his elbows on the cloth, his chin in the palms of his
hands. For some time he did not speak. Outside I
could hear the thrash of the sea and the slosh of spent
waves coursing through the deck gutters.

"You want to hear about that dog, do you?" he
asked, straightening up. "Well, I can tell you if
any man can, but you're to keep mum about it to the
captain."

Again I nodded.

He fumbled in his outside pocket, drew forth a
short pipe, rapped out the dead ashes, refilled it
slowly from a pouch on the table, lighted it, and
settled himself in his chair.

"I'll begin at the beginning, for then you'll understand
how I came to be mixed up in it. I saw that
dog when he first came aboard, and I want to say right
here that the sight of him raised a lump in my throat
big as your fist, for he was just the mate of the one
I owned when I used to look after my father's sheep
on the hills where we lived. Then, again, I took to
him because he wasn't the kind of a pet I'd ever seen
at sea before--we'd had monkeys and parrots and a
bobtail cat, but never a dog--not a real, human dog.

"He was one of those brown-and-white combed-
out collies we have up in my country, with a long,