howl,
eh? Well, ain't you calling it quits, then--till the next time he
kicks you?"

Some one laughed; Conroy raised his voice.

"He'll never kick me again," he cried. "His kicking days are over.
He's kicked me once too often, he has. Quits--I guess not!"

Slade let a mouthful of smoke trickle between his lips; it swam in
front of his face in a tenuous film of pale vapor.

"Well, talkin' won't do it, anyhow," he said.

"No," retorted Conroy, and collected all eyes to his gesture. "But
this will!"

He showed them the thin-bladed knife which the Greek had given him,
holding it before them by the hilt. He let a dramatic moment elapse.

"Like that!" he said, and stabbed at the air. "Like that--see? Like
that!"

They came upon bad weather gradually, drawing into a belt of half-
gales, with squalls that roared up from the horizon and made them for
the time, into whole gales. The Villingen, designed and built
primarily for cargo capacity, was a wet ship, and upon any point of
sailing had a way of scooping in water by the many tons. In nearly
every watch came the roar, "Stand by yer to'gallant halliards!" Then
the wait for ten seconds or ten minutes while the wind grew and the
big four-masted barque lay over and bumped her bluff bows through
racing seas, till the next order, shriller and more urgent, "Lower
avay!" and the stiff canvas fought and slatted as the yards came
down. Sea-boots and oilskins were the wear for every watch; wet decks
and the crash of water coming inboard over the rail, dull cold and
the rasp of heavy, sodden canvas on numb fingers, became again
familiar to the men, and at last there arrived the evening, gravid
with tempest, on which all hands reefed top-sails.

The mate had the middle watch, from midnight till four o'clock in the
morning, and for the first two hours it was Conroy's turn on the
lookout. The rest, in oilskins and sea-boots, were standing by under
the break of the poop; save for the sleeping men in the shut
forecastle, he had the fore part of the ship to himself. He leaned
against the after rail of the fore-castle head, where a ventilator
somewhat screened him from the bitter wind that blew out of the dark,
and gazed ahead at the murk. Now and again the big barque slid
forward with a curtseying motion, and dipped up a sea that flowed aft
over the anchors and cascaded down the ladders to the main-deck;
spray that spouted aloft' and drove across on the wind, sparkled red
and green