On some days there appears the heading "Overdue"--an ominous threat
of loss and sorrow trembling yet in the balance of fate. There is
something sinister to a seaman in the very grouping of the letters
which form this word, clear in its meaning, and seldom threatening
in vain.

Only a very few days more--appallingly few to the hearts which had
set themselves bravely to hope against hope--three weeks, a month
later, perhaps, the name of ships under the blight of the "Overdue"
heading shall appear again in the column of "Shipping
Intelligence," but under the final declaration of "Missing."

"The ship, or barque, or brig So-and-so, bound from such a port,
with such and such cargo, for such another port, having left at
such and such a date, last spoken at sea on such a day, and never
having been heard of since, was posted to-day as missing." Such in
its strictly official eloquence is the form of funeral orations on
ships that, perhaps wearied with a long struggle, or in some
unguarded moment that may come to the readiest of us, had let
themselves be overwhelmed by a sudden blow from the enemy.

Who can say? Perhaps the men she carried had asked her to do too
much, had stretched beyond breaking-point the enduring faithfulness
which seems wrought and hammered into that assemblage of iron ribs
and plating, of wood and steel and canvas and wire, which goes to
the making of a ship--a complete creation endowed with character,
individuality, qualities and defects, by men whose hands launch her
upon the water, and that other men shall learn to know with an
intimacy surpassing the intimacy of man with man, to love with a
love nearly as great as that of man for woman, and often as blind