sound of waves lapping under the house.
They were living in Pearl's father's house. Pearl's father had been a
seaman and wharf owner, and in his declining years had established a sea
grill on one of his wharves, and lived up over it. To get to the Higgins
home you ascended an outside staircase.

The subject of Hat Tyler had a fatal fascination for Pearl Higgins.

"Do you know what I heard downtown this morning?" she resumed. "They say
Jim Rackby's going to make her skipper of the new schooner. After she's
just lost one by not keeping her eyes open too! The luck of some women!
I don't pretend to know how she does it. A great coarse thing like
her----"

"Still there's a different kind of a send-off to her, I was going to
say," said Elmer. "Hat's a seaman, I'll say that for her."

"I guess there ain't much you won't say for her," Pearl retorted.

"Then again, when the _Alfred_ run her down she had the right of way."

"I guess her weight give her that," countered his wife.

Elmer got up and stared across the harbor at the new schooner which Hat
was to command. The _Minnie Williams_ sat on the ways resplendent, her
masts of yellow Oregon pine tapering into a blue sky. A mellow clack of
calking hammers rang across the water.

"Those ways are pitched pretty steep, it seems to me," he said. "When
she goes she'll go with a flourish."

Among those who swore by Elmer for a man of wisdom was Jim Rackby, the
owner of the schooner. Next day the two men met in her shadow. The ship
had just been pumped full of water, and now the calking gang were going
round staring up with open mouths to see where the water came out.
Taking advantage of their absorption Jim Rackby asked Elmer in low tones
whether he considered Hat Tyler a fit person to be intrusted with a
ship.

"I don't know a better," Elmer answered in the same low tone.

"How about her losing this last ship?"

"I wouldn't say this to my wife, it would only aggravate her," said
Elmer, grinding up a piece off his plug, "but the loss of that ship is
only another example of what that woman can do in the way of pure
calculation when she sets out to. There she had that good-for-nothing
schooner on her hands. Why, she had to come in here on these very flats
and squat and squirt mud up into her seams, trip after trip, as I've
seen with my own eyes, to keep the cargo from falling out as much as
anything, let alone water coming in; and as soon as the mud had washed
out it was