topped by the elder Mr. Duncan, who
shook hands with both of us and then went on to speak to Clancy.

"Captain Clancy----"

"Captain once, but----"

"I know, I know, but not from lack of ability, at any rate. Let me
thank you. His mother will thank you herself later, and make you feel,
I know, her sense of what she owes to you. And his cousin Alice--she
thinks the world of him. There, I know you don't want to hear any
more, but you shall--maybe later--though it may come up in another
way. But tell me--wait, come inside a minute. Come in you, too, Joe,"
he said, turning to me, but I said I'd rather wait outside. I wanted
to have a smoke to get my nerves steady again, I guess.

So Clancy and Mr. Duncan went inside, and through the window, whenever
I looked up, I could see them. As their talk went on I could see that
they were getting very much interested about something or other.
Clancy particularly was laying down the law with a clenched fist and
an arm that swung through the air like a jibing boom. Somebody, I
knew, was getting it.

When they came out Mr. Duncan stopped at the door, and said, as if by
way of a parting word, "And so you think that's the cause of Withrow's
picking a quarrel with Maurice? Well, I never thought of that before,
but maybe you're right. And now, what do you say to a vessel for
yourself?"

"Me take a vessel? No, sir--not for me. But when you've got vessels to
hand around, Mr. Duncan, bear Maurice in mind--he's a fisherman."

We left Mr. Duncan then, he making ready to telephone to learn how
Johnnie was getting along. Clancy said his clothes were beginning to
feel so dry that he did not know as he would go to his boarding-house.
"I think we'd better go up to the Anchorage and have a little touch.
But I forgot--you don't drink, Joe? No? So I thought, but don't you
care--you're young yet. Come along, anyway, and have a smoke."

And so we went along to the Anchorage, and while we were there, I
smoking one of those barroom cigars and Clancy nursing the after-taste
of his drink and declaring that a touch of good liquor was equal to a
warm stove for drying wet clothes, I told him what I would have told
him in Crow's Nest if there had not been so many around--about Minnie
Arkell calling Maurice back into her grandmother's house, and then Sam
Hollis coming along and going in after him.

"What!" and stopped dead. Suddenly he brought his fist through the
air. "I'll"--and as suddenly stopped it