A pretty craft, oh sirs, a most clever and pretty craft.

A crew, a brave crew, all youngsters, all of us, fore and aft, no man was forty, a mad, gay crew.

The captain was an elderly gentleman of twenty-eight, the third officer another of eighteen, the down, untouched of steel, like so much young velvet on his cheek.

He, too, died in the longboat.

And the captain gasped out his last under the palm trees of the isle unnamable while the brown maidens wept about him and fanned the air to his parching lungs." Dag Daughtry heard no more, for he turned below to take up his new routine of duty.