CHAPTER II



I would have gladly dispensed with the mournful opportunity of
becoming acquainted by sight with all my fellow-captains at once.
However I found my way to the cemetery. We made a considerable
group of bareheaded men in sombre garments. I noticed that those
of our company most approaching to the now obsolete sea-dog type
were the most moved--perhaps because they had less "manner" than
the new generation. The old sea-dog, away from his natural
element, was a simple and sentimental animal. I noticed one--he
was facing me across the grave--who was dropping tears. They
trickled down his weather-beaten face like drops of rain on an old
rugged wall. I learned afterwards that he was looked upon as the
terror of sailors, a hard man; that he had never had wife or chick
of his own, and that, engaged from his tenderest years in deep-sea
voyages, he knew women and children merely by sight.

Perhaps he was dropping those tears over his lost opportunities,
from sheer envy of paternity and in strange jealousy of a sorrow
which he could never know. Man, and even the sea-man, is a
capricious animal, the creature and the victim of lost
opportunities. But he made me feel ashamed of my callousness. I
had no tears.

I listened with horribly critical detachment to that service I had