es, rocks, shoals, currents, compass, and riggin' that don't know
Portygees. It takes a master mariner to know Portygees. It takes
Portygees to know a master mariner. They know the language. They know
the style. They get the idee by the way he looks at 'em. It's what
he says and the way he says it. Second mates ain't got it. P'r'aps
I ain't got it, after bein' on shore among clodhoppers for two years.
But, by Judas Iscarrot, I'm goin' to start in and find out! Portygees!
There's Portygees! Here's me that has handled 'em--batted brains
into 'em as they've come over the side, one by one, and started 'em
goin' like I'd wind up a watch! And a belayin'-pin is the key!"

He arose with great decision, buttoned his jacket, cocked his cap
to an angle of authority on his gray hair, and started down the hill
toward the boat.

"He's goin' to call in his bunko-men and take that boat," bleated
Mr. Butts to Colonel Ward.

"Wild hosses couldn't drag him into a boat again with those human
toadstools, and I've heard him swear round here enough to know it,"
scoffed the Colonel. "He's just goin' down to try to wheedle your
sailors like he tried to wheedle you, and they're your men and he
can't do it."

And in the face of this authority and confidence in the situation
Mr. Butts subsided, thankful for an excuse to keep at a respectful
distance from Cap'n Aaron Sproul.

That doughty expert on "Portygees" strode past the awed crew with
an air that they instinctively recognized as belonging to the
quarter-deck. Their meek eyes followed him as he stumped into the
swash and kicked up two belaying-pins floating in the debris. He took
one in each hand, came back at them on the trot, opening the
flood-gates of his language. And they instinctively recognized that
as quarter-deck, too. They knew that no mere mate could possess that
quality of utterance and redundancy of speech.

He had a name for each one as he hit him. It was a game of "Tag, you're
it!" that made him master, in that moment of amazement, from the mere
suddenness of it. A man with less assurance and slighter knowledge
of sailorman character might have been less abrupt--might have given
them a moment in which to reflect. Cap'n Aaron Sproul kept them
going--did their thinking for them, dizzied their brains by thwacks
of the pins, deafened their ears by his terrific language.

In fifteen seconds they had run the dingy into the surf, had shipped
oars, and were lustily pulling away