er that worked
like the witch she was to windward."

Dag Daughtry, who had kept always footloose and never married, surveyed
the boat-load of his responsibilities to which he was anchored--Kwaque,
the Black Papuan monstrosity whom he had saved from the bellies of his
fellows; Ah Moy, the little old sea-cook whose age was problematical only
by decades; the Ancient Mariner, the dignified, the beloved, and the
respected; gangly Big John, the youthful Scandinavian with the inches of
a giant and the mind of a child; Killeny Boy, the wonder of dogs; Scraps,
the outrageously silly and fat-rolling puppy; Cocky, the white-feathered
mite of life, imperious as a steel-blade and wheedlingly seductive as a
charming child; and even the forecastle cat, the lithe and tawny slayer
of rats, sheltering between the legs of Ah Moy. And the Marquesas were
two hundred miles distant full-hauled on the tradewind which had ceased
but which was as sure to live again as the morning sun in the sky.

The steward heaved a sigh, and whimsically shot into his mind the memory-
picture in his nursery-book of the old woman who lived in a shoe. He
wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, and was
dimly aware of the area of the numbness that bordered the centre that was
sensationless between his eyebrows, as he said:

"Well, children, rowing won't fetch us to the Marquesas. We'll need a
stretch of wind for that. But it's up to us, right now, to put a mile or
so between us an' that peevish old cow. Maybe she'll revive, and maybe
she won't, but just the same I can't help feelin' leary about her."

CHAPTER XVI

Two days later, as the steamer _Mariposa_ plied her customary route
between Tahiti and San Francisco, the passengers ceased playing deck
quoits, abandoned their card games in the smoker, their novels and deck
chairs, and crowded the rail to stare at the small boat that skimmed to
them across the sea before a light following breeze. When Big John,
aided by Ah Moy and Kwaque, lowered the sail and unstepped the mast,
titters and laughter arose from the passengers. It was contrary to all
their preconceptions of mid-ocean rescue of ship-wrecked mariners from
the open boat.

It caught their fancy that this boat was the Ark, what of its freightage
of bedding, dry goods boxes, beer-cases, a cat, two dogs, a white
cockatoo, a Chinaman, a kinky-headed black, a gangly pallid-haired giant,
a grizzled Dag Daughtry, and an Anci