dare do that! I forbid you!"

Lawford turned a grim face upon his father. "I earn eighteen a week,
dad. I am my own boss."

A soft palm was placed upon I. Tapp's lips before he could reply.
Louise was weeping frankly, but she urged:

"Don't stop him, Mr. Tapp. Don't say another word to him. My--my
heart is breaking; but I am glad--oh, I am so glad!--that he is a real
man."

Cap'n Trainor's hard gaze swept the circle of strained faces about him.
After all, the men here were mostly "second raters"--weaklings like
Milt Baker and Amiel Perdue, or cripples like Cap'n Joab and Washy
Gallup.

Suddenly the captain's gaze descried a figure well back in the
crowd--one who had not pushed forward during these exciting moments,
but who had been chained to the spot by the fascination of what was
happening.

"Ain't that Cap'n Am'zon Silt back there?" demanded the skipper of the
lifeboat crew. "You pull a strong oar, I know, Cap'n Am'zon. We need
you."

CHAPTER XXXI

AN ANCHOR TO THE SOUL

The storekeeper had stretched no point when he told his niece that the
thought of setting foot in a boat made him well-nigh swoon. His only
ventures aboard any craft were in quiet waters.

He could pull as strong an oar, despite his years, as any man along the
Cape, but never had he gripped the ash save in the haven or in similar
land-locked water.

His heart was wrung by the sight of those men clinging to the shrouds
of the wrecked schooner. And he rejoiced that the members of the Coast
Patrol crew displayed their manhood in so noble an attempt to reach the
wreck.

But his very soul was shaken by the spectacle of the storm-fretted sea,
and terror gnawed at his vitals when the lifeboat was thrust out into
that awful maelstrom of tumbling water.

Relating imaginary events of this character or repeating what mariners
had told or written about wreck and storm at sea in the safe harbor of
the old store on the Shell Road was different from being an eyewitness
of this present catastrophe.

Trembling, the salt tears stinging his eyes more sharply than the salt
spray stung his cheeks, the storekeeper had ventured into the crowd of
spectators on the sands. So enthralled were his neighbors by what was
going forward that they did not notice his appearance.

And well they did not. This character of the bluff and ready master
mariner that Cap'n Abe had builded--a new order of Frankenstein--and
with which he had deceived the