he unreasoning temper
of those who sought dividends without bothering much about details. He
knew how other passenger captains were making good with the powers who
controlled transportation interests. He confessed to himself that he had
envied the master of the rushing _Triton_ who had swaggered past as if
he owned the sea.

Till then Mayo had been the meek and apologetic passer-by along the
ocean lane, expecting to be crowded to one side, dodging when the big
fellow bawled for open road.

He remembered with what haste he always manouvered the old _Nequasset_
out of the way of harm when he heard the lordly summons of the passenger
liners. Was not that the general method of the freighter skippers? Why
should he not expect them to get out of his way, now that he was one of
the swaggerers of the sea? Let them do the worrying now, as he had done
the worrying and dodging in the past! He stepped back to his window,
those reflections whirling in his brain.

"This is no freighter," he told himself. "Fogg is right. If I don't
deliver the goods somebody else will be called on to do it, so what's
the use? I'll play the game. Just remember--will you, Mayo--that you've
got your heart's wish, and are captain of the _Montana_. If I lose this
job on account of a placard with red letters, I'll kick myself on board
a towboat, and stay there the rest of my life."

He yanked a log-book from the rack and noted the steamer's average
speed from the entries. He signaled to the engine-room through the
speaking-tube.

"Give her two hundred a minute, chief!" he ordered.

And fifteen seconds later, her engines pulsing rhythmically, the big
craft was splitting fog and water at express speed, howling for little
fellows to get out from underfoot.

Down in the gleaming depths of her the orchestra was lilting a gay
waltz, silver clattered over the white napery of the dining-room, men
and women laughed and chattered and flirted; men wrote telegrams, making
appointments for the morrow at early hours, and the wireless flashed
them forth. They were sent with the certainty on the part of the senders
that no man in these days waits for tide or fog. The frothing waters
flashed past in the night outside, and they who ventured forth upon the
dripping decks glanced at the fan of white spume spreading into the fog,
and were glad to return to cozy chairs and the radiance of the saloon.

High up forward, in the pilot-house, were the eyes and the brains of