work her no further."

Tunis seized the piece of oar. Along one side was a streak of faint
blue paint. He knew immediately where he had seen that broken oar
before--leaning against the door frame of Pareta's cottage in
Portygee Town, when he had last talked with the old man's daughter.

"What in thunder!"

He had turned it over and saw the straggling letters burned into
the wood: MARLIN B. Newbegin looked at Tunis with an expression
which betrayed a great perturbation of soul. The old man could
scarcely show pallor under the mahogany of his face, but it was
plain that superstition had him by the throat.

"So this is the thing that rotten 'Rion played them with, is it?"
Tunis demanded. "Trying to make them think my beautiful _Seamew_ was
once the _Marlin B._? Why, the poor fools, this broken oar came out
of Mike Pareta's woodpile, or I'm a dog-fish! See that blue streak?
I saw this broken oar at Pareta's house. Bet you anything Eunez had
something to do with it, too. Though why she should want to harm me,
who never said a cross word to her, I can't see."

"She and your cousin are mighty thick," Zebedee said reflectively.
"That's a fact."

"Thicker than they ought to be for the girl's good, I guess," agreed
Tunis. Then he said to Horry: "What's the matter with you, old man?
Do you want to desert me, too, all along of a broken oar with some
silly letters burned into it?"

The ancient mariner had got a grip upon himself. The simple
explanation that punctured the bubble of superstition so
convincingly might not have altogether satisfied Horry. But he was a
true and just man.

"I never deserted your father, Cap'n Randall Latham, not even when
his ship sunk under him," the old man declared. "I was saved from
that wreck by chance, not because I tried to be. And I ain't likely
to desert his son."

"How about you, Zebedee?" demanded the captain of the _Seamew_.

"I am not afraid of any foolish talk, anyway, Captain Latham. Had I
been I wouldn't have applied for the berth. I had heard enough about
it. Eunez Pareta, I believe, talked too much to the Portygees, and
that is why you couldn't keep them. But I'm not a Portygee."

"I'll say you're not," agreed Tunis. "But we're left in something of
a fix. This freight for Josh Jones and his father is needed. Some
other stuff consigned to Big Wreck Cove ought to be there by
to-night. And I can't get a man for love or money here to help us
out. I tried while I was uptown."