ark sensibly
diminished until, when they looked up in surprise and gazed around to
see what was occurring, the boys found the Nark practically at a
standstill while a cable's length away rode an ancient schooner,
lumbering along under all sail, to take advantage of the light airs.

"By the ring-tailed caterpillar," exclaimed Frank, employing a quaint
expression current the last term at Harrington Hall, "where did that
caravel of Columbus come from? Why, she's so old you might expect the
Ancient Mariner to peer over her rail. Yes, and there he is."

He pointed at the figure of a whiskered skipper, wearing a dingy
derby, who peered over the rail at this moment in response to a hail
from the Nark.

There was some foundation, in truth, for Frank's suggestion. The old
schooner whose name they now discerned in faded gilt as "Molly M,"
seemed like a ghost of other days. Her outthrust bow, her up-cocked
stern and the figurehead of a simpering woman that might have been
mermaid originally but was now so worn as to make it almost impossible
to tell the original intent, was, indeed, suggestive of galleons of
ancient days. This figurehead jutted out beneath the bowsprit.

"Heh. Heh."

As the skipper of the ancient craft thus responded to the hail from
the Nark, he put a hand to his ear as if hard of hearing.

"Lay to. U. S. patrol boat," returned Lieutenant Summers,
impatiently.

"Evidently our friend believes we have come up with a liquor
smuggler," said Captain Folsom, in an aside, to the boys.

But the old skipper, whose craft was drawing away while the Nark
rocked idly in the swell, with her engines barely turning over, merely
repeated his gesture of putting a hand to his ear, and once more
called:

"Heh. Heh."

Suddenly the deck beneath the feet of the boys quivered slightly,
there was the report of a three-pounder, and a shot fell across the
bow of the old schooner, kicking up a feather of spray. The Ancient
Mariner, as Frank had dubbed him, came to life. He danced up and down
on his deck, where two or three other figures of seamen now appeared.
He shook his fist at the Nark.

"I'm outside the three-mile limit," he screamed. "I'll have the law on
ye."

"He means," explained Captain Folsom to the boys, "that he is beyond
the jurisdiction of United States waters and on the open sea."

Nevertheless, the old skipper barked out an order, sailors sprang to
obey, sails came down, and the schooner lay hove to. Then