t before he can get anywhere and stop payment."

"It's a pretty fair gamble both ways," remarked Hiram, his sporting
instincts awake. "You may know more about water and ways of gettin'
acrost that, but if this wind holds up the old spider will spin out
a thread and ride away on it. He's ga'nt enough!"

Cap'n Sproul made no reply. He sat before his fire buried in thought,
the gale whipping past his ears.

Colonel Ward, after ordering the returned and communicative Bodge
to shut up, was equally thoughtful as he gazed into his fire.
Ludelphus Murray, after trying long and in vain to light a soggy
pipeful of tobacco, gazed into the fire-lit faces of his comrades
of the Ancients and Honorables of Smyrna and said, with a sickly grin:

"I wisht I knew Robinson Crusoe's address. He might like to run out
and spend the rest of the fall with us."

But the jest did not cheer the gloom of the marooned on Cod Lead
Nubble.

XXIII

Cap'n Aaron Sproul had forgotten his troubles for a time. He had been
dozing. The shrewish night wind of autumn whistled over the ledges
of Cod Lead Nubble and scattered upon his gray beard the black ashes
from the bonfire that the shivering men of Smyrna still plied with
fuel. The Cap'n sat upright, his arms clasping his doubled knees,
his head bent forward.

Hiram Look, faithful friend that he was, had curled himself at his
back and was snoring peacefully. He had the appearance of a corsair,
with his head wrapped in the huge handkerchief that had replaced the
plug hat lost in the stress and storm that had destroyed the _Aurilla
P. Dobson_. The elephant, Imogene, was bulked dimly in the first gray
of a soppy dawn.

"If this is goin' to sea," said Jackson Denslow, continuing the sour
mutterings of the night, "I'm glad I never saw salt water before I
got pulled into this trip."

"It ain't goin' to sea," remarked another of the Smyrna amateur
mariners. "It's goin' ashore!" He waved a disconsolate gesture
toward the cove where the remains of the _Dobson_ swashed in the
breakers.

"If any one ever gets me navigatin' again onto anything desp'ritter
than a stone-bo't on Smyrna bog," said Denslow, "I hope my relatives
will have me put into a insane horsepittle."

"Look at that!" shouted Ludelphus Murray. "This is a thunderation
nice kind of a night to have a celebration on!"

This yelp, sounding above the somniferous monotone of grumbling,
stirred Cap'n Sproul from his dozing. He snapped h