He looked at me inquisitively. But, of course, I couldn't admit that a
ship could be mad.
"In the ports where she was known," he went on,' "they dreaded the sight
of her. She thought nothing of knocking away twenty feet or so of solid
stone facing off a quay or wiping off the end of a wooden wharf. She
must have lost miles of chain and hundreds of tons of anchors in her
time. When she fell aboard some poor unoffending ship it was the
very devil of a job to haul her off again. And she never got hurt
herself--just a few scratches or so, perhaps. They had wanted to have
her strong. And so she was. Strong enough to ram Polar ice with. And as
she began so she went on. From the day she was launched she never let
a year pass without murdering somebody. I think the owners got very
worried about it. But they were a stiff-necked generation all these
Apses; they wouldn't admit there could be anything wrong with the Apse
Family. They wouldn't even change her name. 'Stuff and nonsense,' as
Mrs. Colchester used to say. They ought at least to have shut her up
for life in some dry dock or other, away up the river, and never let her
smell salt water again. I assure you, my dear sir, that she invariably
did kill someone every voyage she made. It was perfectly well-known. She
got a name for it, far and wide."
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