derby hat, and a starched collar
of the "choker" variety. He carried the articles to the ship's side
and cast them into the sea. Then he declaimed his freedom.

"They were the uniform of my servitude--badges of my clerkhood! I have
finished with them. Into the ocean they go! Now--ho for the life on
the billowy wave!"

"Very good!" the mate applauded his act and words. Her next words were
an incisive and frosty command. "You may commence at once your life on
the billowy wave! Go for'rd and stand by with the watch!"

Martin went forward, and he began to learn the why and wherefore of
things in his new world. He learned to jump to an order called out by
that baffling and entrancing person aft, learned to haul in unison, to
laugh at hard knocks and grin at pain.

He learned to cultivate humility, and to mount the poop on the lee side
when duty took him there. He learned the rigid etiquette of the sea,
and addressed that blooming, desirable woman with the formal prefix,
"mister."

His body toughened, his mind broadened, his soul expanded. But his
heart also expanded, and it was unruly. Ruth was such a jolly
chum--off duty. On duty, she was a martinet. Below, she was the merry
life of the "happy family." On deck, she lorded it haughtily from the
high place of the poop, and answered to the name of "mister"!

The _Cohasset_, Martin discovered, was manned by a total of eighteen
souls. Besides the five persons aft, there were a sailmaker, a
carpenter, a Chinese cook and ten forecastle hands. His first
impression--that the crew was composed of wild men--was partially borne
out. Of the ten men in the forecastle, but four were Caucasian--two
Portuguese from the Azores, a Finn and an Australian--and the quartet
were almost as outlandish in their appearance as the other six of the
crew.

The remaining six were foregathered from the length and breadth of the
Pacific. There was a Maori from New Zealand, a Koriak tribesman from
Kamchatka, two Kanakas, a stray from Ponape, and an Aleut. The six
natives, Martin discovered, had all been with the ship for years, were
old retainers of Captain Dabney. The four white men, and the cook, who
rejoiced in the name of Charley Bo Yip, had been newly shipped in San
Francisco.

Martin's watchmates were five of the natives. Martin suspected they
composed the mate's watch because they were all old, tractable hands.
They were the Maori, Rimoa, a strapping, middle-aged man,