towards her mutilated and wounded sister, come upon at the point of
death in the sunlit haze of a calm day at sea.

With the binoculars glued to his eyes, the captain said in a
quavering tone: "They are waving to us with something aft there."
He put down the glasses on the skylight brusquely, and began to
walk about the poop. "A shirt or a flag," he ejaculated irritably.
"Can't make it out. . . Some damn rag or other!" He took a few
more turns on the poop, glancing down over the rail now and then to
see how fast we were moving. His nervous footsteps rang sharply in
the quiet of the ship, where the other men, all looking the same
way, had forgotten themselves in a staring immobility. "This will
never do!" he cried out suddenly. "Lower the boats at once! Down
with them!"

Before I jumped into mine he took me aside, as being an
inexperienced junior, for a word of warning:

"You look out as you come alongside that she doesn't take you down
with her. You understand?"

He murmured this confidentially, so that none of the men at the
falls should overhear, and I was shocked. "Heavens! as if in such
an emergency one stopped to think of danger!" I exclaimed to myself
mentally, in scorn of such cold-blooded caution.

It takes many lessons to make a real seaman, and I got my rebuke at
once. My experienced commander seemed in one searching glance to
read my thoughts on my ingenuous face.