by the sound of Horble's footsteps down the ladder. With
his head leaning on his hand, he looked at the big naked feet feeling
for the steps, then at the uncouth clothes as they gradually appeared,
then at the fat, weak, frightened face of the man himself. He grew sick
at the sight of him. Would Horble strike him? Would Horble have the grit
to order him off the ship? No; the infernal coward was getting out the
gin--a bottle of square-face and two glasses.

"Say when," said Horble.

"When," said Gregory.

Horble tipped the bottle into his own glass. A second mate's grog! One
could see what the fellow drank.

"Here's luck," said Gregory.

"Drink hearty," said Horble.

"Joe Horble," said Gregory, leaning both elbows on the table, "there's
something you ought to know: I love Madge, and Madge loves me!"

Horble gasped.

"She's mine!" said Gregory.

Horble helped himself to some more gin, and then slowly wiped his mouth
with the back of his hand.

"You're forgetting she's my wife," he said.

"I'll give you a thousand pounds for her, cash and bills," said Gregory.

"You can't sell white women," said Horble. "She ain't labor."

"A thousand pounds!" repeated Gregory.

"I won't sell my wife to no man," said Horble.

The pair looked at each other. Horble's hand felt for the gin again. His
speech had grown a little thick. He was angry and flustered, and a dull
resentment was mantling his heavy face.

"I'll go the schooner," cried Gregory. "The _Northern Light_ as she lies
there this minute, not a dollar owing on her bottom, with two hundred
pounds of specie in her safe. Lock, stock, and barrel, she's yours!"

Horble shook his head.

"Madge ain't for sale," he said.

"Please yourself," said Gregory. "You'll end by losing her for
nothing."

"Captain Cole," said Horble, "Madge has told me how near it was a go
between you and her, and how, if you hadn't cleared out so sudden the
way you did, she would have married you in spite of old Blanchard. But
when you went away like that you left the field clear, and you mustn't
bear me no malice for having stepped in and taken your leavings. What's
done's done, and it's a sorry game to come back too late and insult a
man who never did you no harm."

"Oh!" said Gregory.

"If you choose," continued Horble in his tone of wounded reasonableness,
"you can make a power of mischief between me and Madge. I don't think it
comes very well from you to do it; I don't think anyth