Vail and Miss Lee had left the others and come into the chart-room.
As Charlie Jones and I looked, he bent over and kissed her hand.
The sun had gone down. My pipe was empty, and from the galley,
forward, came the odor of the forecastle supper. Charlie was
coughing, a racking paroxysm that shook his wiry body. He leaned
over and caught my shoulder as I was moving away.
"New paint and new canvas don't make a new ship," he said, choking
back the cough. "She's still the old Ella, the she-devil of the
Turner line. Pink lights below, and not a rat in the hold! They
left her before we sailed, boy. Every rope was crawling with 'em."
"The very rats
Instinctively had left it,"
I quoted. But Charlie, clutching the wheel, was coughing again,
and cursing breathlessly as he coughed.