rhymed with skies--and they were brown.

Sometimes, at night, a group would gather on the steerage deck and
sing. A black-haired Italian, with shirt open at the throat, would
strike a pose and fling out a wild serenade; or a fat, placid German
would remove his pipe long enough to troll forth a mighty
drinking-song. Whenever the air was a familiar one, the entire circle
joined in the chorus. At such times Sandy was always on hand, singing
with the loudest and telling his story with the best.

"Make de jolly little Irish one to sing by hisself!" called a woman
one night from the edge of the crowd. The invitation was taken up and
repeated on every side. Sandy, laughing and protesting, was pushed to
the front. Being thus suddenly forced into prominence, he suffered an
acute attack of stage fright.

"Chirp up there now and give us a tune!" cried some one behind him.

"Can't ye remember none?" asked another.

"Sure," said Sandy, laughing sheepishly; "but they all come wrong end
first."

Some one had thrust an old guitar in his hands, and he stood
nervously picking at the strings. He might have been standing there
still had not the moon come to his rescue. It climbed slowly out of
the sea and sent a shimmer of silver and gold over the water, across
the deck, and into his eyes. He forgot himself and the crowd. The
stream of mystical romance that flows through the veins of every true
Irishman was never lacking in Sandy. His heart responded to the