distributed bread upon the platters. These voices had rung in his brain,
interrupted now and then by the groans of Bligh and of two other men who
had been alive then. Some of the voices he had heard had been silent on
earth this many a long year, but Abel Keeling, thirst-tortured, had heard
them, even as he was now hearing that vacant moaning with the
intermittent throbbing that filled the strait with alarm....

"Praise Him, praise Him, praise Him!" Bligh was calling deliriously.

Then a bell seemed to sound in Abel Keeling's ears, and, as if something
in the mechanism of his brain had slipped, another picture rose in his
fancy--the scene when the _Mary of the Tower_ had put out, to a bravery
of swinging bells and shrill fifes and valiant trumpets. She had not been
a leper-white galleon then. The scroll-work on her prow had twinkled with
gilding; her belfry and stern-galleries and elaborate lanterns had
flashed in the sun with gold; and her fighting-tops and the war-pavesse
about her waist had been gay with painted coats and scutcheons. To her
sails had been stitched gaudy ramping lions of scarlet saye, and from her
mainyard, now dipping in the water, had hung the broad two-tailed pennant
with the Virgin and Child embroidered upon it....

Then suddenly a voice about him seemed to be saying, "_And a
half-seven--and a half-seven--_" and in a twink the picture in Abel
Keeling's brain changed again. He was at home again, instructing his son,
young Abel, in the casting of the lead from the skiff they had pulled out
of the harbour.

"_And a half-seven!_" the boy seemed to be calling.

Abel Keeling's blackened lips muttered: "Excellently well cast, Abel,