"You can put 'em all in if you want to," broke in Hiram. "I don't bother with things I don't know anything about. What I claim is, here's a log, brief and to the point, and covers all details of plot. And I'm proud of it. That's because it's my own plot."

The Cap'n, propping the wheel with his knee, pulled out his wallet, and again took a long survey of Colonel Ward's check. "For myself, I ain't so proud of it," he said, despondently. "It seems sort of like stealin' money."

"It's a good deal like it," assented Hiram, readily. "But he stole from you first." He took up the old spy-glass and levelled it across the rail.

"That's all of log to date," he mumbled in soliloquy. "Now if I could see—"

He uttered an exclamation and peered into the tube with anxiety.

"Here!" he cried. "You take it, Cap'n. I ain't used to it, and it wobbles. But it's either them or gulls a-flappin'."

Cap'n Sproul's brown hands clasped the rope-wound telescope, and he trained its lens with seaman's steadiness.

"It's them," he said, with a chuckle of immense satisfaction. They're hoppin' up and down on the high ridge, and slattin' their arms in the air. It ain't no joy-dance, that ain't. I've seen Patagonian Injuns a war-dancin'. It's like that. They've got that plank cover pried up. I wisht I could hear what they are sayin'."

"I can imagine," returned Hiram, grimly. "Hold it stiddy, so's I can look. Them old arms of Colonel Gid is goin' some," he observed, after a pause. "It will be a wonder if he don't shake his fists off."

"There certainly is something cheerful about it—lookin' back and knowin' what they must be sayin'," observed the Cap'n, losing his temporary gloom. "I reckon I come by this check honest, after all, considerin' what he done to me on them timber lands."

"Well, it beats goin' to law," grinned Hiram. "Here you be, so afraid of lawyers—and with good reason—that you'd have let him get away with his plunder before you'd have gone to law—and he knew it when he done you. You've taken back what's your own, in your own way, without havin' to give law-shysters the biggest part for gettin' it. Shake!" And chief plotter and the benefited clasped fists with radiant good-nature. The Cap'n broke his grip in order to twirl the wheel, it being necessary to take a red buoy to port.

"We're goin' to slide out of sight of 'em in a few minutes," he said, looking back over his shoulder regretfully. "I wisht I had a crew! I could stand straight out through that passage on a long tack to port, fetch Half-way Rock, and slide into Portland on the starboard tack, and stay in sight of 'em pretty nigh all day. It would keep 'em busy thinkin' if we stayed in sight."

"Stand out," advised Hiram, eagerly. "We ain't in any hurry. Let's rub it into 'em. Stand out."

"With them pea-bean pullers to work ship?" He pointed to the devoted band of Smyrna fire-fighters, who were joyously gathering in with varying luck a supply of tomcod and haddock to furnish the larder inshore. "When I go huntin' for trouble it won't be with a gang of hoss-marines like that."

Hiram, as foreman of the Ancients, felt piqued at this slighting reference to his men, and showed it.

"They can pull ropes when you tell 'em to," he said. "Leastways, when it comes to brains, I reckon they'll stack up better'n them Portygees you used to have."

"I never pretended that them Portygees had any brains at all," said the Cap'n, grimly. "They come aboard without brains, and I took a belayin'-pin and batted brains into 'em. I can't do that to these critters here. It would be just like 'em to misunderstand the whole thing and go home and get me mixed into a lot of law for assaultin' 'em."

"Oh, if you're afraid to go outside, say so!" sneered Hiram. "But you've talked so much of deep water, and weatherin' Cape Horn, and—"

"Afraid? Me afraid?" roared the Cap'n, spatting his broad hand on his breast. "Me, that kicked my dunnage-bag down the fo'c's'le-hatch at fifteen years old? I'll show you whether I'm afraid or not."

He knotted a hitch around the spokes of the wheel and scuffed hastily forward.

"Here!" he bawled, cuffing the taut sheets to point his meaning, "when I get back to the wheel and holler 'Ease away!' you fellers get hold of these ropes, untie 'em, and let out slow till I tell you stop. And then tie 'em just as you find 'em."

They did so clumsily, Cap'n Sproul swearing under his breath, and at last the Dobson got away on the port tack.

"Just think of me—master of a four-sticker at twenty-seven—havin' to stand here in the face and eyes of the old Atlantic Ocean and yell about untyin' ropes and tyin' 'em up like I was givin' off orders in a cow-barn!"

"Well, they done it all right—and they done it pretty slick, so far as I could see," interjected Hiram.

"Done it!" sneered the Cap'n. "Eased sheets here in this puddle, in a breeze about stiff enough to winnow oats! Supposin' it was a blow, with a gallopin' sea! Me runnin' around this deck taggin' gool on halyards, lifts, sheets, and downhauls, and them hoss-marines follerin' me up. Davy Jones would die laughin', unless some one pounded him on the back to help him get his breath."

Now that his mariner's nose was turned toward the sea once again after his two years of landsman's hebetude, all his seaman's instinct, all his seaman's caution, revived. His nose snuffed the air, his eyes studied the whirls of the floating clouds. There was nothing especially ominous in sight.

The autumn sun was warm. The wind was sprightly but not heavy. And yet his mariner's sense sniffed something untoward.

The Dobson, little topmast hooker, age-worn and long before relegated to the use of Sunday fishing-parties "down the bay," had for barometer only a broken affair that had been issued to advertise the virtues of a certain baking-powder. It was roiled permanently to the degree marked "Tornado."

"Yes," remarked Hiram, nestling down once more under the bulwark, after viewing the display of amateur activity, "of course, if you're afraid to tackle a little deep water once more, just for the sake of an outin', then I've no more to say. I've heard of railro'd engineers and sea-capt'ns losin' their nerve. I didn't know but it had happened to you."

"Well, it ain't," snapped the Cap'n, indignantly. And yet his sailor instinct scented menace. He couldn't explain it to that cynical old circus-man, intent on a day's outing. Had it not been for Hiram's presence and his taunt, Cap'n Sproul would have promptly turned tail to the Atlantic and taken his safe and certain way along the reaches and under shelter of the islands. But reflecting that Hiram Look, back in Smyrna, might circulate good-natured derogation of his mariner's courage, Cap'n Sproul set the Dobson's blunt nose to the heave of the sea, and would not have quailed before a tidal wave.

The Smyrna contingent hailed this adventuring into greater depths as a guarantee of bigger fish for the salt-barrel at home, and proceeded to cut bait with vigor and pleased anticipation.

Only the Cap'n was saturnine, and even lost his interest in the animated figures on distant Cod Lead Nubble, though Hiram could not drag his eyes from them, seeing in their frantic gestures the denouement of his plot.

Shortly after noon they were well out to sea, still on the port tack, the swells swinging underneath in a way that soothed the men of Smyrna rather than worried them. So steady was the lift and sweep of the long roll that they gave over fishing and snored wholesomely in the sun on deck. Hiram dozed over his cigar, having paid zestful attention to the dinner that Jackson Denslow had spread in the galley.

Only Cap'n Sproul, at the wheel, was alert and awake. With some misgivings he noted that the trawl fishers were skimming toward port in their Hampton boats. A number of smackmen followed these. Later he saw several deeply laden Scotiamen lumbering past on the starboard tack, all apparently intent on making harbor.

"Them fellers has smelt something outside that don't smell good," grunted the Cap'n. But he still stood on his way. "I reckon I've got softenin' of the brain," he muttered; "livin' inshore has given it to me. 'Cause if I was in my right senses I'd be runnin' a race with them fellers to see which would get inside Bug Light and to a safe anchorage first. And yet I'm standin' on with this old bailin'-dish because I'm afraid of what a landlubber will say to folks in Smyrna about my bein' a coward, and with no way of my provin' that I ain't. All that them hoss-marines has got a nose for is a b'iled dinner when it's ready. They couldn't smell nasty weather even if 'twas daubed onto their mustaches."

At the end of another hour, during which the crew of the Dobson had become thoroughly awake and aware of the fact that the coast-line was only a blue thread on the northern horizon, Cap'n Sproul had completely satisfied his suspicions as to a certain bunch of slaty cloud.

There was a blow in it—a coming shift of wind preceded by flaws that made the Cap'n knot his eyebrows dubiously.

"There!" he blurted, turning his gaze on Hiram, perched on the grating. "If you reckon you've got enough of a sail out of this, we'll put about for harbor. But I want it distinctly understood that I ain't sayin' the word 'enough.' I'd keep on sailin' to the West Injies if we had grub a-plenty to last us."

"There ain't grub enough," suggested Jackson Denslow, who came up from the waist with calm disregard of shipboard etiquette. "The boys have all caught plenty of fish, and we want to get in before dark. So gee her round, Cap'n."

"Don't you give off no orders to me!" roared the Cap'n. "Go back for'ard where you belong."

"That's the sense of the boys, just the same," retorted Denslow, retreating a couple of steps. "'Delphus Murray is seasick, and two or three of the boys are gettin' so. We ain't enlisted for no seafarin' trip."

"Don't you realize that we're on the high seas now and that you're talkin' mutiny, and that mutiny's a state-prison crime?" clamored the irate skipper. "I'd have killed a Portygee for sayin' a quarter as much. I'd have killed him for settin' foot abaft the gratin'—killed him before he opened his mouth."

"We ain't Portygees," rejoined Denslow, stubbornly. "We ain't no sailors."

"Nor I ain't liar enough to call you sailors," the Cap'n cried, in scornful fury.

"If ye want to come right down to straight business," said the refractory Denslow, "there ain't any man got authority over us except Mr. Look there, as foreman of the Smyrna Ancients and Honer'bles."

Mr. Denslow, mistaking the Cap'n's speechlessness for conviction, proceeded:

"We was hired to take a sail for our health, dig dirt, and keep our mouths shut. Same has been done and is bein' done—except in so far as we open 'em to remark that we want to get back onto dry ground."

Hiram noted that the Cap'n's trembling hands were taking a half-hitch with a rope's end about a tiller-spoke. He understood this as meaning that Cap'n Sproul desired to have his hands free for a moment. He hastened to interpose.

"We're goin' to start right back, Denslow. You can tell the boys for me."

"All right, Chief!" said the faithful member of the Ancients, and departed.

"We be goin' back, hey?" The Cap'n had his voice again, and turned on Hiram a face mottled with fury. "This firemen's muster is runnin' this craft, is it? Say, look-a-here, Hiram, there are certain things 'board ship where it's hands off! There is a certain place where friendship ceases. You can run your Smyrna fire department on shore, but aboard a vessel where I'm master mariner, by the wall-eyed jeehookibus, there's no man but me bosses! And so long as a sail is up and her keel is movin' I say the say!"

In order to shake both fists under Hiram's nose, he had surrendered the wheel to the rope-end. The Dobson paid off rapidly, driven by a sudden squall that sent her lee rail level with the foaming water. Those forward howled in concert. Even the showman's face grew pale as he squatted in the gangway, clutching the house for support.

"Cut away them ropes! She's goin' to tip over!" squalled Murray, the big blacksmith. Between the two options—to take the wheel and bring the clumsy hooker into the wind, or to rush forward and flail his bunglers away from the rigging—Cap'n Sproul shuttled insanely, rushing to and fro and bellowing furious language. The language had no effect. With axes and knives the willing crew hacked away every rope forward that seemed to be anything supporting a sail, and down came the foresail and two jibs. The Cap'n knocked down the two men who tried to cut the mainsail halyards. The next moment the Dobson jibed under the impulse of the mainsail, and the swinging boom snapped Hiram's plug hat afar into the sea, and left the showman flat on his back, dizzily rubbing a bump on his bald head.

For an instant Cap'n Sproul was moved by a wild impulse to let her slat her way to complete destruction, but the sailorman's instinct triumphed, and he worked her round, chewing a strand of his beard with venom.

"I don't pretend to know as much about ship managin' as you do," Hiram ventured to say at last, "but if that wa'n't a careless performance, lettin' her wale round that way, then I'm no judge."

He got no comment from the Cap'n.

"I don't suppose it's shipshape to cut ropes instead of untie 'em," pursued Hiram, struggling with lame apology in behalf of the others, "but I could see for myself that if them sails stayed up we were goin' to tip over. It's better to sail a little slower and keep right side up."

He knotted a big handkerchief around his head and took his place on the grating once more.

"What can we do now?" bawled Murray.

"You're the one that's issuin' orders 'board here now," growled the Cap'n, bending baleful gaze on the foreman of the Ancients. "Go for'ard and tell 'em to chop down both masts, and then bore some holes in the bottom to let out the bilge-water. Then they can set her on fire. There might be something them blasted Ancients could do to a vessel on fire."

"I don't believe in bein' sarcastic when people are tryin' to do the best they can," objected Hiram. He noted that the Dobson was once again setting straight out to sea. She was butting her snub nose furiously into swelling combers. The slaty bench of clouds had lifted into the zenith. Scud trailed just over the swaying masts. The shore line was lost in haze. "Don't be stuffy any longer, Cap'n," he pleaded. "We've gone fur enough. I give up. You are deep-water, all right!"

Cap'n Sproul made no reply. Suddenly catching a moment that seemed favorable, he lashed the wheel, and with mighty puffing and grunting "inched" in the main-sheet. "She ought to have a double reef," he muttered. "But them petrified sons of secos couldn't take in a week's wash."

"You can see for yourself that the boys are seasick," resumed Hiram, when the Cap'n took the wheel again. "If you don't turn 'round—"

"Mr. Look," grated the skipper, "I've got just a word or two to say right now." His sturdy legs were straddled, his brown hands clutched the spokes of the weather-worn wheel. "I'm runnin' this packet from now on, and it's without conversation. Understand? Don't you open your yap. And you go for'ard and tell them steer calves that I'll kill the first one that steps foot aft the mainmast."

There was that in the tones and in the skipper's mien of dignity as he stood there, fronting and defying once again his ancient foe, the ocean, which took out of Hiram all his courage to retort. And after a time he went forward, dragging himself cautiously, to join the little group of misery huddled in the folds of the fallen canvas.

"A cargo of fools to save!" growled Cap'n Sproul, his eyebrows knotted in anxiety. "Myself among 'em! And they don't know what the matter is with 'em. We've struck the line gale—that's what we've done! Struck it with a choppin'-tray for a bo't and a mess of rooty-baggy turnips for a crew! And there's only one hole to crawl out of."



XXII

The wind had shifted when it settled into the blow—a fact that the Cap'n's shipmates did not realize, and which he was too disgusted by their general inefficiency to explain to them. In his crippled condition, in the gathering night, he figured that it would be impossible for him to make Portland harbor, the only accessible refuge. The one chance was to ride it out, and this he set himself to do, grimly silent, contemptuously reticent. He held her nose up to the open sea, allowing her only steerageway, the gale slithering off her flattened sail.

The men who gazed on him from the waist saw in his resolution only stubborn determination to punish them.

"He's sartinly the obstinatest man that ever lowered his head at ye," said Zeburee Nute, breaking in on the apprehensive mumble of his fellows. "He won't stop at northin' when he's mad. Look what he's done in Smyrna. But I call this rubbin' it in a darn sight more'n he's got any right to do."

His lament ended in a seasick hiccough.

"I don't understand sailormen very well," observed Jackson Denslow; "and it may be that a lot of things they do are all right, viewed from sailorman standpoint. But if Cap Sproul wa'n't plumb crazy and off'm his nut them times we offered him honors in our town, and if he ain't jest as crazy now, I don't know lunatics when I see 'em."

"Headin' straight out to sea when dry ground's off that way," said Murray, finning feeble hand to starboard, "ain't what Dan'l Webster would do, with his intellect, if he was here."

Hiram Look sat among them without speaking, his eyes on his friend outlined against the gloom at the wheel. One after the other the miserable members of the Ancients and Honorables appealed to him for aid and counsel.

"Boys," he said at last, "I've been figgerin' that he's just madder'n blazes at what you done to the sails, and that as soon's he works his mad off he'll turn tail. Judgin' from what he said to me, it ain't safe to tackle him right away. It will only keep him mad. Hold tight for a little while and let's see what he'll do when he cools. And if he don't cool then, I've got quite a habit of gettin' mad myself."

And, hanging their hopes on this argument and promise, they crouched there in their misery, their eyes on the dim figure at the wheel, their ears open to the screech of the gale, their souls as sick within them as were their stomachs.

In that sea and that wind the progress of the Dobson was, as the Cap'n mentally put it, a "sashay." There was way enough on her to hold her into the wind, but the waves and the tides lugged her slowly sideways and backward. And yet, with their present sea-room Cap'n Sproul hoped that he might claw off enough to save her.

Upon his absorption in these hopes blundered Hiram through the night, crawling aft on his hands and knees after final and despairing appeal from his men.

"I say, Cap'n," he gasped, "you and I have been too good friends to have this go any further. I've took my medicine. So have the boys. Now let's shake hands and go ashore."

No reply from the desperate mariner at the wheel battling for life.

"You heard me!" cried Hiram, fear and anger rasping in his tones. "I say, I want to go ashore, and, damme, I'm goin'!"

"Take your shoes in your hand and wade," gritted the Cap'n. "I ain't stoppin' you." He still scorned to explain to the meddlesome landsman.

"I can carry a grudge myself," blustered Hiram. "But I finally stop to think of others that's dependent on me. We've got wives ashore, you and me have, and these men has got families dependent on 'em. I tell ye to turn round and go ashore!"

"Turn round, you devilish idjit?" bellowed the Cap'n. "What do you think this is—one of your circus wagons with a span of hosses hitched in front of it? I told you once before that I didn't want to be bothered with conversation. I tell you so ag'in. I've got things on my mind that you don't know anything about, and that you ain't got intellect enough to understand. Now, you shut up or I'll kick you overboard for a mutineer."

At the end of half an hour of silence—bitter, suffering silence—Hiram broke out with a husky shout.

"There ye go, Cap'n," he cried. "Behind you! There's our chance!"

A wavering red flare lighted the sky, spreading upward on the mists.

The men forward raised a quavering cheer.

"Ain't you goin' to sail for it?" asked Hiram, eagerly. "There's our chance to get ashore." He had crept close to the skipper.

"I s'pose you feel like puttin' on that piazzy hat of yourn and grabbin' your speakin'-trumpet, leather buckets, and bed-wrench, and startin' for it," sneered Cap'n Sproul in a lull of the wind. "In the old times they had wimmen called sirens to coax men ashore. But that thing there seems to be better bait of the Smyrna fire department."

"Do you mean to tell me that you ain't agoin' to land when there's dry ground right over there, with people signallin' and waitin' to help you?" demanded the showman, his temper whetted by his fright.

The Cap'n esteemed the question too senseless to admit any reply except a scornful oath. He at the wheel, studying drift and wind, had pretty clear conception of their whereabouts. The scraggly ridge dimly outlined by the fire on shore could hardly be other than Cod Lead, where Colonel Gideon Ward and Eleazar Bodge were languishing. It was probable that those marooned gentlemen had lighted a fire in their desperation in order to signal for assistance. The Cap'n reflected that it was about as much wit as landsmen would possess.

To Hiram's panicky mind this situation seemed to call for one line of action. They were skippered by a madman or a brute, he could not figure which. At any rate, it seemed time to interfere.

He crawled back again to the huddled group of the Ancients and enlisted Ludelphus Murray, as biggest and least incapacitated by seasickness.

They staggered back in the gloom and, without preface or argument, fell upon the Cap'n, dragged him, fighting manfully and profanely, to the companionway of the little house, thrust him down, after an especially vigorous engagement of some minutes, slammed and bolted the doors and shot the hatch. They heard him beating about within and raging horribly, but Murray doubled himself over, his knees against the doors, his body prone on the hatch.

His position was fortunate for him, for again the Dobson jibed, the boom of the mainsail slishing overhead. Hiram was crawling on hands and knees toward the wheel, and escaped, also. When the little schooner took the bit in her teeth she promptly eliminated the question of seamanship. It was as though she realized that the master-hand was paralyzed. She shook the rotten sail out of the bolt-ropes with a bang, righted and went sluggishly rolling toward the flare on shore.

"I don't know much about vessel managin'," gasped Hiram, "but seein' that gettin' ashore was what I was drivin' at; the thing seems to be progressin' all favorable."

Up to this time one passenger on the schooner appeared to be taking calm or tempest with the same equanimity. This passenger was Imogene, couched at the break of the little poop. But the cracking report of the bursting sail, and now the dreadful clamor of the imprisoned Cap'n Sproul, stirred her fears. She raised her trunk and trumpeted with bellowings that shamed the blast.

"Let him up now, 'Delphus!" shouted Hiram, after twirling the wheel vainly and finding that the Dobson heeded it not. "If there ain't no sails up he can't take us out to sea. Let him up before he gives Imogene hysterics."

And when Murray released his clutch on the hatch it snapped back, and out over the closed doors of the companionway shot the Cap'n, a whiskered jack-in-the-box, gifted with vociferous speech.

Like the cautious seaman, his first glance was aloft. Then he spun the useless wheel.

"You whelps of perdition!" he shrieked. "Lifts cut, mains'l blowed out, and a lee shore a quarter of a mile away! I've knowed fools, lunatics, and idjits, and I don't want to insult 'em by callin' you them names. You—"

"Well, if we are any crazier for wantin' to go ashore where we belong than you was for settin' out to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a night like this, I'd like to have it stated why," declared Hiram.

"Don't you know enough to understand that I was tryin' to save your lives by ratchin' her off'm this coast?" bellowed Cap'n Sproul.

"Just thought you was crazy, and think so now," replied the showman, now fully as furious as the Cap'n—each in his own mind accusing the other of being responsible for their present plight. "The place for us is on shore, and we're goin' there!"

"What do you suppose is goin' to become of us when she strikes?" bawled the Cap'n, clutching the backstay and leaning into the night.

"She'll strike shore, won't she? Well, that's what I want to strike. It'll sound good and feel good."

For such gibbering lunacy as this the master mariner had no fit reply. His jaws worked wordlessly. He kept his clutch on the backstay with the dizzy notion that this saved him from clutching some one's throat.

"You'd better begin to pray, you fellers," he cried at last, with a quaver in his tones. "We're goin' smash-ti-belter onto them rocks, and Davy Jones is settin' on extra plates for eight at breakfast to-morrer mornin'. Do your prayin' now."

"The only Scripture that occurs to me just now," said Hiram, in a hush of the gale, "is that 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.'"

That was veritably a Delphic utterance at that moment, had Hiram only known it.

Some one has suggested that there is a providence that watches over children and fools. It is certain that chance does play strange antics. Men have fallen from balloons and lived. Other men have slipped on a banana skin and died. Men have fought to save themselves from destruction, and have been destroyed. Other men have resigned themselves and have won out triumphantly.

The doomed Dobson was swashing toward the roaring shore broadside on. The first ledge would roll her bottom up, beating in her punky breast at the same time. This was the programme the doleful skipper had pictured in his mind. There was no way of winning a chance through the rocks, such as there might have been with steerageway, a tenuous chance, and yet a chance. But the Cap'n decided with apathy and resignation to fate that one man could not raise a sail out of that wreck forward and at the same time heave her up to a course for the sake of that chance.

As to Imogene he had not reckoned.

Perhaps that faithful pachyderm decided to die with her master embraced in her trunk. Perhaps she decided that the quarter-deck was farther above water than the waist.

At any rate, curving back her trunk and "roomping" out the perturbation of her spirit, she reared on her hind-legs, boosted herself upon the roof of the house, and clawed aft. This auto-shifting of cargo lifted the bow of the little schooner. Her jibs, swashing soggily about her bow, were hoisted out of the water, and a gust bellied them. On the pivot of her buried stern the Dobson swung like a top just as twin ledges threatened her broadside, and she danced gayly between them, the wind tugging her along by her far-flung jibs.

In matter of wrecks, it is the outer rocks that smash; it is the teeth of these ledges that tear timbers and macerate men. The straggling remains are found later in the sandy cove.

But with Imogene as unwitting master mariner in the crisis, the schooner dodged the danger of the ledges by the skin of her barnacled bottom, spun frothing up the cove in the yeast of the waves, bumped half a dozen times as though searching suitable spot for self-immolation, and at last, finding a bed of white sand, flattened herself upon it with a racket of demolition—the squall of drawing spikes her death-wail, the boom of water under her bursting deck her grunt of dissolution.

The compelling impulse that drives men to close personal contact in times of danger had assembled all the crew of the schooner upon the poop, the distracted Imogene in the centre. She wore the trappings of servitude—the rude harness in which she had labored to draw up the buckets of dirt on Cod Lead, the straps to which the tackle had been fastened to hoist her on board the Dobson.

When the deck went out from under them, the elephant was the biggest thing left in reach.

And as she went sturdily swimming off, trunk elevated above the surges, the desperate crew of the Dobson grabbed at straps and dangling traces and went, too, towing behind her. Imogene could reach the air with the end of her uplifted trunk. The men submerged at her side gasped and strangled, but clung with the death-grip of drowning men; and when at last she found bottom and dragged herself up the beach with the waves beating at her, she carried them all, salvaged from the sea in a fashion so marvellous that Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first on his legs, had no voice left with which to express his sentiments.

He staggered around to the front of the panting animal and solemnly seized her trunk and waggled it in earnest hand-shake.

"You're a dumb animile," he muttered, "and you prob'ly can't have any idea of what I'm meanin' or sayin'. But I want to say to you, man to elephant, that I wouldn't swap your hind-tail—which don't seem to be of any use, anyway—for the whole Smyrna fire company. I'm sayin' to you, frank and outspoken, that I was mad when you first come aboard. I ask your pardon. Of course, you don't understand that. But my mind is freer. Your name ought to be changed to Proverdunce, and the United States Government ought to give you a medal bigger'n a pie-plate."

He turned and bent a disgusted stare on the gasping men dimly outlined in the gloom.

"I'd throw you back again," he snapped, "if it wa'n't for givin' the Atlantic Ocean the colic."

One by one they staggered up from the beach grass, revolved dizzily, and with the truly homing instinct started away in the direction of the fire-flare on the higher land of the island.

Of that muddled company, he was the only one who had the least knowledge of their whereabouts or guessed that those responsible for the signal-fire were Colonel Gideon Ward and Eleazar Bodge. He followed behind, steeling his soul to meet those victims of the complicated plot. An astonished bleat from Hiram Look, who led the column, announced them. Colonel Ward was doubled before the fire, his long arms embracing his thin knees. Eleazar Bodge had just brought a fresh armful of driftwood to heap on the blaze.

"We thought it would bring help to us," cried the Colonel, who could not see clearly through the smoke. "We've been left here by a set of thieves and murderers." He unfolded himself and stood up. "You get me in reach of a telegraph-office before nine o'clock to-morrow and I'll make it worth your while."

"By the long-horned heifers of Hebron!" bawled Hiram. "We've come back to just the place we started from! If you built that fire to tole us ashore here, I'll have you put into State Prison."

"Here they are, Bodge!" shrieked the Colonel, his teeth chattering, squirrel-like, in his passion. "Talk about State Prison to me! I'll have the whole of you put there for bunco-men. You've stolen fifteen thousand dollars from me. Where is that old hell-hound that's got my check?"

"Here are six square and responsible citizens of Smyrna that heard you make your proposition and saw you pass that check," declared Hiram, stoutly, awake thoroughly, now that his prized plot was menaced. "It was a trade."

"It was a steal!" The Colonel caught sight of Cap'n Sproul on the outskirts of the group. "You cash that check and I'll have you behind bars. I've stopped payment on it."

"Did ye telegraft or ride to the bank on a bicycle?" inquired the Cap'n, satirically. He came straight up to the fire, pushing the furious Colonel to one side as he passed him. Angry as Ward was, he did not dare to resist or attack this grim man who thus came upon him, dripping, from the sea.

"Keep out of the way of gentlemen who want to dry themselves," grunted the skipper, and he calmly took possession of the fire, beckoning his crew to follow him. The Colonel and Mr. Bodge were shut out from the cheering blaze.

The first thing Cap'n Sproul did, as he squatted down, was to pull out his wallet and inspect the precious check.

"It's pretty wet," he remarked, "but the ink ain't run any. A little dryin' out is all it needs."

And with Ward shouting fearful imprecations at him over the heads of the group about the fire, he proceeded calmly to warm the check, turning first one side and then the other to the blaze.

"If you try to grab that," bawled Hiram, who was squatting beside the Cap'n, eying him earnestly in his task, "I'll break in your head." Then he nudged the elbow of the Cap'n, who had remained apparently oblivious of his presence. "Aaron," he muttered, "there's been some things between us to-night that I wish hadn't been. But I'm quick-tempered, and I ain't used to the sea, and what I done was on the spur of the moment. But I've shown that I'm your friend, and I'll do more to show—"

"Hiram," broke in the Cap'n, and his tone was severe, "mutiny ain't easy overlooked. But considerin' that your elephant has squared things for you, we'll let it stand as settled. But don't ever talk about it. I'm havin' too hard work to control my feelin's."

And then, looking up from the drying check, he fixed the vociferous Colonel with flaming eyes.

"Did ye hear me make a remark about my feelin's?" he rasped. "Your business and my business has been settled, and here's the paper to show for it." He slapped his hand across the check. "I didn't come back here to talk it over." He gulped down his wrathful memory of the reasons that had brought him. "You've bought Bodge. You've bought Cap Kidd's treasure, wherever it is. You're welcome to Bodge and to the treasure. And, controllin' Bodge as you do, you'd better let him make you up another fire off some little ways from this one, because this one ain't big enough for you and me both." The Cap'n's tone was significant. There was stubborn menace there, also. After gazing for a time on Sproul's uncompromising face and on the check so tantalizingly displayed before the blaze, Colonel Ward turned and went away. Ten minutes later a rival blaze mounted to the heavens from a distant part of Cod Lead Nubble. Half an hour later Mr. Bodge came as an emissary. He brought the gage of battle and flung it down and departed instantly.

"Colonel Ward says for me to say to you," he announced, "that he'll bet a thousand dollars you don't dare to hand that check into any bank."

"And you tell him I'll bet five thousand dollars," bellowed the Cap'n, "that I not only dare to cash it, but that I'll get to a bank and do it before he can get anywhere and stop payment."

"It's a pretty fair gamble both ways," remarked Hiram, his sporting instincts awake. "You may know more about water and ways of gettin' acrost that, but if this wind holds up the old spider will spin out a thread and ride away on it. He's ga'nt enough!"

Cap'n Sproul made no reply. He sat before his fire buried in thought, the gale whipping past his ears.

Colonel Ward, after ordering the returned and communicative Bodge to shut up, was equally thoughtful as he gazed into his fire. Ludelphus Murray, after trying long and in vain to light a soggy pipeful of tobacco, gazed into the fire-lit faces of his comrades of the Ancients and Honorables of Smyrna and said, with a sickly grin:

"I wisht I knew Robinson Crusoe's address. He might like to run out and spend the rest of the fall with us."

But the jest did not cheer the gloom of the marooned on Cod Lead Nubble.



XXIII

Cap'n Aaron Sproul had forgotten his troubles for a time. He had been dozing. The shrewish night wind of autumn whistled over the ledges of Cod Lead Nubble and scattered upon his gray beard the black ashes from the bonfire that the shivering men of Smyrna still plied with fuel. The Cap'n sat upright, his arms clasping his doubled knees, his head bent forward.

Hiram Look, faithful friend that he was, had curled himself at his back and was snoring peacefully. He had the appearance of a corsair, with his head wrapped in the huge handkerchief that had replaced the plug hat lost in the stress and storm that had destroyed the Aurilla P. Dobson. The elephant, Imogene, was bulked dimly in the first gray of a soppy dawn.

"If this is goin' to sea," said Jackson Denslow, continuing the sour mutterings of the night, "I'm glad I never saw salt water before I got pulled into this trip."

"It ain't goin' to sea," remarked another of the Smyrna amateur mariners. "It's goin' ashore!" He waved a disconsolate gesture toward the cove where the remains of the Dobson swashed in the breakers.

"If any one ever gets me navigatin' again onto anything desp'ritter than a stone-bo't on Smyrna bog," said Denslow, "I hope my relatives will have me put into a insane horsepittle."

"Look at that!" shouted Ludelphus Murray. "This is a thunderation nice kind of a night to have a celebration on!"

This yelp, sounding above the somniferous monotone of grumbling, stirred Cap'n Sproul from his dozing. He snapped his head up from his knees. A rocket was streaking across the sky and popped with a sprinkling of colored fires. Another and another followed with desperate haste, and a Greek fire shed baleful light across the waters.

"Yes, sir," repeated Murray, indignantly sarcastic, "it's a nice night and a nice time of night to be celebratin' when other folks is cold and sufferin' and hungry."

"What's the matter?" asked Hiram, stirring in his turn.

The Cap'n was prompt with biting reply.

"One of your Smyrna 'cyclopedys of things that ain't so is open at the page headed 'idjit,' with a chaw of tobacker for a book-mark. If the United States Government don't scoop in the whole of us for maintainin' false beacons on a dangerous coast in a storm, then I miss my cal'lations, that's all!"

"That shows the right spirit out there," vouchsafed Hiram, his eyes kindling as another rocket slashed the sky. "Fireworks as soon as they've located us is the right spirit, I say! The least we can do is to give 'em three cheers."

But at this Cap'n Sproul staggered up, groaning as his old enemy, rheumatism, dug its claws into his flesh. He made for the shore, his disgust too deep for words.

"Me—me," he grunted, "in with a gang that can't tell the difference between a vessel goin' to pieces and a fireworks celebration! I don't wonder that the Atlantic Ocean tasted of us and spit us ashore. She couldn't stand it to drown us!"

When the others straggled down and gabbled questions at him he refused to reply, but stood peering into the lifting dawn. He got a glimpse of her rig before her masts went over. She was a hermaphrodite brig, and old-fashioned at that. She was old-fashioned enough to have a figure-head. It came ashore at Cap'n Sproul's feet as avant-coureur of the rest of the wreckage. It led the procession because it was the first to suffer when the brig butted her nose against the Blue Cow Reef. It came ashore intact, a full-sized woman carved from pine and painted white. The Cap'n recognized the fatuous smile as the figure rolled its face up at him from the brine.

"The old Polyhymnia!" he muttered.

Far out there was a flutter of sail, and under his palm he descried a big yawl making off the coast. She rode lightly, and he could see only two heads above her gunwale.

"That's Cap Hart Tate, all right," mused the Cap'n; "Cap Hart Tate gallantly engaged in winnin' a medal by savin' his own life. But knowin' Cap Hart Tate as well as I do, I don't see how he ever so far forgot himself as to take along any one else. It must be the first mate, and the first mate must have had a gun as a letter of recommendation!"

It may be said in passing that this was a distinctly shrewd guess, and the Cap'n promptly found something on the seas that clinched his belief. Bobbing toward Cod Lead came an overloaded dingy. There were six men in it, and they were making what shift they could to guide it into the cove between the outer rocks. They came riding through safely on a roller, splattered across the cove with wildly waving oars, and landed on the sand with a bump that sent them tumbling heels over head out of the little boat.

"Four Portygee sailors, the cook, and the second mate," elucidated Cap'n Sproul, oracularly, for his own information.

The second mate, a squat and burly sea-dog, was first up on his feet in the white water, but stumbled over a struggling sailor who was kicking his heels in an attempt to rise. When the irate mate was up for the second time he knocked down this sailor and then strode ashore, his meek followers coming after on their hands and knees.

"Ahoy, there, Dunk Butts!" called Cap'n Sproul, heartily.

But Dunk Butts did not appear to warm to greetings nor to rejoice over his salvation from the sea. He squinted sourly at the Cap'n, then at the men of Smyrna, and then his eyes fell upon the figurehead and its fatuous smile.

With a snarl he leaped on it, smashed his knuckles against its face, swore horribly while he danced with pain, kicked it with his heavy sea-boots, was more horribly profane as he hopped about with an aching toe in the clutch of both hands, and at last picked up a good-sized hunk of ledge and went at the smiling face with Berserker rage.

Cap'n Sproul had begun to frown at Butts's scornful slighting of his amiable greeting. Now he ran forward, placed his broad boot against the second mate, and vigorously pushed him away from the prostrate figure. When Butts came up at him with the fragment of rock in his grasp, Cap'n Sproul faced him with alacrity, also with a piece of rock.

"You've knowed me thutty years and sailed with me five, Dunk Butts, and ye're shinnin' into the wrong riggin' when ye come at me with a rock. I ain't in no very gentle spirits to-day, neither."

"I wasn't doin' northin' to you," squealed Butts, his anger becoming mere querulous reproach, for the Cap'n's eye was fiery and Butts's memory was good.

"You was strikin' a female," said Cap'n Sproul, with severity, and when the astonished Butts blazed indignant remonstrance, he insisted on his point with a stubbornness that allowed no compromise. "It don't make any difference even if it is only a painted figger. It's showin' disrespect to the sex, and sence I've settled on shore, Butts, and am married to the best woman that ever lived, I'm standin' up for the sex to the extent that I ain't seein' no insults handed to a woman—even if it ain't anything but an Injun maiden in front of a cigar-store."

Butts dropped his rock.

"I never hurt a woman, and I would never hurt one," he protested, "and you that's sailed with me knows it. But that blasted, grinnin' effijiggy there stands for that rotten old punk-heap that's jest gone to pieces out yender, and it's the only thing I've got to get back on. Three months from Turk's Island, Cap'n Sproul, with a salt cargo and grub that would gag a dogfish! Lay down half a biskit and it would walk off. All I've et for six weeks has been doughboys lolloped in Porty Reek. He kicked me when I complained." Butts shook wavering finger at the shred of sail in the distance. "He kept us off with the gun to-day and sailed away in the yawl, and he never cared whuther we ever got ashore or not. And the grin he give me when he done it was jest like the grin on that thing there." Again the perturbed Butts showed signs of a desire to assault the wooden incarnation of the spirit of the Polyhymnia.

"A man who has been abused as much as you have been abused at sea has good reason to stand up for your rights when you are abused the moment you reach shore," barked a harsh voice. Colonel Gideon Ward, backed by the faithful Eleazar Bodge, stood safely aloof on a huge bowlder, his gaunt frame outlined against the morning sky. "Are you the commander of those men?" he inquired.

"I'm second mate," answered Mr. Butts.

"You and your men are down there associatin' with the most pestilent set of robbers and land-pirates that ever disgraced a civilized country," announced the Colonel. "They robbed me of fifteen thousand dollars and left me marooned here on this desert island, but the wind of Providence blew 'em back, and the devil wouldn't have 'em in Tophet, and here they are. They'll have your wallets and your gizzards if you don't get away from 'em. I invite you over there to my fire, gentlemen. Mr.—"

"Butts," said the second mate, staring with some concern at the group about him and at the Cap'n, who still held his fragment of rock.

"Mr. Butts, you and your men come with me and I'll tell you a story that will—"

Hiram Look thrust forward at this moment. The ex-showman was not a reassuring personality to meet shipwrecked mariners. His big handkerchief was knotted about his head in true buccaneer style. The horns of his huge mustache stuck out fiercely. Mr. Butts and his timid Portuguese shrank.

"He's a whack-fired, jog-jiggered old sanup of a liar," bellowed this startling apparition, who might have been Blackbeard himself. "We only have got back the fifteen thousand that he stole from us."

These amazing figures dizzied Mr. Butts, and his face revealed his feelings. He blinked from one party to the other with swiftly calculating gaze. Looking at the angry Hiram, he backed away two steps. After staring at the unkempt members of the Smyrna fire department, ranged behind their foreman, he backed three steps more. And then reflecting that the man of the piratical countenance had unblushingly confessed to the present possession of the disputed fortune, he clasped his hands to his own money-belt and hurried over to Colonel Ward's rock, his men scuttling behind him.

"Don't you believe their lies," bellowed the Colonel, breaking in on Hiram's eager explanations of the timber-land deal and the quest of the treasure they had come to Cod Lead to unearth. "I'll take you right to the hole they sold to me, I'll show you the plank cover they made believe was the lid of a treasure-chest, I'll prove to you they are pirates. We've got to stand together." He hastened to Mr. Butts and linked his arm in the seaman's, drawing him away. "There's only two of us. We can't hurt you. We don't want to hurt you. But if you stay among that bunch they'll have your liver, lights, and your heart's blood."

Five minutes later the Ward camp was posted on a distant pinnacle of the island. Cap'n Sproul had watched their retreat without a word, his brows knitted, his fists clutched at his side, and his whole attitude representing earnest consideration of a problem. He shook his head at Hiram's advice to pursue Mr. Butts and drag him and his men away from the enemy. It occurred to him that the friendliest chase would look like an attack. He reflected that he had not adopted exactly the tactics that were likely to warm over the buried embers of friendship in Mr. Butts's bosom. He remembered through the mists of the years that something like a kick or a belaying-pin had been connected with Mr. Butts's retirement from the Benn.

And until he could straighten out in his mind just what that parting difficulty had been, and how much his temper had triumphed over his justice to Butts, and until he had figured out a little something in the line of diplomatic conciliation, he decided to squat for a time beside his own fire and ruminate.

For an hour he sat, his brow gloomy, and looked across to where Colonel Ward was talking to Butts, his arms revolving like the fans of a crazy windmill.

"Lord! Cap'n Aaron," blurted Hiram at last, "he's pumpin' lies into that shipmate of yourn till even from this distance I can see him swellin' like a hop-toad under a mullein leaf. I tell you, you've got to do something. What if it should come calm and you ain't got him talked over and they should take the boat and row over to the mainland? Where'd you and your check be if he gets to the bank first? You listen to my advice and grab in there or we might just as well never have got up that complicated plot to get even with the old son of a seco."

"Hiram," said the Cap'n, after a moment's deliberation, the last hours of the Aurilla P. Dobson rankling still, "sence you and your gang mutinied on me and made me let a chartered schooner go to smash I ain't had no especial confidence in your advice in crisises. I've seen you hold your head level in crisises on shore—away from salt water, but you don't fit in 'board ship. And this, here, comes near enough to bein' 'board ship to cut you out. I don't take any more chances with you and the Smyrna fire department till I get inland at least fifty miles from tide-water."

Hiram bent injured gaze on him.

"You're turnin' down a friend in a tight place," he complained. "I've talked it over with the boys and they stand ready to lick those dagos and take the boat, there, and row you ashore."

But his wistful gaze quailed under the stare the Cap'n bent on him. The mariner flapped discrediting hand at the pathetic half-dozen castaways poking among the rocks for mussels with which to stay their hunger.

"Me get in a boat again with that outfit? Why, I wouldn't ride acrost a duck pond in an ocean liner with 'em unless they were crated and battened below hatches." He smacked his hard fist into his palm. "There they straddle, like crows on new-ploughed land, huntin' for something to eat, and no thought above it, and there ain't one of 'em come to a reelizin' sense yet that they committed a State Prison offence last night when they mutinied and locked me into my own cabin like a cat in a coop. Now I don't want to have any more trouble over it with you, Hiram, for we've been too good friends, and will try to continner so after this thing is over and done with, but if you or that gang of up-country sparrer-hawks stick your fingers or your noses into this business that I'm in now, I'll give the lobsters and cunners round this island just six good hearty meals. Now, that's the business end, and it's whittled pickid, and you want to let alone of it!"

He struggled up and strode away across the little valley between the stronghold of Colonel Ward and his own hillock.

Colonel Ward stood up when he saw him approaching, and Butts, after getting busy with something on the ground, stood up, also. When the Cap'n got nearer he noted that Butts had his arms full of rocks.

"Dunk," called Cap'n Sproul, placatingly, pausing at a hostile movement, "you've had quite a long yarn with that critter there, who's been fillin' you up with lies about me, and now it's only fair that as an old shipmate you should listen to my side. I—"

"You bear off!" blustered Mr. Butts. "You hold your own course, 'cause the minute you get under my bows I'll give you a broadside that will put your colors down. You've kicked me the last time you're ever goin' to."

"I was thinkin' it was a belayin'-pin that time aboard the Benn," muttered the Cap'n. "I guess I must have forgot and kicked him." Then once again he raised his voice in appeal. "You're the first seafarin' man I know of that left your own kind to take sides with a land-pirut."

"You ain't seafarin' no more," retorted Mr. Butts, insolently. "Talk to me of bein' seafarin' with that crowd of jays you've got round you! You ain't northin' but moss-backs and bunko-men." Cap'n Sproul glanced over his shoulder at the men of Smyrna and groaned under his breath. "I never knowed a seafarin' man to grow to any good after he settled ashore. Havin' it in ye all the time, you've turned out a little worse than the others, that's all."

Mr. Butts continued on in this strain of insult, having the advantage of position and ammunition and the mind to square old scores. And after a time Cap'n Sproul turned and trudged back across the valley.

There was such ferocity on his face when he sat down by his fire that Hiram Look gulped back the questions that were in his throat. He recognized that it was a crisis, realized that Cap'n Sproul was autocrat, and refrained from irritating speech.



XXIV

By noon the sun shone on Cod Lead wanly between ragged clouds. But its smile did not warm Cap'n Sproul's feelings. Weariness, rheumatism, resentment that became bitterer the more he pondered on the loss of the Dobson, and gnawing hunger combined to make a single sentiment of sullen fury; the spectacle of Colonel Ward busy with his schemes on the neighboring pinnacle sharpened his anger into something like ferocity.

The wind had died into fitful breaths. The sea still beat furiously on the outer ledges of the island, but in the reach between the island and the distant main there was a living chance for a small boat. It was not a chance that unskilful rowers would want to venture upon, but given the right crew the Cap'n reflected that he would be willing to try it.

Evidently Mr. Butts, being an able seaman, was reflecting upon something of the same sort. The Portuguese sailors, the last one of the departing four dodging a kick launched at him by Mr. Butts, went down to the shore, pulled the abandoned dingy upon the sand, and emptied the water out of it. They fished the oars out of the flotsam in the cove. Then they sat down on the upturned boat, manifestly under orders and awaiting further commands.

"Then ye're goin' to let 'em do it, be ye?" huskily asked Hiram. "Goin' to let him get to the bank and stop payment on that check? I tell you the boys can get that boat away from 'em! It better be smashed than used to carry Gid Ward off'm this island."

But Cap'n Sproul did not interrupt his bitter ruminations to reply. He merely shot disdainful glance at the Smyrna men, still busy among the mussels.

It was apparent that Mr. Butts had decided that he would feel more at ease upon his pinnacle until the hour arrived for embarkation. In the game of stone-throwing, should Cap'n Sproul accept that gage of battle, the beach was too vulnerable a fortress, and, like a prudent commander, Mr. Butts had sent a forlorn hope onto the firing-line to test conditions. This was all clear to Cap'n Sproul. As to Mr. Butts's exact intentions relative to the process of getting safely away, the Cap'n was not so clear.

"Portygees!" he muttered over and over. "There's men that knows winds, tides, rocks, shoals, currents, compass, and riggin' that don't know Portygees. It takes a master mariner to know Portygees. It takes Portygees to know a master mariner. They know the language. They know the style. They get the idee by the way he looks at 'em. It's what he says and the way he says it. Second mates ain't got it. P'r'aps I ain't got it, after bein' on shore among clodhoppers for two years. But, by Judas Iscarrot, I'm goin' to start in and find out! Portygees! There's Portygees! Here's me that has handled 'em—batted brains into 'em as they've come over the side, one by one, and started 'em goin' like I'd wind up a watch! And a belayin'-pin is the key!"

He arose with great decision, buttoned his jacket, cocked his cap to an angle of authority on his gray hair, and started down the hill toward the boat.

"He's goin' to call in his bunko-men and take that boat," bleated Mr. Butts to Colonel Ward.

"Wild hosses couldn't drag him into a boat again with those human toadstools, and I've heard him swear round here enough to know it," scoffed the Colonel. "He's just goin' down to try to wheedle your sailors like he tried to wheedle you, and they're your men and he can't do it."

And in the face of this authority and confidence in the situation Mr. Butts subsided, thankful for an excuse to keep at a respectful distance from Cap'n Aaron Sproul.

That doughty expert on "Portygees" strode past the awed crew with an air that they instinctively recognized as belonging to the quarter-deck. Their meek eyes followed him as he stumped into the swash and kicked up two belaying-pins floating in the debris. He took one in each hand, came back at them on the trot, opening the flood-gates of his language. And they instinctively recognized that as quarter-deck, too. They knew that no mere mate could possess that quality of utterance and redundancy of speech.

He had a name for each one as he hit him. It was a game of "Tag, you're it!" that made him master, in that moment of amazement, from the mere suddenness of it. A man with less assurance and slighter knowledge of sailorman character might have been less abrupt—might have given them a moment in which to reflect. Cap'n Aaron Sproul kept them going—did their thinking for them, dizzied their brains by thwacks of the pins, deafened their ears by his terrific language.

In fifteen seconds they had run the dingy into the surf, had shipped oars, and were lustily pulling away—Cap'n Sproul in the stern roaring abuse at them in a way that drowned the howls of Mr. Butts, who came peltering down the hill.

But Hiram Look was even more nimble than that protesting seaman.

Before the little craft was fairly under way he plunged into the surf waist-deep and scrambled over the stern, nearly upsetting the Cap'n as he rolled in.

And Imogene, the elephant, a faithful and adoring pachyderm, pursued her lord and master into the sea.

Cap'n Sproul, recovering his balance and resuming his interrupted invective, was startled by the waving of her trunk above his head, and his rowers quit work, squealing with terror, for the huge beast was making evident and desperate attempts to climb on board and join her fleeing owner. It was a rather complicated crisis even for a seaman, accustomed to splitting seconds in his battling with emergencies. An elephant, unusual element in marine considerations, lent the complication.

But the old sea-dog who had so instantly made himself master of men now made himself master of the situation, before the anxious Imogene had got so much as one big foot over the gunwale. He picked up the late-arriving Jonah, and, in spite of Hiram's kicks and curses, jettisoned him with a splash that shot spray over the pursuing elephant and blinded her eyes.

"Row—row, you blue-faced sons of Gehenna, or she'll eat all four of you!" shrieked the Cap'n; and in that moment of stress they rowed! Rowed now not because Cap'n Sproul commanded—nor ceased from rowing because Mr. Butts countermanded. They rowed for their own lives to escape the ravening beast that had chased them into the sea.

Cap'n Sproul, watching his chance, took a small wave after the seventh big roller, let it cuff his bow to starboard, and made for the lee of Cod Lead, rounding the island into the reach. He was safely away and, gazing into the faces of the Portuguese, he grimly reflected that for impressed men they seemed fully as glad to be away as he. They rowed now without further monition, clucking, each to himself, little prayers for their safe deliverance from the beast.

It was not possible, with safety, to cut across the reach straight for the main, so the Cap'n quartered his course before the wind and went swinging down the seas, with little chance of coming soon to shore, but confident of his seamanship.

But that seamanship was not sufficient to embolden him into an attempt to dodge a steamer with two masts and a dun funnel that came rolling out from behind Eggemoggin and bore toward him up the reach. He was too old a sailor not to know that she was the patrol cutter of the revenue service; wind and sea forced him to keep on across her bows.

She slowed her engines and swung to give him a lee. Cap'n Sproul swore under his breath, cursed aloud at his patient rowers, and told them to keep on. And when these astonishing tactics of a lonely dingy in a raging sea were observed from the bridge of the cutter, a red-nosed and profane man, who wore a faded blue cap with peak over one ear, gave orders to lower away a sponson boat, and came himself as coxswain, as though unwilling to defer the time of reckoning with such recalcitrants.

"What in billy-be-doosen and thunderation do you mean, you weevil-chawers, by not coming alongside when signalled—and us with a dozen wrecks to chase 'longshore?" he demanded, laying officious hand on the tossing gunwale of the dingy.

"We're attendin' strictly to our own business, and the United States Govvument better take pattern and go along and mind its own," retorted Cap'n Sproul, with so little of the spirit of gratitude that a shipwrecked mariner ought to display that the cutter officer glared at him with deep suspicion.

"What were you mixed up in—mutiny or barratry?" he growled. "We'll find out later. Get in here!"

"This suits me!" said Cap'n Sproul, stubbornly.

The next moment he and his Portuguese were yanked over the side of the boat into the life-craft—a dozen sturdy chaps assisting the transfer.

"Let the peapod go afloat," directed the gruff officer. "It's off the Polyhymnia—name on the stern-sheets—evidence enough—notice, men!"

"I'm not off the Polyhymnia," protested Cap'n Sproul, indignantly. "I was goin' along 'tendin' to my own business, and you can't—"

"Business?" sneered the man of the faded blue cap. "I thought you were out for a pleasure sail! You shut up!" he snapped, checking further complaints from the Cap'n. "If you've got a story that will fit in with your crazy-man actions, then you can wait and tell it to the court. As for me, I believe you're a gang of mutineers!" And after that bit of insolence the Cap'n was indignantly silent.

The cutter jingled her full-speed bell while the tackle was still lifting the sponson boat.

"They're ugly, and are hiding something," called the man of the faded cap, swinging up the bridge-ladder. "No good to pump more lies out of them. We'll go where they came from, and we'll get there before we can ask questions and get straight replies."

Cap'n Sproul, left alone on the cutter's deck, took out his big wallet, abstracted that fifteen-thousand-dollar check signed by Gideon Ward, and seemed about to fling it into the sea.

"Talk about your hoodoos!" he gritted. "Talk about your banana skins of Tophet! Twice I've slipped up on it and struck that infernal island. Even his name written on a piece of paper is a cuss to the man that lugs it!"

But after hale second thought he put the check back into his wallet and the wallet into his breast pocket and buttoned his coat securely. And the set of his jaws and the wrinkling of his forehead showed that the duel between him and Colonel Ward was not yet over.

As the steamer with the dun smoke-stack approached Cod Lead he noted sourly the frantic signallings of the marooned. He leaned on the rail and watched the departure of the officer of the faded blue cap with his crew of the sponson boat. He observed the details of the animated meeting of the rescuers and the rescued. Without great astonishment he saw that Hiram, of all the others, remained on shore, leaning disconsolately against the protecting bulk of Imogene.

"It's most a wonder he didn't try to load that infernal elephant onto that life-boat," he muttered. "If I couldn't travel through life without bein' tagged by an old gob of meat of that size, I'd hire a museum and settle down in it."

Cap'n Sproul, still leaning on the rail, paid no attention to the snort that Colonel Ward emitted as he passed on his way to the security of the steamer's deck. He resolutely avoided the reproachful starings of the members of the Smyrna fire department as they struggled on board. Mr. Butts came last and attempted to say something, but retreated promptly before the Cap'n's fiendish snarl and clicking teeth.

"That man there, with the elephant, says he can't leave her," reported Faded Cap to the wondering group on the bridge.

"A United States cutter isn't sent out to collect menageries accompanied by dry-nurses," stated the commander. "What is this job lot, anyway—a circus in distress?"

"Says the elephant can swim out if we'll rig a tackle and hoist her on board. Says elephant is used to it."

Something in the loneliness of the deserted two on Cod Lead must have appealed to the commander. He was profane about it, and talked about elephants and men who owned them in a way that struck an answering chord in the Cap'n's breast. But he finally gave orders for the embarkation of Imogene, and after much more profanity and more slurs which Hiram was obliged to listen to meekly, the task was accomplished, and the cutter proceeded on her way along coast on further errands of mercy.

And then the Cap'n turned and gazed on Hiram, and the showman gazed on the Cap'n. The latter spoke first.

"Hiram," he said, "it ain't best for you and me to talk this thing over, just as it stands now—not till we get back to Smyrna and set down on my front piazzy. P'r'aps things won't look so skeow-wowed then to us as they do now. We won't talk till then."

But the captain of the cutter was not as liberal-minded. In the process of preparing his report he attempted to interview both the Cap'n and Colonel Ward at the same time in his cabin, and at the height of the riot of recriminations that ensued was obliged to call in some deck-hands and have both ejected. Then he listened to them separately with increasing interest.

"When you brought this family fight down here to sprinkle salt water on it," he said at last, having the two of them before him again, with a deck-hand restraining each, "you didn't get it preserved well enough to keep it from smelling. I don't reckon I'll stir it. It doesn't seem to be a marine disaster. The United States Government has got other things to attend to just now besides settling it. Listen!"

He held up a forefinger.

"Smyrna isn't so far away from the seashore but what I've had plenty of chances to hear of Colonel Gideon Ward and his general dealings with his neighbors. For myself, I'd rather have less money and a reputation that didn't spread quite so far over the edges. As for you, Cap'n Sproul, as a seaman I can sympathize with you about getting cheated by land-pirates in that timber-land deal and in other things. But as a representative of the Government I'm not going to help you make good to the extent of fifteen thousand dollars on a hole and a Cap Kidd treasure fake. Hands off for me, seeing that it's a matter strictly in the family! This cutter is due to round to in Portland harbor to-morrow morning a little after nine o'clock. I'll send the two of you in my gig to Commercial Wharf, see that both are landed at the same time, and then—well"—the commander turned quizzical gaze from one to the other with full appreciation of the situation—"it then depends on what you do, each of you, and how quick you do it."

The Cap'n walked out of the room, his hand on his breast pocket. Colonel Ward followed, closing and unclosing his long fingers as if his hands itched to get at that pocket.

At the first peep of dawn Cap'n Aaron Sproul was posted at the cutter's fore windlass, eyes straight ahead on the nick in the low, blue line of coast that marked the harbor's entrance. His air was that of a man whose anxiety could not tolerate any post except the forepeak. And to him there came Hiram Look with tremulous eagerness in his voice and the weight of a secret in his soul.

"I heard him and Butts talkin' last night, Cap'n Aaron," he announced. "It was Butts that thought of it first. The telefoam. 'Run into the first place and grab a telefoam,' says Butts. 'Telefoam 'em at the bank to stop payment. It will take him ten minutes to run up from the wharf. Let him think you're right behind him. He's got to go to the bank,' says Butts. 'He can't telefoam 'em to pay the check.'"

The Cap'n's hand dropped dispiritedly from his clutch at his pocket.

"I knowed something would stop me," he mourned. "The whole plot is a hoodoo. There I was fired back twice onto Cod Lead! Here he is, landin' the same time as I do! And when he stops that check it throws it into law—and I've got the laborin'-oar."

"It ain't throwed into law yet, and you ain't got no laborin'-oar," cried Hiram, with a chuckle that astonished the despondent Cap'n. "He can't telefoam!"

"Can't what?"

"Why, stayin' out in that rain-storm has give him the most jeeroosly cold there's been sence Aunt Jerushy recommended thoroughwort tea! It's right in his thro't, and he ain't got so much voice left as wind blowing acrost a bottle. Can't make a sound! The bank folks ain't goin' to take any one's say-so for him. Not against a man like you that's got thutty thousand dollars in the same bank, and a man that they know! By the time he got it explained to any one so that they'd mix in, you can be at the bank and have it all done."

"Well, he ain't got cold in his legs, has he?" demanded the Cap'n, failing to warm to Hiram's enthusiasm. "It stands jest where it has been standin'. There ain't no reason why he can't get to that bank as quick as I can. Yes, quicker! I ain't built up like an ostrich, the way he is."

"Well," remarked Hiram, after a time, "a fair show and an even start is more'n most folks get in this life—and you've got that. The boss of this boat is goin' to give you that much. So all you can do is to take what's given you and do the best you can. And all I can do is stay back here and sweat blood and say the only prayer that I know, which is 'Now I lay me down to sleep.'"

And after this bit of consolation he went back amidships to comfort the hungry Imogene, who had been unable to find much in the cuisine of a revenue cutter that would satisfy the appetite of elephants.

At half-past nine in the forenoon the cutter swept past Bug Light and into the inner harbor. Hardly had the steamer swung with the tide at her anchorage before the captain's gig was proceeding briskly toward Commercial Wharf, two men rowing and the man of the faded blue cap at the helm. The antagonists in the strange duello sat back to back, astraddle a seat. At this hateful contact their hair seemed fairly to bristle.

"Now, gents," said Faded Cap, as they approached the wharf, "the skipper said he wanted fair play. No scrougin' to get out onto the ladder first. I'm goin' to land at the double ladder at the end of the wharf, and there's room for both of you. I'll say 'Now!' and then you start."

"You fellers are gettin' a good deal of fun out this thing," sputtered Cap'n Sproul, angrily, "but don't you think I don't know it and resent it. Now, don't you talk to me like you were startin' a foot-race!"

"What is it, if it ain't a foot-race?" inquired Faded Cap, calmly. "They don't have hacks or trolley-cars on that wharf, and you'll either have to run or fly, and I don't see any signs of wings on you."

Colonel Ward did not join in this remonstrance. He only worked his jaws and uttered a few croaks.

When the gig surged to the foot of the ladder, Colonel Ward attempted a desperate play, and an unfair one. He was on the outside, and leaped up, stepped on Cap'n Sproul, and sprang for the ladder. The Cap'n was quick enough to grab his legs, yank him back into the boat, and mount over him in his turn. The man of the faded cap was nearly stunned by Ward falling on him, and the rowers lost their oars.

When the Colonel had untangled himself from the indignant seamen and had escaped up the ladder, Cap'n Sproul was pelting up the wharf at a most amazing clip, considering his short legs. Before Ward had fairly gathered himself for the chase his fifteen-thousand-dollar check and the man bearing it had disappeared around a corner into the street.

But the squat and stubby old sailor stood little show in a foot-race with his gaunt and sinewy adversary. It was undoubtedly Colonel Ward's knowledge of this that now led him to make the race the test of victory instead of depending on an interpreter over the telephone. A little more than a block from the wharf's lane he came up with and passed his adversary. Men running for trolley-cars and steamboats were common enough on the busy thoroughfare, and people merely made way for the sprinters.

But when Colonel Ward was a few lengths ahead of the Cap'n, the latter made use of an expedient that the voiceless Colonel could not have employed even if he had thought of it.

With all the force of his seaman's lungs he bellowed: "Stop thief!" and pounded on behind, reiterating the cry vociferously. At first he had the pursuit all to himself, for bystanders merely ducked to one side. But earnest repetition compels attention, and attention arouses interest, and interest provokes zeal. In a little while a dozen men were chasing the Colonel, and when that gentleman went lashing around the corner into Congress Street he—by an entirely natural order of events—ran into a policeman, for the policeman was running in the opposite direction to discover what all that approaching hullabaloo was about.

Cap'n Sproul, prudently on the outskirts of the gathering crowd, noted with rising hope that the policeman and the Colonel were rolling over each other on the ground, and that even when officious hands had separated them the facial contortions of the voiceless tyrant of Smyrna were not making any favorable impression on the offended bluecoat.

Cap'n Sproul started away for the bank at a trot. But he began to walk when he heard the policeman shout: "Aw, there's enough of ye'r moonkey faces at me. Yez will coome along to th' station, and talk it on yer fingers to th' marshal!"

At the bank door the Cap'n halted, wiped his face, composed his features, set on his cap at an entirely self-possessed angle, and then marched in to the wicket.

"Will you have this transferred to your account, Captain Sproul?" inquired the teller, with the deference due to a good customer.

The Cap'n anxiously bent a stubbed finger around a bar of the grating. Sudden anxiety as to leaving the money there beset him. After his perils and his toils he wanted to feel that cash—to realize that he had actually cashed in that hateful check.

"I'll take the real plasters," he said, huskily; "big ones as you've got. I—I want to pay for some vessel property!" He reflected that the few hundreds that the loss of the ancient Dobson called for lifted this statement out of the cheap level of prevarication.

When he hurried out of the bank with various thick packets stowed about his person, he headed a straight course for the police-station.

In the marshal's office he found Colonel Gideon Ward, voiceless, frantic, trembling—licking at the point of a stubby lead-pencil that had been shoved into his grasp, and trying to compose his soul sufficiently to write out some of the information about himself, with which he was bursting.

"There ain't no call for this man to write out the story of his life," declared Cap'n Sproul, with an authority in his tones and positiveness in his manner that did not fail to impress the marshal. "He is my brother-in-law, he is Colonel Gideon Ward, of Smyrna, a man with more'n a hundred thousand dollars, and any one that accuses him of bein' a thief is a liar, and I stand here to prove it."

And to think there was no one present except the Colonel to appreciate the cryptic humor of that remark!

The Cap'n avoided the demoniacal gaze that Ward bent on him and disregarded the workings of that speechless mouth. Sproul shoved his hand deep into his trousers pocket and pulled out a roll of bills on which the teller's tape had not been broken. At this sight the Colonel staggered to his feet.

"Here!" cried the Cap'n, shoving money into the hand of the officer who had made the arrest. "There's something to pay for your muddy clothes. Now you'd better go out and find the man that started all this touse about a leadin' citizen. I'll sue this city as a relative of his if you don't let him go this minute."

And they let him go, with an apology that Colonel Ward treated with perfectly insulting contempt.

Cap'n Sproul faced him on the street outside the prison, standing prudently at guard, for he perfectly realized that just at that moment Colonel Gideon Ward had all the attributes of a lunatic.

"You can see it bulgin' all over me," said the Cap'n, "all tied up in bundles. I don't say my way was the best way to get it. But I've got it. I suppose I might have gone to law to get it, but that ain't my way. Of course you can go to law to get it back; but for reasons that you know just as well as I, I'd advise you not to—and that advice don't cost you a cent."

For a full minute Colonel Ward stood before him and writhed his gaunt form and twisted his blue lips and waggled his bony jaws. But not a sound could he utter. Then he whirled and signalled a trolley-car and climbed on board. With intense satisfaction the Cap'n noted that the car was marked "Union Station."

"Well, home is the best place for him," muttered the Cap'n; "home and a flaxseed poultice on his chist and complete rest of mind and body. Now I'll settle for that schooner, hunt up Hime Look and that pertickler and admirin' friend of his, that infernal elephant, and then I reckon I'll—eraow-w-w!" he yawned. "I'll go home and rest up a little, too."

That repose was not disturbed by Colonel Gideon Ward. The Colonel had decided that affairs in his timber tracts needed his attention during that autumn.



XXV

Events do bunch themselves strangely, sometimes.

They bunched in Smyrna as follows:

1. The new monument arrived for Batson Reeves's graveyard lot in which was interred the first Mrs. Reeves; monument a belated arrival.

2. The announcement was made that Batson Reeves had at last caught a new wife in the person of Widow Delora Crymble, wedding set for Tuesday week.

3. Dependence Crymble, deceased husband of Delora, reappeared on earth. This latter event to be further elaborated.

Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first selectman of Smyrna, on his way from his home to the town office, found several men leaning on the graveyard fence, gazing over into the hallowed precincts of the dead with entire lack of that solemnity that is supposed to be attached to graveyards. It was on the morning following the last stroke of work on the Reeves monument.

The Reeves monument, a wholly unique affair, consisted of a life-sized granite figure of Mr. Reeves standing on a granite pedestal in the conventional attitude of a man having his photograph taken. His head was set back stiffly, the right foot was well advanced, and he held a round-topped hat in the hook of his elbow.

On the pedestal was carved:

ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF LOANTHA REEVES, WIFE OF BATSON REEVES, ACCORDING TO HER LAST REQUEST.

It may be said in passing that Mrs. Reeves, having entertained a very exalted opinion of Mr. Reeves during life, left a portion of her own estate in the hands of trustees in order that this sentinel figure should stand guard above her in the sunshine and the rain. The idea was poetic. But Cap'n Sproul, joining the hilarious group at the graveyard fence, noted that some gruesome village humorist had seriously interfered with the poetic idea. Painted on a planed board set up against the monument was this:

I'm Watching Here Both Night and Day, So Number One Can't Get Away.

"That's kind o' pat, Cap'n, considerin' he's goin' to get married to Number Two next week," suggested one of the loungers.

Cap'n Sproul scowled into the grin that the other turned on him.

"I ain't got any regard for a human dogfish like Bat Reeves," he grunted, his heart full of righteous bitterness against a proclaimed enemy, "but as first selectman of this town I don't stand for makin' a comic joke-book out of this cemetery." He climbed over the fence, secured the offending board and split it across his broad toe. Then with the pieces under his arm he trudged on toward the town office, having it in his mind to use the board for kindling in the barrel stove.

One strip he whittled savagely into shavings and the other he broke into fagots, and when the fire was snapping merrily in the rusty stove he resumed a labor upon which he had been intent for several days. Predecessors in office had called it "writing the town report." Cap'n Sproul called it "loggin' the year's run."

A pen never did hang easy in the old shipmaster's stiff fingers. The mental travail of this unwonted literary effort wrung his brain. An epic poet struggling with his masterpiece could not have been more rapt. And his nerves were correspondingly touchy. Constable Zeburee Nute, emerging at a brisk trot from the town office, had a warning word of counsel for all those intending to venture upon the first selectman's privacy. He delivered it at Broadway's store.

"Talk about your r'yal Peeruvian tigers with eighteen rings on their tails! He's settin' there with his hair standin' straight up and ink on his nose and clear to his elbows, and he didn't let me even get started in conversation. He up and throwed three ledger-books and five sticks of wood at me, and—so I come away," added Mr. Nute, resignedly. "I don't advise nobody to go in there."

However, the warning delivered at Broadway's store did not reach a certain tall, thin man; for the tall, thin man stalked straight through the village and up to the door inscribed "Selectman's Office." In his hand he carried a little valise about as large as a loaf of yeast bread. The shrewish December wind snapped trousers about legs like broom-handles. Black pads were hugged to his ears by a steel strip that curved behind his head, and he wore a hard hat that seemed merely to perch insecurely on his caput instead of fit. Constable Nute, getting a glimpse of him through the store-window, remarked that with five minutes and a razor-strop he could put a shaving edge on the stranger's visage, but added promptly when he saw him disappear into the town office that some one could probably get a job within the next five minutes honing the nicks out of that edge.

Cap'n Sproul was just then absorbed in a task that he hated even worse than literary composition. He was adding figures. They were the items for road bills, and there were at least two yards of them on sheets of paper pasted together, for nearly every voter in town was represented. The Cap'n was half-way up one of the columns, and was exercising all his mental grip to hold on to the slowly increasing total on which he was laboriously piling units.

"I am always glad to meet a man who loves figgers," remarked the stranger, solemnly. He set his valise on the table and leaned over the Cap'n's shoulder. "I have wonderful faculty for figgers. Give me a number and I'll tell you the cube of it instantly, in the snap of a finger."

Cap'n Sproul merely ground his teeth and shoved his nose closer to the paper. He did not dare to look up. His whole soul was centred in effort to "walk the crack" of that column.

"I could do it when I was fifteen—and that was fifty years ago," went on the thin man.

The enunciation of those figures nearly put the Cap'n out of commission, but with a gulp and after a mental stagger he marched on.

"Now give me figgers—tens or hundreds," pleaded the stranger. "I'll give you the cube in one second—the snap of a finger. Since I see you hesitate, we'll take sixteen—a very simple factor. Cube it!" He clacked a bony finger into an osseous palm and cried: "Four thousand and ninety-six!"

That did it!

"Ninety-six," repeated the Cap'n, dizzily; realizing that he had bounced off the track, he rose, kicked his chair out from under him and shoved a livid and infuriated visage into the thin man's face.

"Whang-jacket your gor-righteously imperdence!" he bellowed, "what do you mean by stickin' that fish-hawk beak of your'n into my business and make me lose count? Get to Tophet out of here!"

The stranger calmly removed his ear-pads and gazed on the furious selectman with cold, gray and critical eyes.

"Your suggestion as to destination is not well considered," he said. "There is no hell. There is no heaven. I practically settled that point the first time I died. The—"

Cap'n Sproul, without especial attention to this astonishing announcement, was provoked beyond control by this stranger's contemptuous stare. He grabbed up an ash-stick that served him for a stove-poker.

"Get out of here," he repeated, "or I'll peg you down through this floor like a spike!"

But the thin man simply gazed at him mournfully and sat down.

"Havin' been killed three times—three times—dead by violent means," he said, "I have no fear of death. Strike me—I shall not resist."

Even a bashi-bazouk must have quailed before that amazing declaration and that patient resignation to fate. Cap'n Sproul looked him up and down for many minutes and then tucked the smutty ash-stick under the stove.

"Well, what insane horsepittle did you get out of by crawlin' through the keyhole?" he demanded.

"Oh, I am not insane," remonstrated the thin man. "It is always easy for fools in this world to blat that insult when a man announces something that they don't understand. A man that knows enough to be selectman of Smyrna hadn't ought to be a fool. I hope you are not. But you mustn't blat like a fool."

Cap'n Sproul could not seem to frame words just then.

"The first time I died," pursued his remarkable guest, "I was frozen to death." He pulled up his trousers and showed a shank as shrunken as a peg-leg. "All the meat came off. The second time I died, a hoss kicked me on the head. The third time, a tree fell on me. And there is no hell—there is no heaven. If there had been I'd have gone to one place or the other."

"If I was runnin' either place you wouldn't," said the Cap'n, sourly.

The thin man crossed his legs and was beginning to speak, but the first selectman broke in savagely: "Now look here, mister, this ain't either a morgue, a receivin'-tomb, nor an undertaker's parlor. If you want to get buried and ain't got the price I'll lend it to you. If you want to start over again in life I'll pay for havin' your birth-notice put into the newspaper. But you want to say what you do want and get out of here. I've got some town business to 'tend to, and I ain't got any time to spend settin' up with corpses."

Again the man tried to speak. Again the Cap'n interrupted. "I ain't disputin' a thing you say," he cried. "I'm admittin' everything, 'cause I haven't got time to argue. You may have been dead nine times like a cat. I don't care. All is, you go along. You'll find accommodations at the tavern, the graveyard, or the town farm, whichever hits you best. I'm busy."

But when he pulled his paper of figures under his nose again, the thin man tapped his fleshless digit on the table.

"You're the first selectman, aren't you?" he demanded.

"That's what I be," returned the Cap'n, smartly.

"Well, then, you got to pay attention to town business when it is put before you. I've come here on town business. I used to live in this town."

"Was you buried here or was your remains taken away?" inquired the Cap'n, genially, hoping that satire might drive out this unwelcome disturber.

"Oh, I died all three times after I left this town," said the thin man, in matter-of-fact tones. "What I'm comin' at is this: my father gave the land to this town to build the school-house on out in the Crymble district. Deed said if the building was ever abandoned for school purposes for five years running, land and buildin' came back to estate. I came past that school-house to-day and I see it hasn't been used."

"We don't have school deestricks any more," explained the Cap'n. "We transport scholars to the village here. That's been done for six years and over."

"Then I claim the school-house and land," declared the thin man.

"You do, hey?"

"I do. I've got tired of travellin' round over this world, and I'm goin' to settle down. And that school-house is the only real estate I've got to settle down in. I'll keep bach' hall there."

"Who in thunderation are you, anyway?" demanded Cap'n Sproul, propping himself on the table and leaning forward belligerently.

"My name is Dependence Crymble," replied the other, quietly. "My father was Hope-for-grace Crymble. Odd names, eh? But the Crymbles were never like other folks."

Cap'n Sproul sat down hard in his chair and goggled at the thin man.

"Say, look-here-you," he gasped at last. "There never could be more'n one name like Dependence Crymble in this world. I ain't a native here and I don't know you from Adam. But is your wife the Widow Delora Crymble—I mean, was she—oh, tunk-rabbit it, I reckon I'm gettin' as crazy as you are!"

"I'm not insane," persisted the other. "I'm Dependence Crymble, and I married Delora Goff. I've been away from here twenty years, but I guess the old residents will recognize me, all right."

"But," declared the Cap'n, floundering for a mental footing, "it's always been said to me that Dependence Crymble died off—away somewhere."

"I've already told you I died," said the thin man, still mild but firm. "That's right, just as you've heard it."

"There's a stone in the graveyard to you," went on the Cap'n, clawing his stubby fingers into his bristle of hair, "and they've always called her 'Widder Crymble' and"—he stood up again and leaned forward over the table in the attitude of Jove about to launch a thunderbolt and gasped—"she's goin' to get married to Bat Reeves, Tuesday of next week—and he's the most infernal scalawag in this town, and he's took her after he's tried about every other old maid and widder that's got property."

The thin man did not even wince or look astonished. His querulous mouth only dropped lower at the corners.

"I don't care who marries her. She's a widder and can marry any one she's got a mind to. I didn't come back here to mix in. She's welcome to the property I left her. There was a will. It's hers. I've been administered on according to law. All I want is that school-house back from the town. That's mine by law."

Cap'n Sproul sat down once more.

"Well," he said at last, with some indignation, "if you was dead and wanted to stay dead and leave a widder and property and let her get married again, and all that—what in the name of the yaller-bellied skate-fish have ye come ghostin' round here for to tip everything upside down and galley-west after it's been administered on and settled? And it gets town business all mixed up!"

The thin man smiled a wistful smile.

"The poet says: 'Where'er we roam, the sky beneath, the heart sighs for its native heath.' That's the sentiment side of it. But there's a practical side. There's the school-house. It was worth passing this way to find out whether the town had abandoned it—and I reckoned it had, and I reckoned right. I have presentiments that come true. I reckoned that probably the relict would put a stone in the graveyard for me. I have a presentiment that I shall die twice more, staying dead the fifth time I pass away. That will be here in this town, and the gravestone won't be wasted."