"Dear me, no. Mr. Dempster sings The Indian's Lament, and The May Queen:
that's a cantata and it's in three parts."

Jeremy began to hum, and in a moment was intoning in a loud monotonous
voice, sweeping a hand up and down:

_"To my hero, Bangedero,
Singing hey for a gay Hash girl."_

"I don't think that's very nice," she said primly.

"What do you mean--not very nice?" he demanded, incensed. "There's
nothing finer with a rousing chanteyman leading it and the watch hauling
on the braces. You'd never hear the like at any Ballad Soiree. And:

_"Sweet William, he married a wife,
'Gentle Jenny,' cried Rose Marie,
To be the sweet comfort of his life,
As the dew flies over the mulberry tree."_

"There isn't much sense to it," she observed.

For a little, indignant at her disparagement of such noble fragments, he
tramped silently back and forth, followed by a cloud of smoke from the
cheroot. No one on land could understand the absorbing significance of
every detail of a ship's life.... Only Gerrit, of all his family, knew
the chanteys and watches, the anxiety and beauty of landfalls--the blue
Falklands or Teneriffe rising above the clouds, the hurried making and
taking of sail in the squalls of the Doldrums.