k!"

Ordinarily the skipper addresses one of his sailors only through the
mate. But there was no mate handy just then.

"One hand for the owners and one hand for yourself when you're aloft,
but on deck it's both hands for the owners," he stated, as he plodded
aft, giving forth the aphorism for the benefit of all within hearing.

The passenger was still on deck, and Mayo heard Captain Downs greet him
rather brusquely.

Then the cook's hand-bell announced breakfast, and before the captain
and his guest reappeared on deck a tug had the _Alden's_ hawser and was
towing her down the dredged channel on the way to Hampton Roads and to
sea.

Mayo went at his new tasks so handily that he passed muster as an
able seaman. If a sailor aboard a big schooner of these days is quick,
willing, and strong he does not need the qualities and the knowledge
which made a man an "A. B." in the old times.

While the schooner was on her way behind the tug they hoisted her sails,
a long cable called "the messenger" enabling the steam-winch forward to
do all the work. Mayo was assigned to the jigger-mast, and went aloft
to shake out the topsail. It was a dizzy height, and the task tried his
spirit, for the sail was heavy, and he found it difficult to keep his
balance while he was tugging at the folds of the canvas. He was obliged
to work alone--there was only one man to a mast, and very tiny insects
did his mates appear when Mayo glanced forward along the range of the
masts.

The tug dropped them off the Tail of the Horseshoe; a smashing
sou'wester was serving them.

With all her washing set, the schooner went plowing out past the capes,
and Mayo was given his welcome watch below; he was so sleepy that his
head swam.

When he turned out he was ordered to take his trick at the wheel. The
schooner had made her offing and was headed for her northward run along
the coast, which showed as a thin thread of white along the flashing
blue of the sea.

Mayo took the course from the gaunt, sooty Jamaican who stepped away
from the wheel; he set his gaze on the compass and had plenty to occupy
his hands and his mind, for a big schooner which is logging off six
or eight knots in a following sea is somewhat of a proposition for a
steersman. Occasionally he was obliged to climb bodily upon the wheel in
order to hold the vessel up to her course.

Captain Downs was pacing steadily from rail to rail between the wheel
and the house. At each turn he glan