'Isn't often now it comes so to me, things being' generally dim in my
mind, as I say, slipping away and drawing nigh, like ships in a lifting
fog-but to-day--like that day--a winter's day and sunny and cold--with
the seas running like white-maned ponies before the gale in the bay
below there--as it is now--always on a day like this it comes clearer to
me.




LAYING THE HOSE-PIPE GHOST


Sometimes, for one reason or another, or perhaps without reason at all,
it just happens. So, say a handful of gossiping yeomen find themselves
together, and when that comes about, from some member (if the session
stretches to any length at all) is sure to come a story of particular
interest to the guild; and perhaps it ought to be explained that a
yeoman's story is never mistaken in the Navy for a stoker's, a gunner's,
a quartermaster's; never for anybody's but a yeoman's.

One night, a pleasant-enough night topside, but an even pleasanter night
below, at least in our part of the ship below. A few of us were gathered
in the flag office, where Dalton, the flag yeoman, sometimes allowed us
to call when his admiral was ashore. Getting on toward middle-age was
Dalton, with a head of gray-flecked hair and an old-time school-master's
face. A great fellow for books.

In the flag office store-room, which to get into he had only to lift a
hatch in the deck under his revolving chair and let himself drop, he had