You would be astonished at the difference a name can make in a ship.

When this yacht belonged to Colonel Brotherton, she was called the _Dolphin_, and God and angels know she tried to behave like one, diving and plunging and careering as if she had fins instead of sails.

I was captain of her then and I know it.

Well, your father bought her, and your mother threw a bottle of fine old port over her bow, and called her the _Martha Hatton_, and she has been a different ship ever since--ladylike and respectable, no more butting of the waves, as if she was a ram; she lifts herself on and over them and goes curtseying into harbor like a duchess." As they talked the wind rose, and the play of its solemn music in the rigging of the yacht and in the deep bass of the billows was, as Harry said, "like a chant of High Mass.

I heard one for the sailors leaving Hull last Christmas night," he said, "and I shall never forget it." "But you are a Methodist, sir ?" "Oh, that does not hinder! A good Methodist can pray wherever there is honest prayer going on.