question of seamanship. It was as though she realized that the
master-hand was paralyzed. She shook the rotten sail out of the
bolt-ropes with a bang, righted and went sluggishly rolling toward
the flare on shore.

"I don't know much about vessel managin'," gasped Hiram, "but seein'
that gettin' ashore was what I was drivin' at; the thing seems to
be progressin' all favorable."

Up to this time one passenger on the schooner appeared to be taking
calm or tempest with the same equanimity. This passenger was Imogene,
couched at the break of the little poop. But the cracking report of
the bursting sail, and now the dreadful clamor of the imprisoned
Cap'n Sproul, stirred her fears. She raised her trunk and trumpeted
with bellowings that shamed the blast.

"Let him up now, 'Delphus!" shouted Hiram, after twirling the wheel
vainly and finding that the _Dobson_ heeded it not. "If there ain't
no sails up he can't take us out to sea. Let him up before he gives
Imogene hysterics."

And when Murray released his clutch on the hatch it snapped back,
and out over the closed doors of the companionway shot the Cap'n,
a whiskered jack-in-the-box, gifted with vociferous speech.

Like the cautious seaman, his first glance was aloft. Then he spun
the useless wheel.

"You whelps of perdition!" he shrieked. "Lifts cut, mains'l blowed
out, and a lee shore a quarter of a mile away! I've knowed fools,
lunatics, and idjits, and I don't want to insult 'em by callin' you
them names. You--"

"Well, if we are any crazier for wantin' to go ashore where we belong
than you was for settin' out to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a night
like this, I'd like to have it stated why," declared Hiram.

"Don't you know enough to understand that I was tryin' to save your
lives by ratchin' her off'm this coast?" bellowed Cap'n Sproul.

"Just thought you was crazy, and think so now," replied the showman,
now fully as furious as the Cap'n--each in his own mind accusing the
other of being responsible for their present plight. "The place for
us is on shore, and we're goin' there!"

"What do you suppose is goin' to become of us when she strikes?"
bawled the Cap'n, clutching the backstay and leaning into the night.

"She'll strike shore, won't she? Well, that's what I want to strike.
It'll sound good and feel good."

For such gibbering lunacy as this the master mariner had no fit reply.
His jaws worked wordlessly. He kept his clutch on the backstay with
the