"Marry Dot Johnson?" gasped Prue.

"Oh, bluey!" ejaculated the slangy Cecile.

"But of course Ford won't do it," drawled Marian.

"Then he means to disinherit poor Ford! Oh, yes, he will!" sobbed the lady. "They've had words about it already. You know very well that when once I. Tapp makes up his mind to do a thing, he does it." And there she broke down utterly, with the girls looking at each other in silent horror.



CHAPTER XXIII

BETWEEN THE FIRES

The discovery of Louise's identity was but a mild shock to Lawford after all. His preconceived prejudice against the ordinary feminine member of "The Profession" had, during his intercourse with Cap'n Abe's niece, been lulled to sleep. Miss Louder and Miss Noyes more nearly embodied his conception of actresses—nice enough young women, perhaps, but entirely different from Louise Grayling.

Lawford forgave the latter for befooling him in the matter of her condition in life; indeed, he realized that he had deceived himself. He had accepted the gossip of the natives—Milt Baker was its originator, he remembered—as true, and so had believed Louise Grayling was connected with the moving picture company.

Her social position made no difference to him. At first sight Lawford Tapp had told himself she was the most charming woman he had ever seen.

For a college graduate of twenty-four he was, though unaware of the fact, rather unsophisticated regarding women.

He had given but slight attention to girls. Perhaps they interested him so little because of his three sisters.

He remembered now that he and Dot Johnson had been pretty good "pals" before he had gone to college, and while Dot was still in middy blouse and wore her hair in plaits.

Now, as he walked along the beach and thought of the daughter of his father's partner, he groaned. He, as well as the women of the family, knew well the Taffy King's obstinacy.

His streak of determination had enabled I. Tapp to reach the pinnacle of business wealth and influence. When he wanted a thing he went after it, and he got it!

If his father was really determined that Lawford should marry Dot Johnson, and her parents were willing, the young man had an almost uncanny feeling that the candy manufacturer's purpose would be accomplished.

And yet Lawford knew that such was a coward-nature feeling. Why should he give up the only thing he had ever really wanted in life—so it seemed to him now—because of any third person's obstinacy?

"Of course, she won't have me anyway," an inner voice told him. And, after a time, Lawford realized that that, too, was his coward-nature speaking.

On the other hand: "Why should I give her up? Further, why should I marry Dot Johnson against my will, whether I can get Louise Grayling or not?"

This thought electrified him. His easy-going, placid disposition had made a coward of him. In his heart and soul he was now ready to fight for what he desired. It was now not merely the question of winning Louise's love. Whether he could win her or not his determination grew to refuse to obey his father's command. He revolted, right then and there. Let his father keep his money. He, Lawford Tapp, would go to work in any case and would support himself.

This was no small resolve on the part of the millionaire's son. He could not remember of ever having put his hand into an empty pocket. His demands on the paternal purse had been more reasonable than most young men of his class perhaps, because of his naturally simple tastes and the life he had led outside the classroom. Without having "gone in" for athletics at Cambridge he was essentially an out-of-door man.

Nevertheless, to stand in open revolt against I. Tapp's command was a very serious thing to do. Lawford appreciated his own shortcomings in the matter of intellect. He knew he was not brilliant enough to make his wit entirely serve him for daily bread—let alone cake and other luxuries. If his father disinherited him he must verily expect to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow.

It was that evening, after his fruitless call at Cap'n Abe's store, that the young man met his father and had it out. Lawford came back to Tapp Point in the motor boat. As he walked up from the dock there was a sudden eruption of voices from the house, a door banged, and the Taffy King began exploding verbal fireworks as he crunched the gravel under foot.

"I'll show him! Young upstart! Settin' the women on me! Ha! Thinks he can do as he pleases forever and ever, amen! I'll show him!"

Just then he came face to face with "the young upstart." I. Tapp seized his son's arm with a vicious if puny grasp and yelled:

"What d'you mean by it?"

"Mean by what, dad?" asked the boy with that calmness that always irritated I. Tapp.

"Settin' your ma and the girls on me? They all lit on me at once. All crying together some foolishness about your marrying this Grayling girl and putting the family into society."

"Into society?" murmured Lawford. "I—I don't get you."

"You know what they're after," cried the candy manufacturer. "If a dynamite bomb would blow in the walls of that exclusive Back Bay set, they'd use one. And now it turns out this girl's right in the swim———I thought you said she was a picture actress?"

"I thought she was," stammered Lawford.

"Bah! You thought? You never thought a thing in your life of any consequence."

The young man was silent at this thrust. His silence made I. Tapp even angrier.

"But it makes no difference—no difference at all, I tell you. If she was the queen of Sheba I'd say the same," went on the candy manufacturer wildly. "I've said you shall marry Dorothy Johnson—I've always meant you should; and marry her you shall!"

"No, dad, I'm not going to do any such thing."

Suddenly the Taffy King quieted down. He struggled to control his voice and his shaking hands. A deadly calm mantled his excitement and his eyes glittered as he gazed up at his tall son.

"Is this a straight answer, Lawford? Or are you just talking to hear yourself talk?" he asked coldly.

"I am determined not to marry Dot."

"And you'll marry that other girl?"

"If she'll have me. But whether or no I won't be forced into marriage with a girl I do not love."

"Love!" exploded the Taffy King. Then in a moment he was calm again, only for that inward glow of rage. "People don't really love each other until after marriage. Love is born of propinquity and thrives on usage and custom. You only think you love this girl. It's after two people have been through a good deal together that they learn what love means."

Lawford was somewhat startled by this philosophy; but he was by no means convinced.

"Whether or no," he repeated, "I think I should have the same right that you had of choosing a wife."

His father brushed this aside without comment. "Do you understand what this means—if you are determined to disobey me?" he snarled.

"I suppose you won't begrudge me a bite and sup till I find a job, dad?" the son said with just a little tremor in his voice. "I know I haven't really anything of my own. You have done everything for me. Your money bought the very clothes I stand in. You gave me the means to buy the Merry Andrew. I realize that nothing I have called my own actually belongs to me because I did not earn it——"

"As long as you are amenable to discipline," put in his father gloomily, "you need not feel this way."

"But I do feel it now," said Lawford simply. "You have made me. And, as I say, I'll need to live, I suppose, till I get going for myself."

His father winced again. Then suddenly burst out:

"D'you think for a minute that that society girl will stand for your getting a job and trying to support her on your wages?"

"She will if she loves me."

"You poor ninny!" burst out I. Tapp. "You've got about as much idea of women as you have of business. And where are you going to work?"

"Well," and Lawford smiled a little whimsically, serious though the discussion was, "I've always felt a leaning toward the candy business. I believe I have a natural adaptability for that. Couldn't I find a job in one of your factories, dad?"

"You'll get no leg-up from me, unless you show you're worthy of it."

"But you'll give me a job?"

"I won't interfere if the superintendent of any of the factories takes you on," growled I. Tapp. "But mind you, he'll hire you on his own responsibility—he'll understand that from me. But I tell you right now this is no time to apply for a job in a candy factory. We're discharging men—not hiring them."

"I will apply for the first opening," announced the son.

I. Tapp stamped away along the graveled walk, leaving the young man alone. Lawford's calmness was as irritating to him as sea water to a raw wound.



CHAPTER XXIV

GRAY DAYS

Those days were dark for Louise Grayling; on her shoulders she bore double trouble. Anxiety for her father's safety made her sufficiently unhappy; but in addition her mind must cope with the mystery of Cap'n Amazon's identity and Cap'n Abe's whereabouts.

For she was not at all satisfied in her heart that the storekeeper had sailed from the port of Boston on the Curlew; and the status of the piratical looking Amazon Silt was by no means decided to her satisfaction. Her discoveries in his bedroom had quite convinced the young woman that Cap'n Amazon was in masquerade.

His comforting words and his thoughtfulness touched her so deeply, however, that she could not quarrel with the old man; and his insistence that Cap'n Abe had sailed on the Curlew and would be at hand to assist Professor Grayling if the schooner had been wrecked was kindly meant, she knew. He scoffed at the return of Cap'n Abe's chest as being of moment; he refused to discuss his brother's reason for stuffing the old chest with such useless lumber as it contained.

"Leave Abe for knowing his own business, Niece Louise. 'Tain't any of our consarn," was the most he would say about that puzzling circumstance.

Louise watched the piratical figure of Cap'n Amazon shuffling around the store or puttering about certain duties of housekeeping that he insisted upon doing himself, with a wonder that never waned.

His household habits were those which she supposed Cap'n Abe to have had. She wondered if all sailors were as neat and as fussy as he. He still insisted upon doing much of the cooking; it was true that he had good reason to doubt Betty Gallup's ability to cook.

When there were no customers in the store Louise often sat there with Cap'n Amazon, with either a book or her sewing in her hand. Sometimes they would not speak for an hour, while the substitute storekeeper "made up the books," which was a serious task for him.

He seemed normally dexterous in everything else, but he wrote with his left hand—an angular, upright chirography which, Louise thought, showed unmistakably that he was unfamiliar with the use of the pen. "Writing up the log" he called this clerkly task, and his awkward looking characters in the ledger were in great contrast to Cap'n Abe's round, flowing hand.

For several days following the discovery in the "Globe paper" of the notice about the Curlew, Louise Grayling and Cap'n Amazon lived a most intimate existence. She would not allow Betty Gallup to criticise the captain even slightly within her hearing.

They received news from New York which was no news at all. The Boston Chamber of Commerce had heard no further word of the schooner. Louise and the captain could only hope.

The world of seafaring is so filled with mysteries like this of the Curlew, that Louise knew well that no further word might ever be received of the vessel.

Cap'n Amazon rang the changes daily—almost hourly—upon sea escapes and rescues. He related dozens of tales (of course with the personal note in most), showing how ships' companies had escaped the threat of disaster in marvelous and almost unbelievable ways.

Louise had not the heart now to stop this flow of narrative by telling him bluntly that she doubted the authenticity of his tales. Nor would she look into the old books again to search out the originals of the stories which flowed so glibly from his lips.

Who and what he could really be puzzled Louise quite as much as before; yet she had not the heart to probe the mystery with either question or personal scrutiny. The uncertainty regarding the Curlew and those on board filled so much of the girl's thought that little else disturbed her.

Save one thing. She desired to see Lawford Tapp and talk with him. But Lawford did not appear at the store on the Shell Road.

Mr. Bane came frequently to call. He was an eager listener to Cap'n Amazon's stories and evidently enjoyed the master mariner hugely. Several of the young people from the cottages along The Beaches called on Louise; but if the girl desired to see Aunt Euphemia she had to go to the Perritons, or meet the Lady from Poughkeepsie in her walks along the sands. Aunt Euphemia could not countenance Cap'n Amazon in the smallest particular.

"It is a mystery to me, Louise—a perfect mystery—how you are able to endure that awful creature and his coarse stories. That dreadful tale of the albatross sticks in my mind—I cannot forget it," she complained. "And his appearance! No more savage looking man did I ever behold. I wonder you are not afraid to live in the same house with him."

Louise would not acknowledge that she had ever been fearful of Cap'n Amazon. Her own qualms of terror had almost immediately subsided. The news from the Curlew, indeed, seemed to have smothered the neighborhood criticism of the captain, if all suspicions had not actually been lulled to rest.

Cap'n Amazon spoke no more of his brother, save in connection with Professor Grayling's peril, than he had before. He seemed to have no fears for Cap'n Abe. "Abe can look out for himself," was a frequent expression with him. But Cap'n Amazon never spoke as though he held the danger of Louise's father in light regard.

"I'll give 'em a fortnight to be heard from," Cap'n Joab Beecher said confidently. "Then if ye don't hear from Cap'n Abe, or the noospapers don't print nothin' more about the schooner, I shall write her down in the log as lost with all hands."

"Don't you be too sartain sure 'bout it," growled Cap'n Amazon. "There's many a wonder of the sea, as you an' I know, Joab Beecher. Look at what happened the crew of the Mailfast, clipper built, out o' Baltimore—an' that was when you an' I, Cap'n Joab, was sharpenin' our milk teeth on salt hoss."

"What happened her, Cap'n Am'zon?" queried Milt Baker, reaching for a fresh piece of Brown Mule, and with a wink at the other idlers. "Did she go down, or did she go up?"

"Both," replied Cap'n Amazon unruffled. "She went up in smoke an' flame, an' finally sunk when she'd burned to the Plimsol mark.

"Every man of the crew and afterguard got safely into two boats. This wasn't far to the westward of Fayal—in mebbe somewhere near the same spot where that Portugee fisherman reports pickin' up the Curlew's boat.

"When the Mailfast burned the sea was calm; but in six hours a sudden gale came up and drove the two boats into the southwest. They wasn't provisioned or watered for a long v'y'ge, and they had to run for it a full week, ev'ry mile reeled off takin' them further an' further from the islands, and further and further off the reg'lar course of shipping."

"Where'd they wind up at, Cap'n Am'zon?" asked Milt.

"Couldn't hit nothin' nearer'n the Guineas on that course," growled Cap'n Joab.

"There you're wrong," the substitute storekeeper said. "They struck seaweed—acres an' acres of it—square miles of it—everlastin' seaweed!"

"Sargasso Sea!" exploded Washy Gallup, wagging his toothless jaw. "I swanny!"

"I've heard about that place, but never seen it," said Cap'n Joab.

"And you don't want to," declared the narrator of the incident. "It ain't a place into which no sailorman wants to venture. The Mailfast's comp'ny—so 'tis said—was driven far into the pulpy, grassy sea. The miles of weed wrapped 'em around like a blanket. They couldn't row because the weed fouled the oars; and they couldn't sail 'cause the weed was so heavy. But there's a drift they say, or a suction, or something that gradually draws a boat toward the middle of the field."

"Then, by golly!" exclaimed Milt Baker, "how in tarnation did they git aout? I sh'd think anybody that every drifted into the Sargasso Sea would be there yit."

"P'r'aps many a ship an' many a ship's company have found their grave there," said Cap'n Amazon solemnly. "'Tis called the graveyard of derelicts. But there's the chance of counter-storms. Before the two boats from the Mailfast were sucked down, and 'fore the crew was fair starved, a sudden shift of wind broke up the seaweed field and they escaped and were picked up.

"The danger of the Sargasso threatens all sailin' ships in them seas. Steam vessels have a better chance; but many a craft that's turned up missin' has undoubtedly been swallowed by the Sargasso."

Louise, who heard this discussion from the doorway of the store, could not fail to be impressed by it. Could the Curlew, with her father and Cap'n Abe aboard, have suffered such a fate? There was an element of probability in this tale of Cap'n Amazon's that entangled the girl's fancy. However, the idea colored the old man's further imagination in another way.

"Sargasso Sea," he said reflectively, between puffs of his pipe, after the idlers had left the store. "Yes, 'tis a fact, Niece Louise. That's what Abe drifted in for years—a mort of seaweed and pulp."

"What do you mean, Uncle Amazon?" gasped the girl, shocked by his words.

"This," the master mariner said, with a wide sweep of his arm taking in the cluttered store. "This was Abe's Sargasso Sea—and it come nigh to smotherin' him and bearin' him down by the head."

"Oh! you mean his life was so confined here?"

Cap'n Amazon nodded, "I wonder he bore it so long."

"I am afraid Uncle Abram is getting all he wants of adventure now," Louise said doubtfully.

Cap'n Amazon stared at her unwinkingly for a minute. Then all he said was:

"I wonder?"



CHAPTER XXV

AUNT EUPHEMIA MAKES A POINT

Lawford Tapp did not appear at the store and Louise continued to wonder about it; but she shrank from asking Betty Gallup, who might have been able to inform her why the young man did not come again. However, on one bright morning the gray roadster stopped before the door and Louise, from her window, saw that the three Tapp girls were in the car.

She thought they had come to make purchases, for the store on the Shell Road was often a port of call for the automobiles of the summer colonists. Suddenly, however, she realized that L'Enfant Terrible was standing up in the driver's seat and beckoning to her.

"Oh, Miss Grayling!" shrilled Cecile. "May I come up? I want to speak to you."

"No," commanded Prue firmly, preparing to step out of the car. "I will speak to Miss Grayling myself."

"I don't see why she can't come down," drawled Marian, the languid. "I have a message for her."

"Why!" ejaculated the surprised Louise, "if you all wish to see me I'd better come down, hadn't I?" and she left the window at once.

She had remarked on the few occasions during the last few days that she had met the Tapp sisters on the beach, that they had seemed desirous of being polite to her—very different from their original attitude; but so greatly taken up had Louise's mind been with more important matters that she had really considered this change but little.

Therefore it was with some curiosity that she descended the stairs and went around by the yard gate to the side of the automobile.

"Dear Miss Grayling," drawled Marian, putting out a gloved hand. "Pardon the informality. But mother wants to know if you will help us pour tea at our lawn fete and dance Friday week? It would be so nice of you."

Louise smiled quietly. But she was not a stickler for social proprieties; so, although she knew the invitation savored of that "rawness" of which her aunt had remarked, she was inclined to meet Lawford's family halfway. She said:

"If you really want me I shall be glad to do what I can to make your affair a success. Tell your mother I will come—and thank you."

"So kind of you," drawled Marian.

But Cecile was not minded to let the interview end so tamely—or so suddenly.

"Say!" she exclaimed, "did Ford see you, Miss Grayling, before he went away?"

"He has gone away, then?" Louise repeated, and she could not keep the color from flooding into her cheeks.

"He wanted to see you, I'm sure," Cecile said bluntly. "But he started off in a hurry. Had a dickens of a row with dad."

"Cecile!" admonished Prue. "That sounds worse than it is."

Louise looked at her curiously, though she did not ask a question.

"Well, they did have a shindy," repeated L'Enfant Terrible. "When daddy gets on his high horse———"

"Ford wished to see you before he went away, Miss Grayling," broke in Prue, with an admonitory glare at her young sister. "He told us he was so confused that day he fell overboard from the Merry Andrew that he did not even thank you for fishing him out of the sea. It was awfully brave of you."

"Bully, I say!" cried Cecile.

"Really heroic," added Marian. "Mother will never get over talking about it."

"Oh! I wish you wouldn't," murmured Louise. "I'm glad Betty and I saved him. Mrs. Gallup did quite as much as I——"

"We know all that," Prue broke in quickly. "And daddy's made it up to her."

"Yes. I know. He was very liberal," Louise agreed.

"But mercy!" cried Prue. "He can't send you a check, Miss Grayling. And we all do feel deeply grateful to you. Ford is an awfully good sort of a chap—for a brother."

Louise laughed outright at that. "I suppose, though never having had a brother, I can appreciate his good qualities fully as much as you girls," she said. "Will he be long away?"

"That we don't know," Marian said slowly. Louise had asked the question so lightly that Miss Tapp could not be sure there was any real interest behind it. But Cecile, who had alighted to crank up, whispered to Louise:

"You know what he's gone away for? No? To get a job! He and father have disagreed dreadfully."

"Oh! I am so sorry," murmured Louise. She would not ask any further questions. She was troubled, however, by this information, for L'Enfant Terrible seemed to have said it significantly. Louise wondered very much what had caused the quarrel between Lawford and his father.

She got at the heart of this mystery when she appeared at the lawn fete to help the Tapp girls and their mother entertain. She was introduced at that time to the Taffy King. Louise thought him rather a funny little man, and his excitability vastly amused her.

She caught him staring at her and scowling more than once; so, in her direct way, she asked him what he meant by it.

"Don't you approve at all of me, Mr. Tapp?" she asked, presenting him with a cup of tea that he did not want.

"Ha! Beg pardon!" ejaculated the candy manufacturer. "Did you think I was watching you?"

"I know you were," she rejoined. "And your disapproval is marked. Tell me my faults. Of course, I sha'n't like you if you do; but I am curious."

"Huh! I'd like to see what that son of mine sees in you, Miss Grayling," he blurted out.

"Does he see anything particular in me?" Louise queried, her color rising, but with a twinkle in her eye.

"He's crazy about you," said I. Tapp.

"Oh! Is that why you and he disagreed?"

"It's going to cost him his home and his patrimony," the candy manufacturer declared fiercely. "I won't have it, I tell you! I've other plans for him. He's got to do as I say, or——"

Something in the girl's face halted him at the very beginning of one of his tirades. Positively she was laughing at him?

"Is that the reef on which you and Lawford have struck?" Louise asked gently. "If he chooses to address attentions to me he must become self-supporting?"

"I'll cut him off without a cent if he marries you!" threatened I. Tapp.

"Why," murmured Louise, "then that will be the making of him, I have no doubt. It is the lack I have seen in his character from the beginning. Responsibility will make a man of him."

"Ha!" snarled I. Tapp. "How about you? Will you marry a poor man—a chap like my son who, if he ever makes twenty dollars a week, will be doing mighty well?"

"Oh! This is so—so sudden, Mr. Tapp!" murmured Louise, dimpling. "You are not seriously asking me to marry your son, are you?"

"Asking you to?" exploded the excitable Taffy King, with a wild gesture. "I forbid it! Forbid it! do you hear?" and he rushed away from the scene of the festivities and did not appear again during the afternoon.

Mrs. Tapp, all of a flutter, appeared at Louise's elbow.

"Oh, dear, Miss Grayling! What did he say? He is so excitable." She almost wept. "I hope he has said nothing to offend you?"

Louise looked at her with a rather pitying smile.

"Don't be worried, Mrs. Tapp," she assured her. "Really, I think your husband is awfully amusing."

Naturally disapproval was plainly enthroned upon Aunt Euphemia's countenance when she saw her niece aiding in the entertainment of the guests at the Tapp lawn fete. The Lady from Poughkeepsie had come with the Perritons because, as she admitted, the candy manufacturer's family must be placated to a degree.

"But you go too far, Louise. Even good nature cannot excuse this. I am only thankful that young man is not at home. Surely you cannot be really interested in Lawford Tapp?"

"Do spare my blushes," begged Louise, her palms upon her cheeks but her eyes dancing. "Really, I haven't seen Lawford for days."

"Really, Louise?"

"Surely I would not deceive you, auntie," she said. "He may have lost all his interest in me, too. He went away without bidding me good-bye."

"Well, I am glad of that!" sighed Aunt Euphemia. "I feared it was different. Indeed, I heard something said———Oh, well, people will gossip so! Never mind. But these Tapps are so pushing."

"I think Mrs. Tapp is a very pleasant woman; and the girls are quite nice," Louise said demurely.

"You need not have displayed your liking for them in quite this way," objected Aunt Euphemia. "You could easily have excused yourself—the uncertainty about your poor father would have been reason enough. I don't know—I am not sure, indeed, but that we should go into mourning. Of course, it would spoil the summer——"

"Oh! Aunt Euphemia!"

"Yes. Well, I only mentioned it. For my own part I look extremely well in crepe."

Louise was shocked by this speech; yet she knew that its apparent heartlessness did not really denote the state of her aunt's mind. It was merely bred of the lady's shallowness, and of her utterly self-centered existence.

That evening, long after supper and after the store lights were out, and while Cap'n Amazon and Louise were sitting as usual in the room behind the store, a hasty step on the porch and a rat-tat-tat upon the side door announced a caller than whom none could have been more unexpected.

"Aunt Euphemia!" cried Louise, when the master mariner ushered the lady in. "What has happened?"

"Haven't you heard? Did you not get a letter?" demanded Mrs. Conroth. But she kept a suspicious eye on the captain.

"From daddy-prof?" exclaimed Louise, jumping up.

"Yes. Mailed at Gibraltar. Nothing has happened to that vessel he is on. That was all a ridiculous story. But there is something else, Louise."

"Sit down, ma'am," Cap'n Amazon was saying politely. "Do sit down, ma'am."

"Not in this house," declared the lady, with finality. "I do not feel safe here. And it's not safe for you to be here, Louise, with this—this man. You don't know who he is; nobody knows who he is. I have just heard all about it from one of the—er—natives. Mr. Abram Silt never had a brother that anybody in Cardhaven ever saw. There is no Captain Amazon Silt—and never was!"

"Oh!" gasped Louise.

"Nor does your father say a word in his letter to me about Abram Silt being with him aboard that vessel, the Curlew. Nobody knows what has become of your uncle—the man who really owns this store. How do we know but that this—this creature," concluded Aunt Euphemia, with dramatic gesture, "has made away with Mr. Silt and taken over his property?"

"It 'ud be jest like the old pirate!" croaked a harsh voice from the kitchen doorway, and Betty Gallup appeared, apparently ready to back up Mrs. Conroth physically, as well as otherwise.



CHAPTER XXVI

AT LAST

That hour in the old-fashioned living-room behind Cap'n Abe's store was destined to be marked indelibly upon Louise Grayling's memory. Aunt Euphemia and Betty Gallup had both come armed for the fray. They literally swept Louise off her feet by their vehemence.

The effect of the challenge on Cap'n Amazon was most puzzling. As Mrs. Conroth refused to sit down—she could talk better standing, becoming quite oracular, in fact—the captain could not, in politeness, take his customary chair. And he had discarded his pipe upon going to the door to let the visitor in.

Therefore, it seemed to Louise, the doughty captain seemed rather lost. It was not that he displayed either surprise or fear because of Aunt Euphemia's accusation. Merely he did not know what to do with himself during her exhortation.

The fact that he was taxed with a crime—a double crime, indeed—did not seem to bother him at all. But the clatter of the women's tongues seemed to annoy him.

His silence and his calmness affected Mrs. Conroth and Betty Gallup much as the store idlers had been affected when they tried to bait him—their exasperation increased. Cap'n Amazon's utter disregard of what they said (for Betty did her share of the talking, relieving the Lady from Poughkeepsie when she was breathless) continued unabated. It was a situation that, at another time, would have vastly amused Louise.

But it was really a serious matter. Mrs. Conroth was quite as excited as Betty. Both became vociferous in acclaiming the captain's irresponsibility, and both accused him of having caused Cap'n Abe's disappearance.

"Mark my word," declared Aunt Euphemia, with her most indignant air, "that creature is guilty—guilty of an awful crime!"

"The old pirate! That he is!" reiterated Betty.

"Louise, my child, come away from here at once. This is no place for a young woman—or for any self-respecting person. Come."

For the first time since the opening of this scene Cap'n Amazon displayed trouble. He turned to look at Louise, and she thought his countenance expressed apprehension—as though he feared she might go.

"Come!" commanded Mrs. Conroth again. "This is no fit place for you; it never has been fit!"

"Avast, there, ma'am!" growled the captain, at last stung to retort.

"You are an old villain!" declared Aunt Euphemia.

"He's an old pirate!" concluded Betty Gallup. Here Louise found her voice—and she spoke with decision.

"I shall stay just the same, aunt. I am satisfied that you all misjudge Captain Amazon." His face—the sudden flash of gratitude in it—thanked her.

"Louise!" cried her aunt.

"You better come away, Miss Lou," said Betty. "The constable'll git that old pirate; that's what'll happen to him."

"Stop!" exclaimed Louise. "I'll listen to no more. I do not believe these things you say. And neither of you can prove them. I'm going to bed. Good-night, Aunt Euphemia," and she marched out of the room.

That closed the discussion. Cap'n Amazon bowed Mrs. Conroth politely out of the door and Betty went with her. Louise did not get to sleep in her chamber overhead for hours; nor did she hear the captain come upstairs at all.

In the morning's post there was a letter for Louise from her father—a letter that had been delayed. It had been mailed at the same time the one to Aunt Euphemia was sent. The Curlew would soon turn her bows Bostonward, the voyage having been successful from a scientific point of view. Professor Grayling even mentioned the loss of a small boat in a squall, when it had been cast adrift from the taffrail by accident.

Betty, with face like a thundercloud, had brought the letter up to Louise. When the girl had hastily read it through she ran down to show it to Cap'n Amazon. She found him reading an epistle of his own, while Cap'n Joab, Milt Baker, Washy Gallup, and several other neighbors hovered near.

"Yep. I got one myself," announced Cap'n Amazon.

"Oh, captain!"

"Yep. From Abe. Good reason why your father didn't speak of Abe in his letter to your a'nt. Didn't in yours, did he?"

Louise shook her head.

"No? Listen here," Cap'n Amazon said. "'I haven't spoke to Professor Grayling. He don't know Abe Silt from the jib-boom. Why should he? I am a foremast hand and he lives abaft. But he is a fine man. Everybody says so. We've had some squally weather——'

"Well! that's nothin'. Ahem!"

He went on, reading bits to the interested listeners now and then, and finally handed the letter to Cap'n Joab Beecher. The latter, looking mighty queer indeed, adjusted his spectacles and spread out the sheet.

"Ye-as," he admitted cautiously. "That 'pears to be Cap'n Abe's handwritin', sure 'nough."

"Course 'tis!" squealed Washy Gallup. "As plain, as plain!"

"Read it out," urged Milt while the captain went to wait upon a customer.

Louise listened with something besides curiosity. The letter was a rambling account of the voyage of the Curlew, telling little directly or exactly about the daily occurrences; but nothing in it conflicted with what Professor Grayling had written Louise—save one thing.

The girl realized that the arrival of this letter from Cap'n Abe had finally punctured that bubble of suspicion against the captain that had been blown overnight. It seemed certain and unshakable proof that the substitute storekeeper was just whom he claimed to be, and it once and for all put to death the idea that Cap'n Abe had not gone to sea in the Curlew.

Yet Louise had never been more puzzled since first suspicion had been roused against Cap'n Amazon. A single sentence in her father's letter could not be made to jibe with Cap'n Abe's epistle, and therefore she folded up her own letter and thrust it into her pocket. In speaking of his companions on shipboard, the professor had written:

"I am by far the oldest person aboard the Curlew, skipper included. They are all young fellows, both for'ard and in the afterguard. Yet they treat me like one of themselves and I am having a most enjoyable time."

Cap'n Abe was surely much older than her daddy-prof! It puzzled her. It troubled her. There was not a moment of that day when it was not the uppermost thought in her mind.

People came in from all around to read Cap'n Abe's letter and to congratulate Cap'n Amazon and Louise that the Curlew was safe. The captain took the matter as coolly as he did everything else.

Louise watched him, trying to fathom his manner and the mystery about him. Yet, when the solution of the problem was developed, she was most amazed by the manner in which her eyes were opened.

Supper time was approaching, and the cooler evening breeze blew in through the living-room windows. Relieved for the moment from his store tasks, Cap'n Amazon appeared, rubbing his hands cheerfully, and briskly approached old Jerry's cage as he chirruped to the bird.

"Well! well! And how's old Jerry been to-day?" Louise heard him say. Then: "Hi-mighty! What's this?"

Louise glanced in from the kitchen. She saw him standing before the cage, his chin sunk on his breast, the tears trickling down his mahogany face.

That hard, stern visage, with its sweeping piratical mustache and the red bandana above it, was a most amazing picture of grief.

"Oh! What is it?" cried the girl, springing to his side.

He pointed with shaking index finger to the bird within the cage.

"Dead!" he said brokenly, "Dead, Niece Louise! Poor old Jerry's dead—and him and me shipmates for so many, many years."

"Oh!" screamed the girl, grasping his arm. "You are Cap'n Abe!"



CHAPTER XXVII

SARGASSO

After all, when she considered it later, Louise wondered only that she had not seen through the masquerade long before.

From the beginning—the very first night of her occupancy of the pleasant chamber over the store on the Shell Road—she should have understood the mystery that had had the whole neighborhood by the ears during the summer.

She, more than anybody else, should have seen through Cap'n Abe's masquerade. Louise had been in a position, she now realized, to have appreciated the truth.

"You are Cap'n Abe," she told him, and he did not deny it. Sadly he looked at the dead canary in the bottom of the cage, and wiped his eyes.

"Poor Jerry!" her uncle said, and in that single phrase all the outer husk of the rough and ready seaman—the character he had assumed in playing his part for so many weeks—sloughed away. He was the simple, tender-hearted, almost childish Cap'n Abe that she had met upon first coming to Cardhaven.

Swiftly through her mind the incidents of that first night and morning flashed. She remembered that he had prepared her—as he had prepared his neighbors—for the coming of this wonderful Cap'n Amazon, whose adventures he had related and whose praises he had sung for so many years.

Cap'n Abe had taken advantage of Perry Baker's coming with Louise's trunk to send off his own chest, supposedly filled with the clothes he would need on a sea voyage.

Then, the house clear of the expressman and Louise safe in bed, the storekeeper had proceeded to disguise himself as he had long planned to do.

Not content with the shaving of his beard only, he had dyed his hair and the sweeping piratical mustache left him. Walnut juice applied to his face and body had given him the stain of a tropical sun. Of course, this stain and the dye had to be occasionally renewed.

The addition of gold rings in his ears (long before pierced for the purpose, of course) and the wearing of the colored handkerchief to cover his bald crown completed a disguise that his own mother would have found hard to penetrate.

Cap'n Abe was gone; Cap'n Amazon stood in his place.

To befool his niece was a small matter. At daybreak he had come to her door and bidden Louise good-bye. But she had not seen him—only his figure as he walked up the road in the fog. Cap'n Abe had, of course, quickly made a circuit and come back to re-enter the house by the rear door.

From that time—or from the moment Lawford Tapp had first seen him on the store porch that morning—the storekeeper had played a huge game of bluff. And what a game it had been!

In his character of Cap'n Amazon he had commanded the respect—even the fear—of men who for years had considered Cap'n Abe a butt for their poor jests. It was marvelous, Louise thought, when one came to think of it.

And yet, not so marvelous after all, when she learned all that lay behind the masquerade. There had always been, lying dormant in Cap'n Abe's nature, characteristics that had never before found expression.

Much she learned on this evening at supper, and afterward when the store had been closed and they were alone in the living-room. Diddimus, who still had his doubts of the piratical looking captain, lay in Louise's lap and purred loudly under the ministration of her gentle hand, while Cap'n Abe talked.

It was a story that brought to the eyes of the sympathetic girl the sting of tears as well as bubbling laughter to her lips. And in it all she found something almost heroic as well as ridiculous.

"My mother marked me," said Cap'n Abe. "Poor mother! I was born with her awful horror of the ravenin' sea as she saw the Bravo an' Cap'n Josh go down. I knew it soon—when I was only a little child. I knew I was set apart from other Silts, who had all been seafarin' men since the beginnin' of time.

"And yet I loved the sea, Niece Louise. The magic of it, its mystery, its romance and its wonders; all phases of the sea and seafarin' charmed me. But I could not step foot in a boat without almost swoonin' with fright, and the sight of the sea in its might filled me with terror.

"Ah, me! You can have no idea what pains I suffered as a boy because of this fear," said Cap'n Abe. "I dreamed of voyagin' into unknown seas—of seein' the islands of the West and of the East—of visitin' all the wonderful corners of the world—of facin' all the perils and experiencin' all the adventures of a free rover. And what was my fate?

"The tamest sort of a life," he said, answering his own question. "The flattest existence ever man could imagine. Hi-mighty! Instead of a sea rover—a storekeeper! Instead of romance—Sargasso!" and he gestured with his pipe in his hand. "You understand, Louise? That's what I meant when I spoke of the Sargasso Sea t'other day. It was my doom to live in the tideless and almost motionless Sea of Sargasso.

"But my mind didn't stay tame ashore," pursued Cap'n Abe. "As a boy I fed it upon all the romances of the sea I could gather. Ye-as. I suppose I am greatly to be blamed. I have been a hi-mighty liar, Louise!

"It began because I heard so many other men tellin' of their adventoors, an' I couldn't tell of none. My store at Rocky Head where I lived all my life till I come here (mother came over to Cardhaven with her second husband; but I stayed on there till twenty-odd year ago)—my store there was like this one. There's allus a lot of old barnacles like Cap'n Joab and Washy Gallup clingin' to such reefs as this.

"So I heard unendin' experiences of men who had gone to sea. And at night I read everything I could get touchin' on, an' appertainin' to, sea-farin'. In my mind I've sailed the seven seas, charted unknown waters, went through all the perils I tell 'bout. Yes, sir, I don't dispute I'm a hi-mighty liar," he repeated, sighing and shaking his head.

"But when I come here to the Shell Road, where there warn't nobody knowed me, it struck me forcible," pursued Cap'n Abe, "that my fambly bein' so little known I could achieve a sort of vicarious repertation as a seagoin' man.

"Ye see what I mean? I cal'lated if I'd had a brother—a brother who warn't marked with a fear of the ocean—he would ha' been a sailor. Course he would! All us Silts was seafarin' men!

"An' I thought so much 'bout this brother that I might ha' had, and what he would ha' done sailin' up an' down the world, learnin' to be a master mariner, an' finally pacin' his own quarter-deck, that he grew like he was real to me, Niece Louise—he re'lly did. I give him a name. 'Am'zon' has been a name in our fambly since Cap'n Reba Silt first put the nose of his old Tigris to the tidal wave of the Am'zon River—back in seventeen-forty. He come home to New Bedford and named his first boy, that was waitin' to be christened, 'Am'zon Silt.'

"So I called this—this dream brother of mine—'Am'zon.' These Cardhaven folks warn't likely to know whether I had a brother or not. And I made up he went to sea when he was twelve—like I told ye, my dear. Ye-as. I did hate to lie to ye, an' you just new-come here. But I'd laid my plans for a long while back just to walk out, as it were, an' let these fellers 'round here have a taste o' Cap'n Am'zon Silt that they'd begun to doubt was ever comin' to Cardhaven. An' hi-mighty!" exploded Cap'n Abe, with a great laugh, "I have give 'em a taste of him, I vum!"

"Oh, you have, Uncle Abram! You have!" agreed Louise, and burst, into laughter herself. "It is wonderful how you did it! It is marvelous! How could you?"

"Nothin' easier, when you come to think on't," replied Cap'n Abe. "I'd talked so much 'bout Cap'n Am'zon that he was a fixed idea in people's minds. I said when he come I'd go off on a v'y'ge. I'd fixed ev'rything proper for the exchange when you lit down on me, Niece Louise. Hi-mighty!" grinned Cap'n Abe, "at first I thought sure you'd spilled the beans."

Louise rippled another appreciative laugh. "Oh, dear!" she cried, clapping her hands together. "It's too funny for anything! How you startled Betty! Why, even Lawford Tapp was amazed at your appearance. You—you do look like an old pirate, Uncle Abram."

"Don't I?" responded Cap'n Abe, childishly delighted.

"That awful scar along your jaw—and you so brown," said the girl. "How did you get that scar, Uncle Abram?"

"Fallin' down the cellar steps when I was a kid," said the storekeeper. "But these fellers think I must ha' got it through a cutlass stroke, or somethin'. Oh, I guess I've showed 'em what a real Silt should look like. Yes, sir! I cal'late I look the part of a feller that's roved the sea for sixty year or so, Niece Louise."

"You do, indeed. That red bandana—and the earrings—and the mustache—and stain. Why, uncle! even to that tattooing——"

He looked down at his bared arm and nodded proudly.

"Ye-as. That time I went away ten year ago and left Joab to run the store (and a proper mess he made of things!) I found a feller down in the South End of Boston and he fixed me up with this tattoo work for twenty-five dollars. Course, I didn't dare show it none here—kep' my sleeves down an' my throat-latch buttoned all winds and weathers. But now———"

He laughed again, full-throated and joyous like a boy. Then, suddenly, he grew grave.

"Niece Louise, I wonder if you can have any idea what this here dead-and-alive life all these years has meant to me? Lashed hard and fast to this here store, and to a stay-ashore life, when my heart an' soul was longin' to set a course for 'way across't the world? Sargasso—that's it. This was my Sargasso Sea—and I was smothered in it!"

"I think I understand, Cap'n Abe," the girl said softly, laying her hand in his big palm.

"An' now, Louise, that I've got a taste of romance, I don't want to come back to humdrum things—no, sir! I want to keep right on bein' Cap'n Am'zon, and havin' even them old hardshells like Cap'n Joab and Washy Gallup look on me as a feller-salt."

"But how———?"

"They never really respected Cap'n Abe," her uncle hurried on to say. "I find my neighbors did love him, an' I thank God for that! But they knew he warn't no seaman, and a man without salt water in his blood don't make good with Cardhaven folks.

"But Cap'n Am'zon—he's another critter entirely. They mebbe think he's an old pirate or the like," and he chuckled again, "but they sartin sure respect him. Even Bet Gallup fears Cap'n Am'zon; but, to tell ye the truth, Niece Louise, she used to earwig Cap'n Abe!"

"But when the Curlew arrives home?" queried the girl suddenly.

"Hi-mighty, ye-as! I see that," he groaned. "Looks to me as though somethin'll have to happen to Abe Silt 'twixt Boston and this port. And you'll have to stop your father's mouth, Louise. I depend upon you to help me. Otherwise I shall be undone—completely undone."

"Goodness!" cried the girl, choked with laughter again. "Do you mean to do away with Cap'n Abe? I fear you are quite as wicked as Betty Gallup believes you to be—and Aunt Euphemia."

He grinned broadly once more. "I got Cap'n Abe's will filed away already—if somethin' should happen," said the old intriguer. "Everything's fixed, Niece Louise."

"I'll help you," she declared, and gave him her hand a second time.



CHAPTER XXVIII

STORM CLOUDS THREATEN

The next week Gusty Durgin made her debut as a picture actress. She had pestered Mr. Bane morn, noon, and night at the hotel until finally the leading man obtained Mr. Anscomb's permission to work the buxom waitress into a picture.

"But nothin' funny, Mr. Bane," Gusty begged. "Land sakes! It's the easiest thing in the world to get a laugh out of a fat woman fallin' down a sand bank, or a fat man bein' busted in the face with a custard pie. I don't want folks to laugh at my fat. I want 'em to forget that I am fat."

"Do you know, Miss Grayling," said Bane, recounting this to Louise, "that is art. Gusty has the right idea. Many a floweret is born to blush unseen, the poet says. But can it be we have found in Gusty Durgin a screen artist in embryo?"

Louise was interested enough to go to the beach early to watch Gusty in a moving picture part.

"A real sad piece 'tis, too," the waitress confided to Louise. "I got to make up like a mother—old, you know, and real wrinkled. And when my daughter (she's Miss Noyes) is driv' away from home by her father because she's done wrong, I got to take on like kildee 'bout it. It's awful touchin'. I jest cried about it ha'f the night when this Mr. Anscomb told me what I'd have to do in the picture.

"Land sakes! I can cry re'l tears with the best of 'em—you see if I can't, Miss Grayling. You ought to be a movie actress yourself. It don't seem just right that you ain't."

"But I fear I could not weep real tears," Louise said.

"No. Mebbe not. That's a gift, I guess," Gusty agreed. "There! I got to go now. He's callin' me. The boss's sister will have to wait on all the boarders for dinner to-day. An' my! ain't she sore! But if I'm a success in these pictures you can just believe the Cardhaven Inn won't see me passin' biscuits and clam chowder for long."

In the midst of the rehearsal Louise saw a figure striding along the shore from the direction of Tapp Point, and her heart leaped. Already there seemed to be a change in the appearance of Lawford.

His sisters, who came frequently to see Louise at Cap'n Abe's, had told her their brother, was actually working in one of his father's factories. He had not even obtained a position in the office, but in the factory itself. He ran one of the taffy cutting machines, for one thing, and wore overalls!

"Poor Ford!" Cecile said, shaking her head. "He's up against it. I'm going to save up part of my pocket money for him—if he'll take it. I think daddy's real mean, and I've told him so. And when Dot Johnson comes I'm not going to treat her nice at all."

Lawford, however, did not look the part of the abused and disowned heir. He seemed brisker than Louise remembered his being before and his smile was as winning as ever.

"Miss Grayling!" he exclaimed, seizing both her hands.

"Lawford! I am so glad to see you," she rejoined frankly. And then she had to pull her hands away quickly and raise an admonitory finger. "Walk beside me—and be good," she commanded. "Do you realize that two worlds are watching us—the world of The Beaches and the movie world as well?"

"Hang 'em!" announced Lawford with emphasis, his eyes shining. "Think! I've never even thanked you for what you did for me that day. I thought Betty Gallup hauled me out of the sea till Jonas Crabbe at the lighthouse put me wise."

"Never mind that," she said. "Tell me, how do you like your work? And why are you at home again?"

"I'm down here for the week-end—-to get some more of my duds, to tell the truth. I'm going to be a fixture at the Egypt factory—much to dad's surprise, I fancy."

"Do you like it?" she asked him, watching his face covertly.

"I hate it! But I can stick, just the same. I have a scheme for improving the taffy cutting machines, too. I think I've a streak in me for mechanics. I have always taken to engines and motors and other machinery."

"An inventor!"

"Yes. Why not?" he asked soberly, "Oh! I'm not going to be one of those inventors who let sharp business men cheat them out of their eye-teeth. If I improve that candy cutter it will cost I. Tapp real money, believe me!"

Louise's eyes danced at him in admiration and she dimpled. "I think you are splendid, Lawford!" she murmured.

It was a mean advantage to take of a young man. They were on the open beach and every eye from the lighthouse to Tapp Point might be watching them. Lawford groaned deeply—and looked it.

"Don't," she said. "I know it's because of me you have been driven to work."

"You know that, Miss Grayling? Louise!"

"Yes. I had a little talk with your father. He's such a funny man!"

"If you can find anything humorous about I. Tapp in his present mood you are a wonder!" he exclaimed. "Oh, Louise!" He could not keep his hungry gaze off her face.

"You're a nice boy, Lawford," she told him, nodding. "I liked you a lot from the very first. Now I admire you."

"Oh, Louise!"

"Don't look like that at me," she commanded. "They'll see you. And—and I feel as though I were about to be eaten."

"You will be," he said significantly. "I am coming to the store to-night. Or shall I go to see your aunt first?"

"You'd better keep away from Aunt Euphemia, Lawford," she replied, laughing gayly. "Wait till my daddy-prof comes home. See him."

"And you really love me? Do you? Please . . . dear!"

She nodded, pursing her lips.

"But eighteen dollars a week!" groaned Lawford. "I think the super would have made it an even twenty if it hadn't been for dad."

"Never mind," she told him, almost gayly. "Maybe the invention will make our fortune."

At that speech Lawford's cannibalistic tendencies were greatly and visibly increased. Louise was no coy and coquettish damsel without a thorough knowledge of her own heart. Having made up her mind that Lawford was the mate for her, and being confident that her father would approve of any choice she made, she was willing to let the young man know his good fortune.

Nor was Lawford the only person to learn her mind. Cap'n Abe said:

"Land sakes! you come 'way down here to the Cape to be took in by a feller like Ford Tapp, Niece Louise? I thought you was a girl with too much sense for that!"

"But what has love to do with sense, uncle?" she asked him, dimpling.

"Hi-mighty! I s'pect that's so. An', anyway, he does seem to improve. He's really gone to work, they tell me, in one of his father's candy factories."

"But that's the one thing about him I'm not sure I approve of," sighed Louise. "We could have so much better times if he and I could play along the shore this summer and not have to think about hateful money."

"My soul an' body!" gasped the storekeeper, as though she had spoken irreverently about sacred things. "Money ain't never hateful, Niece Louise."

On Sunday I. Tapp did not accompany his family to church at Paulmouth. Returning, the big car stopped before Cap'n Abe's store and Mrs. Tapp came in to call on Louise. The good woman hugged the girl and wept on her bosom.

"I'm so happy and so sorry, both together, that I'm half sick," she said. "Lawford is so proud and joyful that I could cry every time I look at him. And his father's so cross and unhappy that I have to cry for him, too."

Which seemed to prove that Mrs. Tapp was being kept in a moist state most of the time.

"But I know I. Tapp is sorry for what he's done. Only there's no use expectin' him to admit it, or that he'll change. If Fordy won't marry Dot Johnson I. Tapp will never forgive him. I don't know what I shall say to her when she does come."

"Maybe she will not appear at all," Louise suggested comfortingly.

"I don't know. I got a letter from her mother putting the visit off till later. But it can't be put off forever. Anyhow, when she comes Lawford says he won't be at home. I hope the girls will act nice to her."

"I will," Louise assured her. "And I'll make Mr. Tapp like me yet; you see if I don't."

"Oh, I can't hope for that much, my dear," sighed the lachrymose lady, shaking her head; but she kissed Louise again.

Lawford waved a hand to her at her chamber window early on Monday morning as L'Enfant Terrible drove him in the roadster to Paulmouth to catch the milk train. All the girls were proud of their brother because, as Cecile said, he was proving himself to be "such a perfectly good sport after all." And perhaps I. Tapp himself admired his son for the pluck he was showing.

They corresponded after that—Louise and Lawford. As she could not hope to hear from the Curlew again until the schooner made the port of Boston, Lawford's letters were the limit of her correspondence. Louise had always failed to make many close friends among women.

Her interests aside from those at the store and with the movie people were limited, too. The butterfly society of The Beaches did not much attract Louise Grayling.

Aunt Euphemia manifestly disapproved of her niece at every turn. The Lady from Poughkeepsie had remained on the Cape for the full season in the hope of breaking up the intimacy between Louise and Lawford Tapp. His absence, which she had believed so fortunate, soon proved to be merely provocative of her niece's interest in the heir of the Taffy King.

Nor could she wean Louise from association with the piratical looking mariner at Cap'n Abe's store. The girl utterly refused to be guided by the older woman in either of these particulars.

"You are a reckless, abandoned girl!" Aunt Euphemia declared. "I am sure, no matter what others may say, that awful sailor is no fit companion for you.

"And as, for Lawford Tapp——Why, his people are impossible, Louise. Wherever you have your establishment, if you marry him, his people, when they visit you will have to be apologized for," the indignant woman continued.

"Let—me—see," murmured Louise. "How large an 'establishment' should you think, auntie, we could keep up on eighteen dollars a week?"

"Eighteen dollars a week!" exclaimed Aunt Euphemia, aghast.

"Yes. That is Lawford's present salary. Wages, I think they call it at the factory. He gets it in cash—in a pay envelope."

"Mercy, Louise! You are not in earnest?"

"Certainly. My young man is going to earn our living. If he marries me his father will cut him off with the proverbial shilling. I. Tapp has other matrimonial plans for Lawford."

"What?" gasped the horrified Mrs. Conroth. "He does not approve of you?"

"Too true, auntie. I have driven poor Lawford to work in a candy factory."

"That—that upstart!" exploded the lady. But she did not refer to Lawford.

It was evident that Aunt Euphemia saw nothing but the threat of storm clouds for her niece in the offing. Trouble, deep and black, seemed, to her mind to be hovering upon the horizon of the future,

As it chanced, the weather about this time seemed to reflect Aunt Euphemia's mood. The summer had passed with but few brief tempests. Seldom had Louise seen any phase of the sea in its wrath.

September, however, is an uncertain month at best. For several days a threatening haze shrouded the distant sea line. The kildees, fluttered and shrieked over the booming surf.

Washy Gallup, meeting Louise as she strolled on the beach, prognosticated:

"Shouldn't be surprised none, Miss Lou, if we had a spell of weather. Mebbe we'll have an airly equinoctooral. We sometimes do.

"Then ye'll hear the sea sing psalms, as the feller said, an' no mistake. Them there picture folks'll mebbe git a show at a re'l storm. That's what they been wishin' for—an' a wreck off shore. Land sakes! if they'd ever seed a ship go to pieces afore their very eyes they wouldn't ask for a second helpin'—no, ma'am!"

That evening threatening clouds rolled up from seaward and mantled the arch of the sky. The fishing boats ran to cover in the harbor before dark. The surf rumbled louder and louder along the shore.

And all night the sea mourned its dead over Gull Rocks.



CHAPTER XXIX

THE SCAR

Another fishfly (or was it the same that had droned accompaniment to Cap'n' Abe's story-telling upon a former occasion?) boomed against the dusty panes of the window while the fretful, sand-laden wind swept searchingly about the store on the Shell Road.

It was early afternoon; but a green and dreary light lay upon sea and land as dim as though the hour was that of sunset. In the silence punctuating the desultory conversation, the sharp swish, swish of the sand upon the panes almost drowned the complaint of the fishfly.

"We're going to have a humdinger of a gale," announced Milt Baker, the last to enter and bang the store door. "She's pullin' 'round into the no'th-east right now, and I tell Mandy she might's well make up her mind to my lyin' up tight an' dry for a while. Won't be no clams shipped from these flats to-morrow."

"High you'll likely be," agreed the storekeeper. "How dry ye'll be, Milt, remains to be seen."

"In-side, or aout?" chuckled Cap'n Joab, for

Milt Baker's failing was not hidden under a bushel.

Amiel hastened to toll attention away from his side partner. "This wind's driv' them picture folks to cover," he said. "They was makin' some fillums over there on the wreck of the Goldrock, that's laid out four year or so in Ham Cove———"

"Nearer five year," put in Cap'n Joab, a stickler for facts.

"You air right, cap'n," agreed Washy Gallup.

"Well," said Amiel, "four or five. The heave of her made ha'f of 'em sick, and that big actor man, Bane, got knocked off into the water an' 'twas more by good luck than good management he warn't drowned. I cal'late he's got enough."

"The gale that brought the Goldrock ashore had just such another beginning as this," Cap'n Joab said reflectively. "But she'd never been wrecked on a lee shore if her crew had acted right. They mutineed, you know."

"The sculpins!" ejaculated the storekeeper briskly. "Can't excuse that. Anything but a crew that'll turn on the afterguard that they've signed on for to obey!"

"That's right, Cap'n Am'zon," said Cap'n Joab. "Ye say a true word."

"An' for good reason," declared the mendacious storekeeper. "I've had experience with such sharks," and he ran his finger reflectively down the old scar upon his jaw.

"I always wanted to ask you 'bout that scar, Cap'n Am'zon," put in Milt Baker encouragingly. "Did you get it in a mutiny?"

"Yep."

"I didn't know but ye got it piratin'," chuckled Milt. "Bet Gallup, she swears you sailed under the Jolly Roger more'n once."

"So I did," declared the captain boldly. "This crew o' mutineers I speak of turned pirates, and they held me—the only one of the afterguard left alive—to navigate the ship.

"Guess mebbe you've heard tell, Cap'n Joab, of the mutiny of the Galatea?" went on the narrator unblushingly.

His fellow skipper nodded. "I've heard of it—yes. But you don't mean to say you sailed on her, Am'zon?"

"Yes, I did," the storekeeper declared. "I was third aboard her—she carried a full crew. She sailed out o' N'York for Australia and home by the way of the Chile ports and the Horn—a hermaphrodite brig she was; and—she—could—sail!

"But she warn't well found. The grub was wuss'n a Blue-nose herrin' smack's. Weevilly bread and rusty beef. The crew had a sayin' that the doc didn't have to call 'em to mess; the smell of it was sufficient.

"They was a hard crew I allow—them boys; many of 'em dock rats and the like. Warn't scurcely half a dozen able seamen in the whole crew. And the skipper and mate was master hard on 'em. In the South Atlantic we got some bad weather and the crew was worked double tides, as you might say.

"The extry work on top o' the poor grub finished 'em," said the storekeeper. "One day in the mornin' watch the whole crew come boilin' aft and caught the skipper and the mate at breakfast. They lived well. The second was in his berth and I had the deck.

"I got knocked out first thing—there's the scar of it," and the captain put a finger again on the mark along his jaw which actually was a memento of contact with the cellar step when he was a child. "Belayin' pin. Knocked me inside out for Sunday. But I cal'late they didn't put the steel to me 'cause I'd been fairly decent to 'em comin' down from N'York.

"Then, after the fight was over and they'd hove the others overboard, they begun to see they needed me to navigate the Galatea. They give me the choice of four inches of cold steel or actin' as navigator—the bloody crew o' pirates!"

"And what did ye do?" demanded Amiel Perdue, his mouth ajar.

"Well," snorted the storekeeper, "ye can see I didn't choose a knife in my gizzard. We sailed up an' down the coast of Brazil and the Guineas for two months, sellin' the cargo piecemeal to dirty little Portugee traders an' smugglers. Then we h'isted the black flag and took our first prize—an English barque goin' down to Rio. It was me saved her crew's lives and give 'em a chance't in their longboat. They made Para all right, I heard afterward.

"We burned that barque," proceeded the storekeeper dreamily, "after we looted her of everything wuth while. Then——"

The door was flung open with a gust of wind behind it. A lanky, half-grown lad stuck his head in at the opening to shrill:

"Hi! ain't ye heard 'bout it?"

"Bout what?" demanded Milt Baker.

"There's a schooner drivin' in on to the Gull Rocks," cried the news vender. "Something gone wrong with her rudder, they say. She's goin' spang onto the reef. Ev'rybody's down there, an' the life-savers are comin' around from Wellriver with their gear."

"Gale out o' the no'theast, too!" exclaimed Cap'n Joab, starting for the door.

The story-teller saw his audience melt away in a minute. He went out on the porch. Fluttering across the fields and sand lots from all directions were the neighbors—both men and women. The possibility of a wreck—the great tragedy of long-shore existence—would bring everybody not bed-ridden to the sands.

He saw Betty Gallup in high boots, her pea-coat buttoned tightly across her flat bosom, her man's hat pulled down over her ears, already halfway to the shore. From the cottage on the bluffs above The Beaches the summer visitors were trailing down. Below Bozewell's bungalow the motion picture company were running excitedly about.

"Like sandpipers," muttered the storekeeper. "Crazy critters. Wonder where that schooner is."

He hesitated to leave the premises. Cap'n Abe had never been known to follow the crowd to the beach when an endangered craft was in the offing. Indeed, he never looked in the direction of the sea if he could help it when a storm lashed its surface and piled the breakers high upon the strand.

But suddenly the man remembered that he was not Cap'n Abe! He stood here in an entirely different character. Cap'n Amazon, the rough and ready mariner, had little in common with the timid creature who had tamely kept store on the Shell Road for twenty-odd years.

What would the neighbors think of Cap'n Amazon if he remained away from the scene of excitement at such a time? He turned back into the store for his hat and coat and later came out and closed the door. Then he shuffled down the road.

At first he closed his eyes—squeezing the lids tight so as not to see the gale-ridden sea. But finally, stumbling, he opened them. Far away where the pale tower of the lighthouse lifted staunchly against the greenish gray sky, the surf was rolling in from the open sea, the waves charging up the strand one after the other like huge white horses, their manes of spume tossed high by the breath of the gale. Black was the sea, and streaked angrily with foam.

Thunderously did it roar and break over the Gull Rocks. A curtain of spoondrift hung above that awful reef and almost shut from the view of those ashore the open sea and what swam on it.

The old storekeeper reached the sands below the Shell Road. Scattered in groups along the strand were the people of all classes and degrees brought together by the word that a vessel was in peril. Here a group of fishermen in guernseys and high boots, their sou'westers battened down upon their heads. Yonder Bane and his fellow actors in natty summer suits stood around the camera discussing with the director the possibility of making a film of the scene. Farther away huddled a party of women from the neighborhood, with shawls over their heads and children at their skirts. Beyond them the people from the cottages on the bluff were hurrying to the spot—women in silk attire and men in the lounge suits that fashion prescribed for afternoon wear.

The storekeeper saw and appreciated all this. He stood squarely up to the wind, the ends of the red bandana over his ears snapping in the rifted airs, and shaded his eyes with his hand. With his other hand he stroked the scar along his jaw. He had a feeling that he had been cheated. That story of the mutiny of the Galatea was destined to be one of his very best narratives.

He had come to take great pride in these tales, had Cap'n Abe. He had heard enough men relate personal reminiscences to realize that his achievements in the story-telling line had a flavor all their own. He could hold his course with any of them, was his way of expressing it.

And here something had intervened to shut him off in the middle of a narrative. Cap'n Abe did not like it.

His keen vision swept the outlook once more. How darkly the clouds lowered! And the wind, spray-ridden down here on the open strand, cut shrewdly. It would be a wild night. Casually he thought of his cheerful living-room, with his chintz-cushioned rocker, Diddimus purring on the couch, and the lamplight streaming over all.

"Lucky chap, you, Abe Silt, after all," he muttered. "Lucky you ain't at sea in a blow like this."

It was just then that he saw the laboring schooner in the offing. Her poles were completely bare and by the way she pitched and tossed Cap'n Abe knew she must have two anchors out and that they were dragging.

She was so far away that she looked like a toy on the huge waves that rolled in from the horizon line. Now and then a curling wave-crest hid even her topmasts. Again, the curtain of mist hanging above Gull Rocks shrouded her.

For the craft was being driven steadily upon the rocks. Unless the wind shifted—and that soon—she must batter her hull to bits upon the reef.

The storekeeper, who knew this coast and the weather conditions so well, saw at once that the schooner had no chance for salvation. When the wind backed around into the northeast, as it had on this occasion, it foreran a gale of more than usual power and of more than twenty-four hours' duration.

"She's doomed!" he whispered, and wagged his head sadly.

The might of the sea made him tremble. The thought of what was about to happen to the schooner—a fate that naught could avert—sickened him. Yet he walked on to join the nearest group of anxious watchers, the spray beating into that face which was strangely marred.



CHAPTER XXX

WHEN THE STRONG TIDES LIFT

It was the tag-end of the season for the summer colony at The Beaches. Mrs. Conroth expected to leave the Perritons that evening—was leaving lingeringly, for she had desired to bear her niece off to New York with her. But on that point Louise had been firm.

"No, Aunt Euphemia," she had said. "I shall wait for daddy-prof and the Curlew to arrive at Boston. Then I shall either go there to meet him, or he will come here. I want him to meet Lawford just as quickly as possible, for we are not going to wait all our lives to be married."

"Louise!" gasped Mrs. Conroth with horror. "How can you say such a thing!"

"I mean it," said the girl, nodding with pursed lips.

"You are behaving in a most selfish way," the Lady from Poughkeepsie declared. "Everybody here has remarked how you have neglected me for those Tapps. They have taken full advantage of your patronage to push themselves into the society of their betters."

"Perhaps," sighed Louise. "But consider, auntie. This is a free and more or less independent republic. After all, money is the only recognized mark of aristocracy."

"Money!"

"Yes. How far would the Perritons' blue blood get them—or the Standishes'—or the Graylings'—without money? And consider our own small beginnings. Your great, great, great grandfather was a knight of the yardstick and sold molasses by the quart."

"You are incorrigible, Louise," cried Aunt Euphemia, her fingers in her ears. "I will not listen to you. It is sacrilegious."

"It's not a far cry," her niece pursued, "from molasses to taffy. And it seems to me one is quite as aristocratic as the other."

So she left Mrs. Conroth in a horrified state of mind and stepped out to face the gale. Seeing others streaming down upon the sands, Louise, too, sought the nearest flight of steps and descended to the foot of the bluff.

This was Saturday and she hoped that Lawford would come for the week-end. It was not Lawford, however, but his father into whose arms she almost stumbled as she came out from under the shelter of the bank into the full sweep of the gale.

"Oh, Mr. Tapp! Why is everybody running so? What has happened?"

The Taffy King had a most puzzling expression upon his face. He glared at her as though he did not hear what she said. In his hand he clutched an envelope.

"Ha! That you, Miss Grayling?" he growled. "Seen Ford?"

"No. Is he at home?"

"He's here fast enough," was I. Tapp's ungracious rejoinder. "I supposed he'd come over to see you."

"Perhaps he has," she returned wickedly. "He is a very faithful knight."

"He's a perfect ninny, if that's what you mean," snapped the Taffy King. "He's made a fool of me, too. I shouldn't wonder if he knew this all along," and he shook the letter in his hand and scowled.

"You arouse my curiosity," Louise said. "I hope Lawford has done nothing more to cause you vexation."

"I don't know whether he has or not. The young upstart! I feel like punching him one minute, and then the next I've got to take off my hat to him, Miss Grayling. D'you know what he's done?"

"Something really fine, I hope. I do not think you wholly appreciate Lawford, Mr. Tapp," the girl told him firmly.

"Ha! No. I s'pose he's got to go outside his immediate family to be appreciated," he snarled.

But at that Louise merely laughed. "You don't tell me what he has done," she urged.

"Why, the young rascal's solved a problem in mechanics that has puzzled us candy makers for years. I'm having a new cutting machine built after his suggestions."

"I hope Lawford will be properly reimbursed for his idea," she interrupted. "You know, he and I are going to need the money."

"Ha!" snorted I. Tapp again. "Ford's no fool, it seems, when it comes to a contract. He's got me tied hard and fast to a royalty agreement and a lump sum down if the machine works the way he says it will."

"I'm so glad!" cried Louise.

"You are, eh? What for?"

"Because we need not wait so long to be married," she frankly told him.

I. Tapp stood squarely in the path and looked at her.

"So you are going to marry him, whether I agree or not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Right in my very teeth?"

"I—I hope you won't be very angry, Mr. Tapp," Louise said softly. "You see—we love each other."

"Love!" began I. Tapp. Then he stopped, turning the thick letter over and over in his hand. "Well!" and he actually blew a sigh. "Perhaps there is something in that. Seems to be. I set my heart on having my fortune and my partner's joined by Ford and Dot Johnson—and see what's come of it."

He suddenly thrust the missive into Louise's hand.

"Look at that!"

With a growing suspicion of what it meant she opened the outer envelope and then the inner one, drawing out the engraved inclosure. Before she could speak a commotion along the beach drew their attention.

"What can it be?" Louise cried. "The lifesavers!"

"And their gear—lifeboat and all," Mr. Tapp agreed. "Must be a wreck——"

His gaze swept the sea and he seized Louise's arm. "There! Don't you see her? A vessel in distress sure enough. She's drifting in upon Gull Rocks. Bad business, Miss Grayling."

"Oh, there is Lawford!" murmured Louise. "He's with the surfmen!"

Two teams of heavy farm horses were dragging the boat and the surfmen's two-wheeled cart along the hard sand at the edge of the surf. The bursting waves wetted all the crew as they helped push the wagons, and the snorting horses were sometimes body deep in the water.

Lawford, in his fishermen's garments, waved his hand to Louise and his father. The girl smiled upon him proudly and the Taffy King, seeing the expression on her face, suddenly seized the missive from her hand.

"I give up! I give up!" he exclaimed. "I said I'd disown him if he refused to marry Dorothy Johnson, my partner's daughter. But 'tain't really Lawford's fault, I s'pose, if Dot won't marry him. It seems she had other ideas along that line, too, and I never knew it till we got this invitation to her wedding."

Louise smiled on the little man with tolerance. "Of course, I knew you would see it in the right light in time. But it really has been the making of Lawford," she said calmly.

"You think so, do you?" returned the Taffy King. "I wonder what good it would have done him if you hadn't been the prize he wanted? I'm not sure I shouldn't pay you out, Louise Grayling, by making the two of you live for a year on his eighteen dollars a week."

"Are you sure that would be such a great punishment?" she asked him softly.

They moved on with the crowd about the gear and boat. The patrol had come in good season. It was not probable that the schooner would hold together long after she struck the reef.

Not until this moment, when she saw the stern faces of the men and the wan countenances of the women, did Louise understand what the incident really meant. A few children, clinging to their mother's skirts, whimpered. The men talked in low voices, the women not at all.

Her heart suddenly shorn of its happiness, Louise Grayling stared out at the distant, laboring craft. Death rode on the gale, and lurked where the billows roared and burst over Gull Rocks. The schooner was doomed.

That might be the Curlew out there—the schooner her father was aboard—instead of this imperiled vessel. Only the night before she and her uncle had figured out the Curlew's course homeward-bound from her last port of call. She might pass in sight of Cardhaven Head and the lighthouse any day now.

The thought sobered Louise. Clinging to I. Tapp's arm she went nearer to the spot where the surfmen had brought their gear and boat.

The sea beyond the line of surf—between the strand and the reef—was foam-streaked and broken, a veritable cauldron of boiling water. The captain of the life-saving crew shrank from launching the boat into that wild waste.

If the line could be shot as far as the reef the moment the schooner struck, a breeches buoy could be rigged with less danger and, perhaps, with a better chance of bringing the ship's company safely ashore.

"'Tis a woeful pickle of water," Washy Gallup shrieked in Louise's ear. "And the wind a-risin'. 'Tis only allowed by law to shoot a sartain charge o' powder in the pottery little gun. Beyond that, is like to burst her. But mebbe they can make it. Cap'n Jim Trainor knows his work; and 'tis cut out for him this day."

Gradually the seriousness of the situation began to affect all the lighter-minded spectators. Louise saw the group of moving picture actors at one side. The men dropped their cigarettes and strained forward as they watched the schooner drive in to certain destruction.

It was like a play. The schooner, rearing on each succeeding wave, drew nearer and nearer. A hawser parted and they saw her bows swing viciously shoreward, the jib-boom thrusting itself seemingly into the very sky as she topped a huge breaker.

The crew had to slip the cable of the second anchor. The foremast came crashing down before she struck. Then, with a grinding thud those on the shore could not hear, but could keenly sense, the fated craft rebounded on the reef.

A gasping cry—the intake of a chorused breath—arose from the throng of spectators. The fishermen and sailors recoiled from the cart and left an open space in which the life-saving crew could handle their gear.

Cap'n Trainor, the grizzled veteran of the crew, had already loaded the gun and now aimed it. The shot to which was attached the line was slipped into the muzzle.

"Back!" the old man ordered, and waved his hand. Then he pulled the lanyard.

The line fled out of the box with a speed that made it smoke. But the shot fell short.

"'Tis too much wind, skipper," squealed Washy Gallup. "You be a-shootin' into the wind's eye. An' she's risin' ev'ry minute."

His only answer was a black look from Cap'n Trainor. The latter loaded the gun again, and yet again. The last time he waited for every one to get well back before he fired the cannon. When she went off she did not burst as they half expected—she turned a double back somersault.

"'Tis no use, boys!" the captain roared at them, smiting his hands together. "We must try the boat. But that's a hell's broth out there, and no two ways about it."

The stranded schooner, all but hidden at times in the smother of flying spume and jumping waves, hung halfway across the reef. They could see men, like black specks, lashed to her after rigging. Louise, between bursting waves, counted twenty of these figures.

"It may be the Curlew!" she cried to the Taffy King. "Father told me in his letter there were twenty people aboard her afore and abaft. He may be out there!" and the girl shuddered.

"No, no," said I. Tapp. "Not possible. Don't think of such a thing, my girl. But whoever they are, they are to be pitied."

There rose a shout at the edge of the surf. The fringe of fishermen had rushed in to aid in launching the boat. Anscomb and his camera man had taken up a good position with the machine. The director was going to get some "real stuff."

Louise saw that Lawford was foremost among the volunteers. The lifeboat crew, their belts strapped under their arms, had taken their places in the boat. Captain Trainor stood in the stern with his steering oar. On its truck the lifeboat was run into the surf.

"Now!" shrieked the excited moving picture director. "Action! Camera! Go!"

There was something unreal about it—it was like a play. And yet out there on that schooner her crew faced bitter death, while the men of the Coast Patrol took their lives in their hands as the lifeboat was run through the bursting surf.

The volunteers ran in till those ahead were neck deep in the sea. Then the boat floated clear and, with a mighty shove from behind the surfmen pulled out.

Lawford and his mates staggered back with the gear. The lifeboat lifted to meet the onrolling breakers. The men tugged at the oars.

Somebody screamed. Those ashore saw the white gash of a split oar. The man in the bow went overboard, not being strapped to the seat. His mate reached for him and the banging broken oar handle hit him on the head.

The boat swung broadside and the next instant was rolling over and over in the surf, the crew half smothered.

The spectators ran together in a crowd. But Lawford and some of the men who had helped to launch the boat rushed into the surf and dragged the overturned craft and her crew out upon the beach.

"One of the crew with a broken arm; another knocked out complete with that crack on the head," sputtered Cap'n Jim Trainor. "Two of my very best men. Come on, boys! Who'll take their places?"

Lawford was already putting on the belt he had unbuckled from about one of the injured surfmen. The Taffy King, seeing what his son was about, shouted:

"Ford! Ford! Don't dare do that! I forbid you!"

Lawford turned a grim face upon his father. "I earn eighteen a week, dad. I am my own boss."

A soft palm was placed upon I. Tapp's lips before he could reply. Louise was weeping frankly, but she urged:

"Don't stop him, Mr. Tapp. Don't say another word to him. My—my heart is breaking; but I am glad—oh, I am so glad!—that he is a real man."

Cap'n Trainor's hard gaze swept the circle of strained faces about him. After all, the men here were mostly "second raters"—weaklings like Milt Baker and Amiel Perdue, or cripples like Cap'n Joab and Washy Gallup.

Suddenly the captain's gaze descried a figure well back in the crowd—one who had not pushed forward during these exciting moments, but who had been chained to the spot by the fascination of what was happening.

"Ain't that Cap'n Am'zon Silt back there?" demanded the skipper of the lifeboat crew. "You pull a strong oar, I know, Cap'n Am'zon. We need you."



CHAPTER XXXI

AN ANCHOR TO THE SOUL

The storekeeper had stretched no point when he told his niece that the thought of setting foot in a boat made him well-nigh swoon. His only ventures aboard any craft were in quiet waters.

He could pull as strong an oar, despite his years, as any man along the Cape, but never had he gripped the ash save in the haven or in similar land-locked water.

His heart was wrung by the sight of those men clinging to the shrouds of the wrecked schooner. And he rejoiced that the members of the Coast Patrol crew displayed their manhood in so noble an attempt to reach the wreck.

But his very soul was shaken by the spectacle of the storm-fretted sea, and terror gnawed at his vitals when the lifeboat was thrust out into that awful maelstrom of tumbling water.

Relating imaginary events of this character or repeating what mariners had told or written about wreck and storm at sea in the safe harbor of the old store on the Shell Road was different from being an eyewitness of this present catastrophe.

Trembling, the salt tears stinging his eyes more sharply than the salt spray stung his cheeks, the storekeeper had ventured into the crowd of spectators on the sands. So enthralled were his neighbors by what was going forward that they did not notice his appearance.

And well they did not. This character of the bluff and ready master mariner that Cap'n Abe had builded—a new order of Frankenstein—and with which he had deceived the community for these many weeks, came near to being wrecked right here and now.

He all but screamed aloud in fear when the lifeboat was overturned. Pallid, shaking, panting for every breath he drew, he was slipping out of the unnoticing crowd when Cap'n Jim Trainor of the lifeboat crew called to him.

"You pull a strong oar, I know, Cap'n Am'zon. We need you."

For the space of a breath the storekeeper "hung in the wind." He had been poised for flight and the shock of the lifeboat captain's call almost startled him into running full speed up the beach.

Then the thought smote upon his harassed mind that Cap'n Trainor was not speaking to Cap'n Abe, storekeeper. The call for aid was addressed to Cap'n Amazon Silt.

It was to Cap'n Amazon, the man who had been through all manner of perils by sea and land, who had suffered stress of storm and shipwreck himself, whose reputation for courage the Shell Road storekeeper had builded so long.

Should all this fall in a moment? Should he show the coward's side of the shield after all his effort toward vicarious heroism? Another moment of hesitancy and as Cap'n Amazon Silt he would never be able to hold up his head in the company of Cardhaven folk again.

Cursed by the horror his mother had felt for the cruel sea that had taken her husband before her very eyes, Cap'n Abe had ever shrunk from any actual venture upon deep water. But Cap'n Amazon must be true to his manhood—must uphold by his actions the character the storekeeper had builded for him.

He buttoned his coat tightly across his chest and pushed through the group. Men and women alike made way for him, and in his ringing ears he heard such phrases as:

"He's the man to do it!"

"That's Cap'n Am'zon for ye!"

"There's one Silt ain't afraid of salt water, whatever Cap'n Abe may be!"

"Will you come, Cap'n Am'zon?" called the skipper of the life-saving crew.

"I'm coming," mumbled the storekeeper, and held up his arms that Milt Baker might fasten the belt about his body.

Afterward Milt was fond of declaring that the look on Cap'n Amazon's face at that moment prophesied the tragedy that was to follow. "He seen death facin' him—an' he warn't afraid," Milt said reverently.

"In with you, boys!" shouted the skipper. "And hook your belts—every man of you! If she overturns again I want to be able to count noses when we come right side up. Now!"

A shuddering cry from the women, in which Louise found herself joining; a "Yo! heave-ho!" from the men who launched the craft. Then the lifeboat was in the surf again, her crew laboring like the sons of Hercules they were to keep her head to the wind and to the breakers.

The storekeeper was no weakling; rowing was an accomplishment he had excelled in from childhood. It was the single activity in any way connected with the sea that he had learned and maintained.

At first he kept his eyes shut—tight shut. A strange thrill went through him, however. All these years he had shrunk from an unknown, an unexperienced, peril. Was it that Cap'n Abe had been frightened by a bogey, after all?

He opened his eyes, pulling rhythmically with the oar—never missing a stroke. His gaze rested on the face of that old sea-dog, Cap'n Jim Trainor. The fierce light of determination dwelt there. The skipper meant to get to the wrecked schooner. He had no doubt of accomplishing this, and Cap'n Abe caught fire of courage from the skipper's transfigured countenance.

As for Lawford Tapp, no member of Cap'n Trainor's crew pulled a better oar than he. With the bow ash he drove on like a young giant. Fear did not enter into his emotions.

There was nobody to notice the pallor of the storekeeper's visage. Every man's attention was centered on his own oar, while the skipper gazed ahead at the wave-beaten schooner grounded hard and fast upon the reef.

There was no lull in the gale. Indeed, it seemed as though the strength of the wind steadily rose. The lifeboat only crept from the shore on its course to Gull Rocks. Each yard must be fought for by the earnest crew.

Occasionally Cap'n Trainor called an encouraging sentence at them. For the most part, however, only the ravening sea roared malice in their ears.

Around them the hungry waves leaped and fought for their lives; but the buoyant boat, held true to her course by the skipper, bore up nobly under the strain. They won on, foot by foot.

The thunder of the breakers over the reef finally deafened them. The rocking schooner, buffeted by waves that could not drive her completely over the reef, towered finally above the heads of the men in the lifeboat.

Cap'n Trainor's straining eyes deciphered her name painted on the bow. He threw a hand upward in a surprised gesture, still clinging to the steering oar with his other hand, and shrieked aloud:

"The Curlew! By mighty! who'd ha' thought it? 'Tis the Curlew." He, too, knew of Cap'n Abe's supposed voyage on the seaweed ship.

The oarsmen read the word upon the skipper's lips rather than heard his voice. Two, at least, were shocked by the announcement—Lawford and the storekeeper. There was no opportunity for comment upon this wonder.

Skillfully the lifeboat was brought around under the lee of the wreck. Already most of her crew had crept down to the rail and were waiting, half submerged, to drop into the lifeboat. But one figure was still visible high up in the shrouds.

When the waves sucked out from under her the keel of the lifeboat almost scratched the reef. Then it rose on a swell to the very rail of the wreck, wedged so tightly on the rock.

The castaways came inboard rapidly, bringing their injured skipper with them. The lifeboat was quickly overburdened with human freight.

"No more! No more!" shouted Cap'n Trainor. "We'll have to make another trip."

"Where's the professor? Bring down the professor! There he is!" yelled the mate of the Curlew, who had given his attention to the injured master of the wrecked craft. "Who lashed him fast up there?"

There was a movement forward. The storekeeper had got up and pulled a stout-armed member of the Curlew's crew into his place.

"Take my oar!" commanded Cap'n Abe. "I got a niece—he's her father. Hi-mighty! I just got to get him aboard!"

With an agility that belied his years he leaped for the schooner's rail as the next surge rose. He swarmed inboard and started up the shrouds. Those below remained silent while he climbed.

He reached the helpless man, whipped out his knife, cut the lashings. Slight as the storekeeper seemed, his muscles were of steel. As though the half-conscious professor were a child, he lowered him to the slanting deck.

"Only room for one o' you!" roared Cap'n Trainor. "Only one! We're overloaded as 'tis. Better wait."

"You'll take him!" shouted Cap'n Abe, and dropped his burden at Lawford Tapp's feet.

The next moment the lifeboat shot away from the side of the wreck, leaving the Man Who Was Afraid marooned upon her deck.

That was a perilous journey for the overladen boat. Only the good management of Cap'n Trainor could have brought her safely to shore. And when she banged upon the beach it was almost a miracle that she did not start all her bottom boards.

Many willing hands hauled the heavy boat up upon the sands. The rescued crew of the schooner tumbled out and lifted their injured captain ashore. But it was Lawford who brought in Professor Grayling. Louise had watched with the Taffy King all through the battle of the lifeboat with the sea, suffering pangs of terror for Lawford's safety, yet feeling, too, unbounded pride in his achievement.

Now she pressed down to meet him at the edge of the sea and found that the drenched, dazed man Lawford bore up in his arms was her own father!