's the chance of your making Boston by Christmas?"
And he answered, after some thought: "It's a westerly wind with a medium
glass to-day. It ought to hang on westerly and dry for another four or
five days. Clear me by the morning after to-morrow, and I'll lay the
_Sirius_ to anchor in Boston Harbor Christmas Eve, or"--he was a man of
serious ways, and spoke most seriously now---"or I'll give you a good
reason why."

I hunted up Captain Oliver Sickles of the _Orion_, and I found him
having a drink in the bar of the Tidewater Cafe. He looked as if he'd
welcome a quarrel, but that was nothing strange in him. I put the same
question to him that I had put to his cousin, and the answer came in
almost the same words as to the medium glass and the westerly wind, but
at that point he looked sharply at me.

"And when does the _Sirius_ sail?" he asked.

"The morning after to-morrow."

"And"--suspiciously--"who first that morning, the _Sirius_ or me?"

"I don't know. You'll be loaded and cleared together--it's for
yourselves to say who sails first."

"And what did he say?"

Captain Oliver had a hectoring way about him which used to make me
promise myself that some day, after he'd done hauling coal for my
outfit, I'd tell him what I thought of him. "What did who say?" I asked
him now.

"Warn't you talkin' to my cousin awhile ago about the same thing?"

"I was, though I don't remember telling you about it."

"H-m," he sneered, "I thought so. Y' always go to him first."

"Yes, I do!" I snapped at him. "And why? Because he knows his mind. And
he's a man to give an answer without using up an afternoon talking about
it. He said he'd have the _Sirius_ to anchor in Boston Harbor by
Christmas Eve or give me a good reason why."

"He did, did he? Then set this down in your log"--with the end of a
prodigiously thick forefinger he was tapping the bar as he said
it:--"The _Orion_ will be laying to anchor in Boston Harbor by Christmas
Eve or there'll be a _damn_ good reason why."

Right here I should say that there was more than a rivalry of
craftsmanship between the Sickles cousins. Once, thinking it was the
_Sirius_, Norman Sickles's sweetheart, a very pretty and a very good
girl, had gone aboard the _Orion_ as it lay in Boston Harbor. Oliver at
once locked her in the cabin, put to sea, and carried her to
Philadelphia, where, urged by her mother, and to save her good name as
she thought, she married Oliver. But that her heart wa