I heard his startled cry--Oh!--in a high treble as he felt himself
going, and looked up in time to see him go limp all over as he fell.
Ough! Poor father was remarkably white about the gills when we shook
hands in Gravesend. 'Are you all right?' he says, looking hard at me.
'Yes, father.' 'Quite sure?' 'Yes, father.' 'Well, then good-bye, my
boy.' He told me afterwards that for half a word he would have carried
me off home with him there and then. I am the baby of the family--you
know," added the man in tweeds, stroking his moustache with an ingenuous
smile.
I acknowledged this interesting communication by a sympathetic murmur.
He waved his hand carelessly.
"This might have utterly spoiled a chap's nerve for going aloft, you
know--utterly. He fell within two feet of me, cracking his head on a
mooring-bitt. Never moved. Stone dead. Nice looking little fellow, he
was. I had just been thinking we would be great chums. However, that
wasn't yet the worst that brute of a ship could do. I served in her
three years of my time, and then I got transferred to the Lucy Apse, for
a year.
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