and pulled his bell. "Make yourself to
home, mate," he advised. "I hope you ain't in so much of a hurry to get
there as you seem to be, for I've got three barges to tow."

Mayo sat down on the rear transom and was hidden from all eyes on the
pier.

There was no opportunity for an explanation until the barges had been
picked up, for there was much manouver-ing and much tooting. But he
found ready sympathy after he had explained.

"The law sharps are always hankering to catch a poor cuss who is trying
to navigate these waters and suit the inspectors and the owners at the
same time," admitted the master of the tug. "I have read everything the
papers had to say about your case, and I figured they didn't give you a
fair show. Newspapers and lawyers and owners don't understand what a
fellow is up against. I'm glad you're aboard, mate, because I want to
hear your side, with all the details."

The threshing over of the matter occupied many hours of the long wallow
down the Jersey coast, and the tug captain weighed all features of the
case with the care of a man who has plenty of time on his hands and with
the zest a mariner displays in considering the affairs of his kind of
folk.

"If I didn't know you pretty well, Mayo, and know what kind of a man
you got your training with, I might think--just as those law sharps
will probably say--that you were criminally careless or didn't know your
business. But that dodge she made on you! Two points off her course!
You've got to put your finger right on there and hold it! Let me tell
you something. It was a queer thing in my own case. That was a queer
thing in your case. Stand two queer things in our business up beside
each other and squint at 'em and you may learn something."

"She was on her course--I put her there with my own hands," persisted
Mayo.

"Sure! You know your business. If this thing was going to be left to
the bunch that know you, you'd go clear. But here's what happened in my
case: I had a new man in the wheel-house, here, and he almost rammed me
into Cuttyhunk, gave me a touch and go with the Pollock Rip Lightship,
and had me headed toward Nauset when the fog lifted. And he was steering
my courses to the thinness of a hair, at that! Say, I took a sudden
tumble and frisked that chap and dragged a toad-stabber knife out of his
pocket--one of those regular foot-long knives. It had been yawing off
that compass all the way from a point to a point and a half. When did