would be lost."

Poor Johnnie! he was all but crying.

"That's it. And that's where some would say you showed yourself a man,
and some a fool, Johnnie-boy. Some would say, 'Use judgment--think of
the other eighteen or twenty men safe aboard the vessel.' Would you
use judgment, or what, Johnnie?"

"M-m--I don't know. What would you do, Captain Clancy?"

"What d'y' think I'd do, Johnnie?" Clancy drew the boy up and tucked
the little face to his own broad breast. The rest of us knew well
enough what Clancy would do. "Judgment hell!" Clancy would say, and go
in and get lost--or maybe get away with it where a more careful man
would be lost--but we waited to hear what Johnnie--such a little
boy--would say. He said it at last, after looking long into Clancy's
face.

"I think you'd go in, Captain Clancy."

Clancy laughed at that. "Lord, Johnnie-boy, no wonder everybody loves
you. No matter what a man does, all you see is the best that's in
him."

It was time to clean up then, and Johnnie of course was bound to
help.

V

FROM OUT OF CROW'S NEST

"What'll I do with this?" asked Johnnie, in the middle of the cleaning
up, holding up a pan of sweepings.

"Oh, that"--Clancy naturally took charge--"heave it overboard. Ebb
tide'll carry it away. Heave it into the slip. Wait--maybe you'll have
to hoist the hatches. 'Tisn't raining much now, anyway, and it will
soon stop altogether. Might as well go aloft and make a good job of
the hatches, hadn't he, Peter?"

"Wait a minute." Peter was squinting through the porthole. "I
shouldn't wonder but this is one of our fellows coming in. I know
she's a banker. The Enchantress, I think. Look, Tommie, and see what
you make of her."

Clancy looked. "That's who it is, Peter. Hi, Johnnie, here'll be a
chance for you to hoist the flag. Hurry aloft and tend to the hatches,
as Peter says, and you can hoist the flag for the Enchantress home
from the Banks."

In bad weather, like it was that day, the little balcony of Crow's
Nest was shut in by little hatches, arranged so that they could be run
up and down, the same as hatches are slid over the companionway of a
fisherman's cabin or forec's'le. Johnnie was a pretty active boy, and
he was up the rope ladder and onto the roof in a few seconds. We could
hear him walking above, and soon the hatches slid away and we all
could look freely out to sea again.

"All right below?" called out Johnnie.

"Not yet," answered Peter. He was