them steer calves that I'll
kill the first one that steps foot aft the mainmast."

There was that in the tones and in the skipper's mien of dignity as
he stood there, fronting and defying once again his ancient foe, the
ocean, which took out of Hiram all his courage to retort. And after
a time he went forward, dragging himself cautiously, to join the
little group of misery huddled in the folds of the fallen canvas.

"A cargo of fools to save!" growled Cap'n Sproul, his eyebrows
knotted in anxiety. "Myself among 'em! And they don't know what the
matter is with 'em. We've struck the line gale--that's what we've
done! Struck it with a choppin'-tray for a bo't and a mess of
rooty-baggy turnips for a crew! And there's only one hole to crawl
out of."

XXII

The wind had shifted when it settled into the blow--a fact that the
Cap'n's shipmates did not realize, and which he was too disgusted
by their general inefficiency to explain to them. In his crippled
condition, in the gathering night, he figured that it would be
impossible for him to make Portland harbor, the only accessible
refuge. The one chance was to ride it out, and this he set himself
to do, grimly silent, contemptuously reticent. He held her nose up
to the open sea, allowing her only steerageway, the gale slithering
off her flattened sail.

The men who gazed on him from the waist saw in his resolution only
stubborn determination to punish them.

"He's sartinly the obstinatest man that ever lowered his head at ye,"
said Zeburee Nute, breaking in on the apprehensive mumble of his
fellows. "He won't stop at northin' when he's mad. Look what he's
done in Smyrna. But I call this rubbin' it in a darn sight more'n
he's got any right to do."

His lament ended in a seasick hiccough.

"I don't understand sailormen very well," observed Jackson Denslow;
"and it may be that a lot of things they do are all right, viewed
from sailorman standpoint. But if Cap Sproul wa'n't plumb crazy and
off'm his nut them times we offered him honors in our town, and if
he ain't jest as crazy now, I don't know lunatics when I see 'em."

"Headin' straight out to sea when dry ground's off that way," said
Murray, finning feeble hand to starboard, "ain't what Dan'l Webster
would do, with his intellect, if he was here."

Hiram Look sat among them without speaking, his eyes on his friend
outlined against the gloom at the wheel. One after the other the
miserable members of the Anci