ys, she wasn't to be trusted among
them dudes on shore, and I speak from observation and, being an old
bach, I can speak impartial. The dudes on the water is just as bad. Them
fellows were flirting with her all the time they was 'longside. Real men
that means decent ain't called on to keep whisking their caps off and on
all the time a woman is in sight--and I see one of 'em wink at her."

Captain Candage was in a mood to accept this comfort from Oakum Otie,
and to put out of his contrite conscience the memory of what Captain
Ranse Lougee had said.

"Don't you worry! I've got her now where I can keep my eye on her, and
I'm cap'n of my own vessel--don't nobody ever forget that!" He shook his
fist at the gaping cook. "What ye standing there for, like a hen-coop
with the door open and letting my vittels cool off? Hiper your boots!
Down below with you and dish that supper onto the table!"

The skipper lingered on deck, his hand at his ear.

The fog was settling over the inner harbor. In the dim vastness seaward
a steamer was hooting. Each prolonged blast, at half-minute intervals,
sounded nearer. The sound was deep, full-toned, a mighty diapason.

"What big fellow can it be that's coming in here?" the captain grunted.

"Most likely only another tin skimmer of a yacht," suggested the mate,
tossing the eye-splice and the marline-spike into the open hatch of the
lazaret. "You know what they like to do, them play-critters! They stick
on a whistle that's big enough for Seguin fog-horn." He squinted under
the edge of his palm and waited. "There she looms. What did I tell ye?
Nothing but a yacht."

"But she's a bouncer," remarked the skipper. "What do you make her?"

"O--L," spelled Otie--"O--L--_Olenia_. Must be a local pilot aboard.
None of them New York spiffer captains could find Saturday Cove through
the feather-tide that's outside just now."

"Well, whether they can or whether they can't isn't of any interest to
me," stated the skipper, with fine indifference. "I'd hate to be in
a tight place and have to depend on one of them gilded dudes! I smell
supper. Come on!"

He was a little uncertain as to what demeanor he ought to assume
below, but he clumped down the companion-way with considerable show of
confidence, and Otie followed.

The captain cast a sharp glance at his daughter. He had been afraid that
he would find her crying, and he did not know how to handle such cases
with any certainty.

But she had dried h