well as I do, I don't see how he ever so
far forgot himself as to take along any one else. It must be the first
mate, and the first mate must have had a gun as a letter of
recommendation!"

It may be said in passing that this was a distinctly shrewd guess,
and the Cap'n promptly found something on the seas that clinched his
belief. Bobbing toward Cod Lead came an overloaded dingy. There were
six men in it, and they were making what shift they could to guide
it into the cove between the outer rocks. They came riding through
safely on a roller, splattered across the cove with wildly waving
oars, and landed on the sand with a bump that sent them tumbling heels
over head out of the little boat.

"Four Portygee sailors, the cook, and the second mate," elucidated
Cap'n Sproul, oracularly, for his own information.

The second mate, a squat and burly sea-dog, was first up on his feet
in the white water, but stumbled over a struggling sailor who was
kicking his heels in an attempt to rise. When the irate mate was up
for the second time he knocked down this sailor and then strode ashore,
his meek followers coming after on their hands and knees.

"Ahoy, there, Dunk Butts!" called Cap'n Sproul, heartily.

But Dunk Butts did not appear to warm to greetings nor to rejoice
over his salvation from the sea. He squinted sourly at the Cap'n,
then at the men of Smyrna, and then his eyes fell upon the figurehead
and its fatuous smile.

With a snarl he leaped on it, smashed his knuckles against its face,
swore horribly while he danced with pain, kicked it with his heavy
sea-boots, was more horribly profane as he hopped about with an
aching toe in the clutch of both hands, and at last picked up a
good-sized hunk of ledge and went at the smiling face with Berserker
rage.

Cap'n Sproul had begun to frown at Butts's scornful slighting of his
amiable greeting. Now he ran forward, placed his broad boot against
the second mate, and vigorously pushed him away from the prostrate
figure. When Butts came up at him with the fragment of rock in his
grasp, Cap'n Sproul faced him with alacrity, also with a piece of
rock.

"You've knowed me thutty years and sailed with me five, Dunk Butts,
and ye're shinnin' into the wrong riggin' when ye come at me with
a rock. I ain't in no very gentle spirits to-day, neither."

"I wasn't doin' northin' to you," squealed Butts, his anger becoming
mere querulous reproach, for the Cap'n's eye was fiery and Butt