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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, pointed nose that could smell a mile and eyes like your mother’s–they were so soft and tender. One of those dogs that when he put his cold nose alongside your cheek and snuffed around your whiskers you loved him–you couldn’t help it–and you knew he loved you. As for the captain–the dog was never three feet from his heels. Night or day, it was just the same–up on the bridge, followin’ him with his eyes every time he turned, or stretched out beside his berth when he was asleep. Hard to understand how such a man can love a dog until you saw that one. Then, again, this dog had another hold upon the captain, for the girl had loved him just the same way.

“And he had the best nose in a fog–seemed as if he could sniff things as they went by or came on dead ahead. After a while the captain would send him out with the bow-watch in thick weather, and there he’d crouch, his nose restin’ on the rail, his eyes peerin’ ahead. Once he got on to a brigantine comin’ bow on minutes before the lookout could see her–smelt her, the men said, just as he used to smell the sheep lost on the hillside at home. It was thick as mud–one of those pasty fogs that choke you like hot steam. We had three men in the cro’nest and two for’ard hangin’ over her bow-rail. The dog began to grow restless. Then his ears went up and his tail straightened out, and he began to growl as if he had seen another dog. The captain was listenin’ from the bridge, and he suspected somethin’ was wrong and rang ‘Slow down!’ just in time to save us from smashing bow on into that brigantine. Another time he rose on his hind legs and ‘let out’ a yelp that peeled everybody’s eyes. Then the slippery, barnacle-covered bottom of a water-logged derelict went scootin’ by a few yards off our starboard quarter. After that the men got to dependin’ on him–‘Ought to have a first mate’s pay,’ I used to tell the captain, at which he would laugh and pat the dog on the head.

“One morning about eight bells, some two hundred miles off Rio–we were ‘board the Zampa, one of our South American line, with eighteen first-class passengers, half of ’em women, and ten or twelve emigrants–when word came to the bridge that a fire had started in the cargo. We had a lot of light freight on board and some explosives which were to be used in the mines in the mountains off the coast, so fire was the last thing we wanted. Bayard–did I tell you the dog’s name was Bayard?–that’s what the girl called him–was on the bridge with Captain Bogart. I was asleep in my bunk. First thing I knew I felt the dog’s cold nose in my face, and the next thing I was on the dead run for the after-hatch. I’ve had it big and ugly a good many times in my life; was washed upon a pile of rocks once stickin’ up about a cable’s length off our coast, and hung to the cracks until I dropped into a lifeboat; and another time I was picked up for dead off Natal and rolled on a barrel till I came to. But that racket aboard the Zampa was the worst yet.