by wires to the ceiling, ran back to the chimney behind
Cap'n Abe.

He stood at the one space that was kept cleared on his counter, hairy
fists on the brown, hacked plank--the notches of the yard-stick and
fathom-stick cut with a jackknife on its edge--his pale eyes sparkling as
he talked.

"There she wallered," went on the narrator of maritime disaster, "her
cargo held together by rotting sheathing and straining ribs. She was
wrung by the seas like a dishrag in a woman's hands. She no longer
mounted the waves; she bored through 'em. 'Twas a serious time--to hear
Cap'n Am'zon tell it."

"I guess it must ha' been, Abe," Milt Baker put in hastily. "Gimme a
piece o' that Brown Mule chewin' tobacker."

"I'll _sell_ it to ye, Milt," the storekeeper said gently, with his hand
on the slide of the cigar and tobacco showcase.

"That's what I mean," rejoined Milt boldly, fishing in his pocket for the
required nickel.

"For fourteen days while the _Posy Lass_ was drivin' off shore before an
easterly gale, Cap'n Am'zon an' two others, lashed to the stump o' the
fo'mast, _ex_-isted in a smother of foam an' spume, with the waves
picklin' 'em ev'ry few minutes. And five raw potaters was all they had
to eat in all that endurin' time!"

"Five potatoes?" Lawford Tapp cried. "For three men? And for fourteen
days? Good-_night_!"

Cap'n Abe stared at him for a moment, his eyes holding sparks of
indignation. "Young man," he said tartly, "you should hear Cap'n Am'zon
himself tell it. You wouldn't cast no doubts upon his statement."

Cap'n Joab snorted and turned his back again. Young Tapp felt somewhat
abashed.

"Yes, sir!" proceeded Cap'n Abe who seldom lost the thread of one of his
stories, "they was lashed to that stump of a mast and they lived on them
potaters--scraping 'em fine with their sheath-knives, and husbandin' 'em
like they was jewels. One of 'em went mad."

"One o' the potaters?" gasped Amiel Perdue.

"_Who_ went crazy--your brother, Cap'n Abe?" Milt asked cheerfully. He
had squandered a nickel in trying to head off the flow of the
storekeeper's story, and felt that he was entitled to something besides
the Brown Mule.

Cap'n Abe kept to his course apparently unruffled: "Cap'n Am'zon an' the
other feller lashed the poor chap--han's _an_' feet--and so kep' him from
goin' overboard. But mebbe 'twarn't a marciful act after all. When they
was rescued from the _Posy Lass_, her decks awash and her slowl