sh ensign from the flag-staff at the taffrail. There was an
exchange of signals between the two crafts until eight bells struck, and
then Scotty, just about to sit down to his breakfast, was called aft and
told to get his belongings ready for another trans-shipment. Scotty's
belongings, the few rags he had collected by various methods from his
shipmates, were hardly worth taking; but he regretted his breakfast,
though glad to quit the ship. As he slid down the davit-tackle he
surmised the meaning of the change by the expression on the third mate's
face as he peered over the rail, and some words uttered by the captain,
among which he only made out one--"underwriters."

"I'm told," said the semi-uniformed captain of the tramp, "that you are
a castaway, picked up on the American coast, and are discontented with
the ship."

"I dinna ken what the sleeve-drivers telt ye, cappen," answered Scotty,
his brogue a little thicker from his emotions, "but I agree that I'm
discontented."

"What's wrong with your face?"

"Ran foul o' the third mate's fist for no seem' your light. I were no
one o' the crew, yet they put me on lookout. And I strongly suspect,
cappen, that I'm bundled off mair on account o' that than because of my
discontent."

"Possibly; but I'm a man short, and will sign you at Shanghai
wages--three pounds a month. You will not be struck here, and will be
well treated while you do your work. We're bound for Boston, and will go
on when the engine is mended."

"I'm obleeged to ye, sir," said Scotty, radiantly. "And Boston's the
port for me, sir. I've strong reasons for strikin' that coast."

He still had his dollar secure in its leather casing, hung to his neck,
but in this ship he said nothing about it.

Nothing unpleasant happened to him on this passage homeward; and he
fondly believed that his sincere intent to return the dollar to Captain
Bolt had changed his luck--that his painful friction with Mr. Smart's
fist was a providential happening; but Providence had ordered otherwise,
and in this manner: The steamer captain, ahead of his reckoning while
approaching the coast in thick fog, ran his ship at full speed onto the
sands of Cape Cod. He was unable to back off; a rising wind and sea
threw the steamer broadside to the beach, and here she churned a hole
for herself from which a wrecking tug could hardly pull her.

But a wrecking tug was sent for, by signals to the shore when the fog
lifted, and in time one