moment when the boom would give him the most help.

He heard Captain Downs's astonished oath when he dove over that worthy
mariner's head, a human comet in a twenty-foot parabola.

He landed in the sail on his hands and knees, yelling, even as he
alighted: "Catch her, boys!"

They did it when the spar banged against the stays. They surged on the
rope, tightened the noose, and before the vessel rolled again had made
half a dozen turns of the free end of the cable around the nearest
cleats.

Mayo scrambled down from the sail and helped them complete the work of
securing the spar. He passed near Captain Downs when the job had been
finished.

"Well," growled the master of the _Alden_, "what do you expect me to say
to that?"

"I simply ask you to keep from saying something."

"What?"

"That a steamboat man can't earn his pay aboard a wind-jammer, sir. I
don't like to feel that I am under obligations in any way."

The master grunted.

"And if the little thing I have done helps to square that break I made
by licking your passenger I'll be glad of it," added Mayo.

"You needn't rub it in," said Captain Downs, carefully noting that there
was nobody within hearing distance. "When a man has been in a nightmare
for twenty-four hours, like I've been, you've got to make some
allowances, Captain Mayo. This is a terrible mixed-upmess." He squinted
at the mizzen rigging where the lanterns revealed the damage. "And by
the way those backstays are ripped out, and seeing how that mast is
wabbling, this schooner is liable to be about as badly mixed up as the
people are on board of her."

Mayo turned away and went back to his work. They were rigging
extra stays for the mizzenmast. And he noted that the girl near the
coach-house door was staring at him with a great deal of interest. But
in that gloom he was only a moving figure among toiling men.

An hour later the mate ordered the oil-bags to be tied to the catheads.
The bags were huge gunny sacks stuffed with cotton waste which was
saturated with oil.

In spite of the fact that her spanker, double-reefed, was set in order
to hold her up to the wind, weather-vane fashion, the schooner seemed
determined to keep her broadside to the tumbling seas. The oil slick
helped only a little; every few moments a wave with spoondrift flying
from it would smash across the deck, volleying tons of water between
rails, with a sound like thunder. At these times the swirling torrent in
the wa