There the owner of the ship had passed his last years, sick at heart and with swollen legs, directing from his seat a course that was repeated every week across the foggy winter waves tossing bits of ice snatched from the icebergs.

Near the stove was a piano and upon its top an orderly collection of musical scores yellowed by time,--_La Sonnambula, Lucia_, Romances of Tosti, Neapolitan songs, breezy and graceful melodies that the old chords of the instrument sent forth with the fragile and crystalline tinkling of an old music box.

The poor old captain with sick heart and legs of stone had always turned to the sea of light for distraction.

It was music that made appear in the foggy heavens the peaks of Sorrento covered with orange and lemon trees, and the coast of Sicily, perfumed by its flaming flora.
Ferragut manned his boat with friendly people.

His first mate was a pilot who had begun his career in a fishing smack.