"Up with ye, yez foretop bullies! Up an' give her a cheer! Hip!—--Hear her! A bloody Englishman playin' av 'Th' Star Spangled Banner!' That's for us, ye bullies! Hip, hip!—--Damn ye, cheer! Now! Hip!—Again!—She's struck! No! She's by the reef!—By God she's clear! She's in the open sea! Clear! Hip!"  
This monologue, shouted as if through the teeth of a gale, suddenly broke upon the gold woman's troubled consciousness where she stood writing at William Elston's desk. It was the derelict raving. The dramatic spirit of his speech thrilled her. It conveyed to her mind a picture of a ship fighting to sea against all odds and she could see the stranger in the next room somewhere in the foreground of a ragged shore urging others—men under him—to cheer her on.
 
A silence followed the outburst and Emily tiptoed into the alleyway. She listened for Paul, but no sound came from him aft. She had been below about an half-hour. He must be asleep.
 
The gold woman entered the derelict's door softly and discovered him sitting upright in his berth, peering from under his two hands as if at something a long distance away. There was an heroic suggestion in the posture of him and in the set of his scraggly white-bearded jaw.
 
"She's clear—clear," came from him in a tired whisper as Emily crossed the threshold. He dropped his hands. "Hello, nurse," he said, discovering the girl. She turned up the light.
 
"You're feeling much better, aren't you?" she asked very tenderly.
 
She held a glass of water to his lips and he drained it.
 
"Thankee, nurse, thankee. Another long drink, please. That's—Ah! That's good. My coppers is hot. Thankee. I'll be comin' out o' drydock soon. All I needs is t' get my head gear overhauled an' these ribs spliced. Nurse, sailormen orter have good hackmatack knees for ribs." A faint smile of humor rippled across his face. "It's a mighty long way from a fore-uppertawps'l yard t' th' foc'sle head—a mighty long way."
 
The listener gathered that the old man believed he was suffering from the effects of a fall. He lay back obediently at her suggestion. His eyes appeared quite rational. Although his hands were still scorching to the touch there had been an abatement of the fever. Yet his pulse was extremely weak. When Emily felt it she was surprised at the strength of his voice.
 
"Nurse," he said, after a short pause, "when that 'ere sky pilot comes roun' in th' mornin' I wants you t' stand by." A twinkle danced in his sea-bleached blue eyes. "He says th' sea gives up its dead. I'll be after askin' th' gentleman how he knows. Ye'll hear him shputter at that. It'll be a fair joke. A fair——"
 
He stopped seriously. His gaze sought the doorway. In a whisper fraught with a note of bitter fatalism he said:
 
"Th' sea gives nothin' back, nurse. When it takes annythin' it kapes it. Th' sky pilots are but pretindin'."
 
Emily sensed that the sailor's mind was groping around the appearance of Paul earlier in the evening. She feared that it would do him harm to let his mind rest on this and that it would be better if she could induce him to sleep.
 
"Don't you think if I turned down the light you might be able to sleep again?"
 
The suggestion startled him.
 
"No, no, nurse. Plaze lave th' light. I'll be afther stayin' awake for th' Ould Man—that's me own skipper."
 
"But he has been here. He——"
 
"Mother av God!" he cried. He seized her hand and held it in great stress. "Thin yez saw him, too! Yez saw Lavelle." His eyes, filled with awe, leaped from Emily's face to the open doorway and back again. "'Tis me warnin', colleen, t' be snuggin down—t' make everythin' tight!"
 
The thing she had wished not to do she had done unwittingly. She had turned his poor brain back to its memory of Paul's father.
 
"Did yez hear him shpake t' me? Did he shpake t' annybody else?"
 
"It was not the Captain Lavelle you think. It was his son."
 
"His son? Not 'Prince' Lavelle?"
 
The derelict shook his head in doubt, and as he did so he looked round the stateroom. His eyes picked up each article in it in a bewildered, half-familiar way.
 
"Yes, his son. You must have no fears. Can't you think where you are? Do try. You're aboard the bark Daphne—the Daphne."
 
"Daphne? Daphne?" he repeated. "No, th' Daphne wasn't there. There was th' Trenton, th' Nipsic, th' Vandalia, a Dutchmin called th' Sadler, th' Cally-ope—not Daphne." It was plain that the past was ruling his memory. "'Twas only yestiddy th' home mails come in an' brought th' 'Prince' a loikeness av his littul bhoy—littul Paul. Says th' 'Prince' t' me, 'Dan, an' 'tis home with th' littul feller I'd loike t' be.' He says that t' me, an' him th' 'first luff' an' me a common sailorman an' capt'n av th' foretop be grace av three enlistments an' sthayin' sthraight three months on ind. Now he's lyin' out there in thim God-forsaken wathers an' all because av a bloody lot av Dutchmin an' naygurs."—"Come along t' th' mass with me an' pray for God's kindness t' th' 'Prince's' sowl. Yez'll niver sail agin, my bullies, under an officher man loike 'The Prince.'"
 
The last was not spoken to Emily, but to men who were not in the room.
 
The sweet tender praise of the father of the man she loved with all the soul of her wrung tears from the listener. She could see "The Prince" showing this sailor the picture of Paul. She could hear him speaking.
 
"And he called you Dan—'The Prince'?" Emily managed to say and with the hope that possibly it might suggest the derelict's identity.
 
"Dan? T' be sure he called me Dan. 'Rid-headed bunch av sin' he called me whin I wint on th' bind. I had a thatch in thim days as rid as th' British merchant flag." A gnarled hand wandered to his bald crown and as it touched it the sailor started up. Reason seemed to have made a breach in his poor brain. He looked round the room quickly. A light of recognition dawned in his gaze. "Dan—Dan," he kept repeating. "Daniel—Daniel Mc—Mc—Mc—Daniel McGovern!"
 
Emily hearkened in breathlessness. She felt herself in the presence of a mystery. Paul had read her the names of the Daphne's crew from the log. "Daniel McGovern" was not one of them.
 
Tears coursed down the old man's cheeks. His hands trembled. His voice quavered in a childish treble. He kept on repeating the name over and over again as if he had found it after many years and was making sure that it would not escape him again.
 
Suddenly he caught Emily's hand and became still. He was listening.
 
"Mother av God where am I?" he asked in a few seconds. In the next breath he exclaimed: "'Tis a ship I'm on! I c'n fale th' sea!"
 
"You're in the bark Daphne—the Daphne. Don't you understand? Can't you remember anything?"
 
It was evident that a great struggle was going on within him.
 
"That's her door; tha............