k sufficient to shake a man out of a top,
especially a man by the name of Bjoernsen--a thoroughgoing seafaring
name.

I was destined to hear more of this in the evening, from the ancient
boatman who rowed me out on the upper river. He had been to sea in his
day. He knew enough to wonder about this thing, even to indulge in a
little superstitious awe about it.

"No sir-ee. Something _happened_ to them four chaps. And another
thing--"

I fancied I heard a sea-bird whining in the darkness overhead. A shape
moved out of the gloom ahead, passed to the left, lofty and silent, and
merged once more with the gloom behind--a barge at anchor, with the
sea-grass clinging around her water-line.

"Funny about that other chap," the old fellow speculated. "Bjoernsen--I
b'lieve he called 'im. Now that story sounds to me kind of--" He
feathered his oars with a suspicious jerk and peered at me. "This McCord
a friend of yourn?" he inquired.

"In a way," I said.

"Hm-m--well--" He turned on his thwart to squint ahead. "There she is,"
he announced, with something of relief, I thought.

It was hard at that time of night to make anything but a black blotch
out of the _Abbie Rose_. Of course I could see that she was pot-bellied,
like the rest of the coastwise sisterhood. And that McCord had not
stowed his topsails. I could make them out, pursed at the mastheads and
hanging down as far as the cross-trees, like huge, over-ripe pears.
Then I recollected that he had found them so--probably had not touched
them since; a queer way to leave tops, it seemed to me. I could see also
the glowing tip of a cigar floating restlessly along the farther rail. I
called: "McCord! Oh, McCord!"

The spark came swimming across the deck. "Hello! Hello, there--ah--"
There was a note of querulous uneasiness there that somehow jarred with
my remembrance of this man.

"Ridgeway," I explained.

He echoed the name uncertainly, still with that suggestion of
peevishness, hanging over the rail and peering down at us. "Oh! By
gracious!" he exclaimed, abruptly. "I'm glad to see you, Ridgeway. I had
a boatman coming out before this, but I guess--well, I guess he'll be
along. By gracious! I'm glad--"

"I'll not keep you," I told the gnome, putting the money in his palm and
reaching for the rail. McCord lent me a hand on my wrist. Then when I
stood squarely on the deck beside him he appeared to forget my presence,
leaned forward heavily on the rail, and squinted aft