hall not receive it. On the contrary, sir,
I shall speak of this wholesale murder at the first opportunity!"

The captain leaned back and stared at the debauched face, the trembling
figure of the sailor, with which this defiant speech so little accorded.
Under ordinary circumstances, he would have sent him on deck to be dealt
with by the officers. But this was not an ordinary circumstance. In the
watery eyes was a look of shock, and horror, and honest indignation; the
accents were those of an educated man; and the consequences hanging over
himself and the company for which he worked--already complicated by and
involved in his efforts to avoid them--which this man might precipitate,
were so extreme, that such questions as insolence and difference in rank
were not to be thought of. He must meet and subdue this Tartar on common
ground--as man to man.

"Are you aware, Rowland," he asked, quietly, "that you will stand
alone--that you will be discredited, lose your berth, and make enemies?"

"I am aware of more than that," answered Rowland, excitedly. "I know of
the power vested in you as captain. I know that you can order me into
irons from this room for any offense you wish to imagine. And I know
that an unwitnessed, uncorroborated entry in your official log
concerning me would be evidence enough to bring me life imprisonment.
But I also know something of admiralty law; that from my prison cell I
can send you and your first officer to the gallows."

"You are mistaken in your conceptions of evidence. I could not cause
your conviction by a log-book entry; nor could you, from a prison,
injure me. What are you, may I ask--an ex-lawyer?"

"A graduate of Annapolis. Your equal in professional technic."

"And you have interest at Washington?"

"None whatever."

"And what is your object in taking this stand--which can do you no
possible good, though certainly not the harm you speak of?"

"That I may do one good, strong act in my useless life--that I may help
to arouse such a sentiment of anger in the two countries as will forever
end this wanton destruction of life and property for the sake of
speed--that will save the hundreds of fishing-craft, and others, run
down yearly, to their owners, and the crews to their families."

Both men had risen and the captain was pacing the floor as Rowland, with
flashing eyes and clinched fists, delivered this declaration.

"A result to be hoped for, Rowland," said the former, pausing be