you shift wheel-watch?"

"Before we made Vineyard Sound."

"And no trouble coming up the sound?"

"Made Nobska and West Chop to the dot."

"Then perhaps your general manager, who was in that pilot-house, had an
iron gizzard inside him. Most of them Wall Street fellows do have!" said
the skipper, with sarcasm.

"There's something going on in the steamboat business that I can't
understand," declared Mayo. "It's high up; it hasn't to do with us
chaps, who have to take the kicks. Fogg brought a man aboard the old
_Nequasset_, and he didn't bring along a good explanation to go with
that man. I have been wondering ever since how it happened that Fogg got
to be general manager of the Vose line so almighty sudden."

"Them high financiers play a big game, mate. And if you happened to be
a marked card in it, they'd tear you up and toss you under the table
without thinking twice. If you'll take a tip from me, you lay low and
do a lot of thinking while Uncle Zoradus does his scouting. What are you
going to do when you get to Norfolk?"

"I haven't thought."

"Well, the both of us better think, and think hard, mate. If the United
States is really after you there'll be a sharp eye at every knot-hole. I
can't afford to let 'em get in a crack at me for what I've done."

"I'll jump overboard outside the capes before I'll put you in wrong,"
asserted Mayo, with deep feeling.

That night the captain of the tug took a trick at the wheel in person.

His guest lay on the transom, smoking the skipper's spare pipe, and
racking his mind for ways and means. After a time he was conscious that
the captain was growling a bit of a song to relieve the tedium of his
task. He sang the same words over and over--a tried and true Chesapeake
shanty:

"Oh, I sailed aboard a lugger, and I shipped aboard a scow,
And I sailed aboard a peanut-shell that had a razor bow.
Needle in a haystack, brick into a wall!
A nigger man in Norfolk, he ain't no 'count at all!"

Mayo rolled off the transom and went to the captain's side. "There's
more truth than poetry in that song of yours, sir," he said. "You have
given me an idea. A nigger in Norfolk doesn't attract much attention.
And I haven't got to be one of the black ones, either. Don't you suppose
there's something aboard here I can use to stain my face with?"

"My cook is a great operator as a tattoo artist."

"I don't think I want to make the disguise permanent, sir," stated