* * * * *
By the time I was beginning to look into the face of danger as into a
mother's face, the weather wore down. The ocean was still heavy with
running seas, but we rode high and dry.
* * * * *
Unlucky Kampke!
His shipmates bore his dunnage aft, for the captain to take in charge.
And, just as in melodramas and popular novels, a picture of a
fair-haired girl was found at the bottom of his sea-chest, together with
one of his mother ... his sweetheart and his mother....
Depositions were taken down from his forecastle mates, as to his going
overboard, and duly entered into the log ... and the captain wrote a
letter to his mother, to be mailed to her from Sydney.
* * * * *
For a day we were sad. An imminent sense of mortality hung over us.
But there broke, the next morning, a clear sky of sunshine and an open
though still yesty sea--and we sang, and became thoughtless and gay
again.
* * * * *
"Yes," sighed the cook, "I wish it had been Franz instead of Gottlieb.
Gottlieb was such a fine fellow, and Franz is such a son of a----."
* * * * *
... I have left something out.
At the beginning of the voyage Captain Schantze housed a flock of two
dozen chickens in a coop under the forecastle .
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