Butts's bosom. He remembered through the mists
of the years that something like a kick or a belaying-pin had been
connected with Mr. Butts's retirement from the _Benn_.

And until he could straighten out in his mind just what that parting
difficulty had been, and how much his temper had triumphed over his
justice to Butts, and until he had figured out a little something
in the line of diplomatic conciliation, he decided to squat for a
time beside his own fire and ruminate.

For an hour he sat, his brow gloomy, and looked across to where
Colonel Ward was talking to Butts, his arms revolving like the fans
of a crazy windmill.

"Lord! Cap'n Aaron," blurted Hiram at last, "he's pumpin' lies into
that shipmate of yourn till even from this distance I can see him
swellin' like a hop-toad under a mullein leaf. I tell you, you've
got to do something. What if it should come calm and you ain't got
him talked over and they should take the boat and row over to the
mainland? Where'd you and your check be if he gets to the bank first?
You listen to my advice and grab in there or we might just as well
never have got up that complicated plot to get even with the old son
of a seco."

"Hiram," said the Cap'n, after a moment's deliberation, the last
hours of the _Aurilla P. Dobson_ rankling still, "sence you and your
gang mutinied on me and made me let a chartered schooner go to smash
I ain't had no especial confidence in your advice in crisises. I've
seen you hold your head level in crisises on shore--away from salt
water, but you don't fit in 'board ship. And this, here, comes near
enough to bein' 'board ship to cut you out. I don't take any more
chances with you and the Smyrna fire department till I get inland
at least fifty miles from tide-water."

Hiram bent injured gaze on him.

"You're turnin' down a friend in a tight place," he complained. "I've
talked it over with the boys and they stand ready to lick those dagos
and take the boat, there, and row you ashore."

But his wistful gaze quailed under the stare the Cap'n bent on him.
The mariner flapped discrediting hand at the pathetic half-dozen
castaways poking among the rocks for mussels with which to stay their
hunger.

"Me get in a boat again with that outfit? Why, I wouldn't ride acrost
a duck pond in an ocean liner with 'em unless they were crated and
battened below hatches." He smacked his hard fist into his palm.
"There they straddle, like crows on new-ploughed land,