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At last one day at dinner-time the old man paid us a visit, characteristically announcing himself by falling between the vessel and the wharf into the ice-laden water. Of course he wasn’t hurt—didn’t even get a chill, but he was taken back to his “hotel,” and came no more to see us. With the completion of our deck-load my patience was exhausted, and as soon as she was ready for sea, I hunted him up and demanded my discharge. I felt prepared to take all reasonable risks, but to cross the Atlantic in December with a vessel like a top-heavy bladder under me, and myself the sole officer, was hardly good enough. Of course he wouldn’t release me, and the upshot was, to cut my yarn short, that I remained ashore penniless, while he towed back to St. John, engaged another unfortunate mate, and after a week’s final spree, sailed for home. As I had expected, she got no farther than the mouth of the Bay of Fundy. There her old bones were finally broken up in a howling snowstorm, in which several of the crew were frozen to death, but he escaped to worry better men again.