper stood watching the Englishman for some time, but as she appeared to draw no nearer, he finally went below. The _Arrow_, having no steering way, now drifted so as to bring the stranger almost head on, so I could no longer see the men on her quarter-deck. In the morning, after I had passed a restless night, I turned out with but little appetite for breakfast. I knew well enough what was the matter with me, and, had I been ashore, I would have put some distance between myself and our passengers. I was about as awkward at the table as it was possible to be, but I dared not shirk the ordeal, for fear of making an idiot of myself before Captain Crojack. It’s all well enough to joke about such matters, and say they don’t last, and that no man ever died for love, but joking don’t help the case in any way whatever. The cholera don’t last long after it takes a man, either, for that matter. It’s just as well to look the subject squarely in the face. That no man ever died for love is an absurd statement. There are more men killed or ruined by this mental disturbance than any other. That its origin is not purely physical even a deep-water sailor knows. That it don’t last is also certain, for nothing human ever does last above a certain limited time. I have seen this passion burn itself out like a flash of tropical lightning, and I’ve seen it smoulder like the damp coal in a ship’s hold and last until it passes quietly into the perfect friendship between an old man and an old woman. But because it don’t last, don’t think that it lacks force while it does act. I’m a plain man and known as “Bull Gore” among the deep-water men. My face is too big to be handsome, and I’ve the girth of forty-five inches around the heave of my chest. In spite of this, I knew I was going to have a tough struggle and would need all my strength for the fracas brewing within me. Who is it, I say? Who is it that has felt this passion and can say no one was ever hurt or killed by it?