once.

"Stand to your duty, men!" shouted Duncan. "Don't be cowards. Do your
part of the work and we'll save all of you and all the coal. Only obey
orders promptly and I'll be responsible for the rest. Go to the pumps
and answer every command promptly."

He then ordered flaming torches kindled on every barge, and in the light
thus created he was able to tow one after another of the coal boats into
that harbor of safety in which the tug captain should have moored them
during the day before, the men meanwhile pumping to keep the water
down.

Then with his clothing drenched and frozen stiff upon him, he steered
the tug back to her landing place, through the now receding storm.

Kennedy, the tug captain, was there, waiting. As Duncan came ashore
Kennedy said menacingly:

"If I get my discharge for this I'll prosecute you for piloting without
a license."

The ice-encased and half-frozen young man made no reply. He simply
hurried ashore.

As he mounted to the top of the levee, though it was only a little after
daylight, Duncan encountered Captain Will Hallam, who stood there
waiting for him.

"Go to the hotel," said the employer. "I've ordered a piping hot bath
for you there, and a blazing wood fire. There's nothing like a wood fire
after a chilling such as you've had. When you get good and warm, go to
bed. When you wake naturally, telegraph to the office for me, and we'll
breakfast together. I've ordered the breakfast--the hotel keeper thinks
it will bankrupt him or make his fortune to furnish it, but that doesn't
matter. Get warm and get some sleep. Sleep as long as you can."

"I don't think I care for sleep," answered the half-frozen and wholly
exhausted young man. "But would you mind sending Dutch John to me at the
hotel? I'd like to have him rub me down with some Turkish towels after
my hot bath. Tell him I have a dollar for him if he rubs me well."

"That fellow is certainly a new brand," muttered Captain Hallam to
himself as he walked away up the levee. "But he's 'triple X' for
endurance and modesty and courage, and all the rest of it. What a
fighter he must have been! I'd like to see him in a hot battle, if I
were bullet proof myself. I'll bet bonds to brickbats he got all the
fight there was in them out of his men. But why doesn't he look out for
his own interests, I wonder? I'm still paying him the salary on which he
began. Any other man in my employ who could have done one-tenth of what
he has done, wo