To the naked eye it is as black and as dismal as death, but the
smallest telescope reveals it beautiful and populous with stars.

Lestrange's eyes travelled from this mystery to the burning
cross, and the nameless and numberless stars reaching to the
sea-line, where they paled and vanished in the light of the rising
moon. Then he became aware of a figure promenading the quarter-
deck. It was the "Old Man."

A sea captain is always the "old man," be his age what it may.
Captain Le Farges' age might have been forty-five. He was a sailor
of the Jean Bart type, of French descent, but a naturalised
American.

"I don't know where the wind's gone," said the captain as he drew
near the man in the deck chair. "I guess it's blown a hole in the
firmament, and escaped somewheres to the back of beyond."

"It's been a long voyage," said Lestrange; "and I'm thinking,
Captain, it will be a very long voyage for me. My port's not
'Frisco; I feel it."

"Don't you be thinking that sort of thing," said the other, taking
his seat in a chair close by. "There's no manner of use forecastin'
the weather a month ahead. Now we're in warm latitoods, your
glass will rise steady, and you'll be as right and spry as any one
of us, before we fetch the Golden Gates."

"I'm thinking about the children," said Lestrange, seeming not to
hear the captain's words. "Should anything happen to me before