afterguard that they've
signed on for to obey!"

"That's right, Cap'n Am'zon," said Cap'n Joab. "Ye say a true word."

"An' for good reason," declared the mendacious storekeeper. "I've had
experience with such sharks," and he ran his finger reflectively down
the old scar upon his jaw.

"I always wanted to ask you 'bout that scar, Cap'n Am'zon," put in Milt
Baker encouragingly. "Did you get it in a mutiny?"

"Yep."

"I didn't know but ye got it piratin'," chuckled Milt. "Bet Gallup,
she swears you sailed under the Jolly Roger more'n once."

"So I did," declared the captain boldly. "This crew o' mutineers I
speak of turned pirates, and they held me--the only one of the
afterguard left alive--to navigate the ship.

"Guess mebbe you've heard tell, Cap'n Joab, of the mutiny of the
_Galatea_?" went on the narrator unblushingly.

His fellow skipper nodded. "I've heard of it--yes. But you don't mean
to say you sailed on _her_, Am'zon?"

"Yes, I did," the storekeeper declared. "I was third aboard her--she
carried a full crew. She sailed out o' N'York for Australia and home
by the way of the Chile ports and the Horn--a hermaphrodite brig she
was; and--she--could--sail!

"But she warn't well found. The grub was wuss'n a Blue-nose herrin'
smack's. Weevilly bread and rusty beef. The crew had a sayin' that
the doc didn't have to call 'em to mess; the smell of it was sufficient.

"They was a hard crew I allow--them boys; many of 'em dock rats and the
like. Warn't scurcely half a dozen able seamen in the whole crew. And
the skipper and mate was master hard on 'em. In the South Atlantic we
got some bad weather and the crew was worked double tides, as you might
say.

"The extry work on top o' the poor grub finished 'em," said the
storekeeper. "One day in the mornin' watch the whole crew come boilin'
aft and caught the skipper and the mate at breakfast. _They_ lived
well. The second was in his berth and I had the deck.

"I got knocked out first thing--there's the scar of it," and the
captain put a finger again on the mark along his jaw which actually was
a memento of contact with the cellar step when he was a child.
"Belayin' pin. Knocked me inside out for Sunday. But I cal'late they
didn't put the steel to me 'cause I'd been fairly decent to 'em comin'
down from N'York.

"Then, after the fight was over and they'd hove the others overboard,
they begun to see they needed me to navigate the _Galatea_.