ith a husky shout.

"There ye go, Cap'n," he cried. "Behind you! There's our chance!"

A wavering red flare lighted the sky, spreading upward on the mists.

The men forward raised a quavering cheer.

"Ain't you goin' to sail for it?" asked Hiram, eagerly. "There's our
chance to get ashore." He had crept close to the skipper.

"I s'pose you feel like puttin' on that piazzy hat of yourn and
grabbin' your speakin'-trumpet, leather buckets, and bed-wrench,
and startin' for it," sneered Cap'n Sproul in a lull of the wind.
"In the old times they had wimmen called sirens to coax men ashore.
But that thing there seems to be better bait of the Smyrna fire
department."

"Do you mean to tell me that you ain't agoin' to land when there's
dry ground right over there, with people signallin' and waitin' to
help you?" demanded the showman, his temper whetted by his fright.

The Cap'n esteemed the question too senseless to admit any reply
except a scornful oath. He at the wheel, studying drift and wind,
had pretty clear conception of their whereabouts. The scraggly ridge
dimly outlined by the fire on shore could hardly be other than Cod
Lead, where Colonel Gideon Ward and Eleazar Bodge were languishing.
It was probable that those marooned gentlemen had lighted a fire in
their desperation in order to signal for assistance. The Cap'n
reflected that it was about as much wit as landsmen would possess.

To Hiram's panicky mind this situation seemed to call for one line
of action. They were skippered by a madman or a brute, he could not
figure which. At any rate, it seemed time to interfere.

He crawled back again to the huddled group of the Ancients and
enlisted Ludelphus Murray, as biggest and least incapacitated by
seasickness.

They staggered back in the gloom and, without preface or argument,
fell upon the Cap'n, dragged him, fighting manfully and profanely,
to the companionway of the little house, thrust him down, after an
especially vigorous engagement of some minutes, slammed and bolted
the doors and shot the hatch. They heard him beating about within
and raging horribly, but Murray doubled himself over, his knees
against the doors, his body prone on the hatch.

His position was fortunate for him, for again the _Dobson_ jibed,
the boom of the mainsail slishing overhead. Hiram was crawling on
hands and knees toward the wheel, and escaped, also. When the little
schooner took the bit in her teeth she promptly eliminated the