Then a bell seemed to sound in Abel Keeling's ears, and, as if something in the mechanism of his brain had slipped, another picture rose in his fancy--the scene when the _Mary of the Tower_ had put out, to a bravery of swinging bells and shrill fifes and valiant trumpets. She had not been a leper-white galleon then. The scroll-work on her prow had twinkled with gilding; her belfry and stern-galleries and elaborate lanterns had flashed in the sun with gold; and her fighting-tops and the war-pavesse about her waist had been gay with painted coats and scutcheons. To her sails had been stitched gaudy ramping lions of scarlet saye, and from her mainyard, now dipping in the water, had hung the broad two-tailed pennant with the Virgin and Child embroidered upon it.... Then suddenly a voice about him seemed to be saying, "_And a half-seven--and a half-seven--_" and in a twink the picture in Abel Keeling's brain changed again. He was at home again, instructing his son, young Abel, in the casting of the lead from the skiff they had pulled out of the harbour. "_And a half-seven!_" the boy seemed to be calling. Abel Keeling's blackened lips muttered: "Excellently well cast, Abel, excellently well cast!" "_And a half-seven--and a half-seven--seven--seven--_" "Ah," Abel Keeling murmured, "that last was not a clear cast--give me the line--thus it should go ... ay, so.... Soon you shall sail the seas with me in the _Mary of the Tower_. You are already perfect in the stars and the motions of the planets; to-morrow I will instruct you in the use of the backstaff...." For a minute or two he continued to mutter; then he dozed. When again he came to semi-consciousness it was once more to the sound of bells, at first faint, then louder, and finally becoming a noisy clamour immediately above his head. It was Bligh. Bligh, in a fresh attack of delirium, had seized the bell-lanyard and was ringing the bell insanely. The cord broke in his fingers, but he thrust at the bell with his hand, and again called aloud. "Upon an harp and an instrument of ten strings ... let Heaven and Earth praise Thy Name!..." He continued to call aloud, and to beat on the bronze-rusted bell. _"Ship ahoy! What ship's that?"_ One would have said that a veritable hail had come out of the mists; but Abel Keeling knew those hails that came out of the mists. They came from ships which were not there. "Ay, ay, keep a good look-out, and have a care to your lodemanage," he muttered again to his son....