room after me.

Well, I have loved, lived with, and left the sea without ever
seeing a ship's tall fabric of sticks, cobwebs and gossamer go by
the board. Sheer good luck, no doubt. But as to poor P-, I am
sure that he would not have got off scot-free like this but for the
god of gales, who called him away early from this earth, which is
three parts ocean, and therefore a fit abode for sailors. A few
years afterwards I met in an Indian port a man who had served in
the ships of the same company. Names came up in our talk, names of
our colleagues in the same employ, and, naturally enough, I asked
after P-. Had he got a command yet? And the other man answered
carelessly:

"No; but he's provided for, anyhow. A heavy sea took him off the
poop in the run between New Zealand and the Horn."

Thus P- passed away from amongst the tall spars of ships that he
had tried to their utmost in many a spell of boisterous weather.
He had shown me what carrying on meant, but he was not a man to
learn discretion from. He could not help his deafness. One can
only remember his cheery temper, his admiration for the jokes in
Punch, his little oddities--like his strange passion for borrowing
looking-glasses, for instance. Each of our cabins had its own
looking-glass screwed to the bulkhead, and what he wanted with more
of them we never could fathom. He asked for the loan in
confidential tones. Why? Mystery. We made various surmises. No
one will ever know now. At any rate, it was a harmless
eccentricity, and may the god of gales, who took him away so
abruptly between New Zealand and the Horn, let his soul rest in