The broken ship-master fell to brooding again, and there was so much grief in his tired eyes and uncertain voice that David forbore to ask him any more questions. When he went forward again, David sought the forecastle to learn what he could about the lone seaman of the _Pilgrim's_ crew. A group of _Roanoke_ hands were listening to the story of the loss of the bark as told by the battered man with bandaged head and one arm in a sling who sat propped in a spare bunk. The cadets were forbidden to loaf in the forecastle, and after a word or two David lingered in the doorway, where he could hear the sailor's voice rise and fall in such fragments of his tale as these: