After a while, Captain Bradley gathered up the fag-ends of his life and started out in the _Viking_ on another voyage. She was all he had now. A few more years went by, years of increasing discouragement, aimless and fugitive. Times were becoming very hard. The day of China charters was over; steamers monopolized that business now. The _Viking_ became a tramp ship, they picked up what freights they could get, and the old ports knew them no longer. The vessel barely paid her way; operating expenses were retrenched on every hand, there was no money left for upkeep, and Captain Bradley saw her literally falling to pieces before his eyes. But the old hull remained sound. He lived a blank life; but he continued to live, which was something. The old days were indeed passing, and with them the ships and the men. Sailors were not what they used to be; business ethics was not what it used to be. He began to feel as if the very fibre of mankind had changed. Nothing seemed left but memory and the remnants of an invincible pride. He could not realize that he had made what would be commonly called a mistake, in buying the _Viking_ with his last dollar. His philosophy did not provide the materials for such a conception. The day came when the old _Viking_ was almost the last of her race, the only wooden full-rigged three-masted ship to sail out of Atlantic ports. All her lofty companions had passed away, or had been converted into coal barges. Her arrival in New York was an item of news. This was the one substantial reward of Captain Bradley’s declining years as a ship-master; he had sailed his ship beyond her era, he had flaunted her in the face of a new generation. That compact made with the _Viking_ in her maiden hour had been no idle sentiment; it had been life’s supremest dedication, and he had kept the vow. A few old friends remained to him, though he had made no new ones in the latter years. These friends kept urging him, every voyage, to sell the _Viking_ for a coal barge while there was time, while even this way offered for the disposal of an outworn hull. The coal companies were beginning to build their own barges. The _Viking_ would still be worth some fifteen thousand dollars as a coal barge. He could retire on the proceeds, and live in modest comfort for the rest of his days. "Never!" he invariably answered "Do I look like a man who needs to retire? She shall never be a coal barge while I live"