grandfather had sailed in as second and then first mate, of others he had
been master, and the rest, she knew, were owned by Ammidon, Ammidon and
Saltonstone, her grandfather, father and uncle.

Just opposite her was the _Two Capes_ at anchor in Table Bay, the sails
all furled except the fore-topsail which hung in the gear. A gig manned
by six sailors in tarpaulin hats with an officer in the stern sheets
swung with dripping oars across the dark water of the foreground; on the
left an inky ship was standing in close hauled on the port tack with all
her canvas set. It was lighter about the _Two Capes_, and at the back a
mountain with a flat top--showing at once why it was called Table
Bay--rose against an overcast sky. Laurel knew a great deal about the
_Two Capes_--for instance that she had been a barque of two hundred and
nine tons--because it had been her grandfather's first command, and he
never tired of narrating every detail of that memorable voyage.

Laurel could repeat most of these particulars: They sailed on the tenth
of April in 'ninety-three, and were four and a half months to the Cape of
Good Hope; twenty days later, on the rocky island of St. Paul,
grandfather had a fight with a monster seal; a sailor took the scurvy,
and, dosed with niter and vinegar, was stowed in the longboat, but he
died and was buried at sea in the Doldrums. Then, with a cargo of Sumatra
pepper, they made Corregidor Island and Manilla Bay where the old Spanish
fort stood at the mouth of the Pasig. The barque, the final cargo of hemp
and indigo and sugar in the hold, set sail again for the Cape of Good
Hope, and returned, by way of Falmouth in England and Rotterdam, home.

The other drawings were hardly less familiar; ships, barques, brigs and
topsail schooners, the skillful work of Salmon, Anton Roux and Chinnery.
There was the _Celestina_ becalmed off Marseilles, her sails hanging idly