I knew the long arm of the law, and I did not know the fate of the
other boat, or the tale they might tell. So, I shipped for the East,
found and learned this strait, and have been here since, afraid to go
home."

* * * * *

This is the yarn I listened to on anchor watch thirty years ago. It
pertains to events forty years farther back in the past. If that
white-haired, mild-mannered old pilot is still alive, he is over
ninety-five years old, and immune from earthly punishment.

But, before deciding to give this story to the world, I visited the
United States Hydrographic Office for some corroborative data, and on a
pilot chart of 1896 read that one Captain Lloyd, of the British ship
_Crompton_, had lately reported seeing in latitude forty-seven north
and longitude thirty-seven degrees twenty minutes west, a rock sixty
feet long and eight or ten feet high in the middle. It was at a time of
low spring tides, and such a menace to navigation could easily elude
observation under ordinary conditions. Captain Lloyd averred that he
saw it at twenty minutes to eight on a fine, sunshiny morning, so close
and clear to him that he forbore lowering a boat.

Yet, as I learned from further inquiry, he was the subject of much
ridicule, and his story was generally disbelieved.

Should it be disbelieved?

THE ARGONAUTS

A few months ago I attended a banquet and left it as I always leave
such functions, hungry. Entering an all-night lunch room I took a seat,
and gave my order to a waiter, who, when he had filled it, sat down at
the table with me. It was very late, and his duties were light.

"You're looking well," he remarked, as his glance traveled over my
evening clothes. "You're dead swell, but the last time I saw you, you
were covered with mud, carrying a stern line ashore in the Welland
Canal."

I took stock of him. He was white-haired, but had the keen, intelligent
face of a man of forty-five who had not yet given up the fight; a
lively, hopeful face, one that comes to those who win oftener than
lose. His skin was brown, as though the sun and wind of all the zones
had smitten it. His eyes, gray, steadfast and humorous, had in them
when half closed the twinkle of self-confidence, but also, in their
wide-open stare, the intensity of a man of initiative and sudden
action. In his voice were character, individuality, and the habit of
command; yet he wore the short jacket of a w