r! I have been a father--and my girls can come
and sit on my knee to-day and get my advice, and think it's worth
something."

He rose and walked toward his dory.

"But hold on," called Captain Candage. "You haven't told me what you
think."

"Haven't I? I thought I had, making it mild and pleasant. But if you
need a little something more plain and direct, I'll remark--still making
it mild and pleasant--that you're a damned old fool! And now I'll go
back and be sociable with them fish scraps. I believe they will smell
better after this!" He leaped into his dory and rowed away.

Captain Candage offered no rejoinder to that terse and meaty summing up.
Naturally, he was as ready with his tongue as Captain Ranse Lougee or
any other man alongshore. But in this case the master of the _Polly_
was not sure of his ground. He knew that Captain Lougee had qualified as
father of five. In the judgment of a mariner experience counts. And
he did not resent the manner of Captain Lougee because that skipper's
brutal bluntness was well known by his friends. Captain Candage had
asked and he had received. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared
after the departing caller and pondered.

"Maybe he is right. He probably _is_ right. But it wouldn't be shipboard
discipline if I told her that I have been wrong. I reckon I'll go aft
and be pleasant and genteel, hoping that nothing will happen to rile my
feelings. Now that my feelings are calm and peaceful, and having taken
course and bearings from a father of five, I'll probably say to her,
'You'd better trot along home, sissy, seeing that I have told you how to
mind your eye after this.'"

IV ~ OVER THE "POLLY'S" RAIL

O Stormy was a good old man!
To my way you storm along!
Physog tough as an old tin pan,
Ay, ay, ay, Mister Storm-along!
--Storm-along Shanty.

Without paying much attention to the disturber, Captain Candage had been
a bit nettled during his meditation. A speed boat from one of the yachts
kept circling the _Polly_, carrying a creaming smother of water
under its upcocked bow. It was a noisy gnat of a boat and it kicked a
contemptuous wake against the rust-streaked old wagon.

When it swept under the counter, after Captain Candage was back on his
quarter-deck, he gave it a stare over the rail, and his expression was
distinctly unamiable.

"They probably wasted more money on that doostra-bulus than this
schooner would sell for i