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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dan Merrithew, by Lawrence Perry
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Dan Merrithew
+
+Author: Lawrence Perry
+
+Illustrator: J. V. McFall
+
+Release Date: September 24, 2005 [EBook #16742]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAN MERRITHEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Tongues of flame reached hungrily for them, licking
+above Dan's red-gold hair, but never touching the girl.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Dan Merrithew
+
+By Lawrence Perry
+
+
+
+Author of "From the Depths of Things," "Two Tramps," "The Bounder,"
+"The Sacrifice," etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLORS
+
+BY J. V. McFALL
+
+
+
+
+
+A. L. BURT COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS                NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT
+
+By A. C. McClurg & Co.
+
+A.D. 1910
+
+
+
+Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England
+
+
+
+Published, March 12, 1910
+
+Second edition, March 19, 1910
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_Thanks are due Mr. Arthur W. Little, president of the Pearson
+Publishing Company, for permission to use in this novel several
+incidents in the life of Dan Merrithew which originally appeared in
+"Pearson's Magazine."_
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+LARRY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+TOC
+    I.  THE GIRL ON THE "VEILED LADYE"
+   II.  DAN'S SEARCH FOR THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
+  III.  A FIGHT IN THE DARK
+   IV.  DAN STAKES HIS LIFE, AND WINS
+    V.  THE LOSS OF THE "FLEDGLING"
+   VI.  THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR
+  VII.  DAN IS COMMANDED TO A PARTY
+ VIII.  WITS VERSUS MACHINE GUNS
+   IX.  AN ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION
+    X.  THE WRAITH IN THE MOONLIGHT
+   XI.  THE BURNING OF THE "TAMPICO"
+  XII.  ALONE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
+ XIII.  NIGHT ON THE DERELICT
+  XIV.  DAN AND VIRGINIA
+   XV.  CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+Tongues of flame reached hungrily for them, licking above Dan's
+red-gold hair, but never touching the girl . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+"Oh, father," broke in the girl, "tell him it was noble!"
+
+In the flash of an eye, Dan was making for the assassin
+
+Opposite, smiling at him as though they had breakfasted together for
+years, was the radiant girl
+
+
+
+DAN MERRITHEW
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE GIRL ON THE "VEILED LADYE"
+
+The big coastwise tug _Hydrographer_ slid stern-ward into a slip
+cluttered with driftwood and bituminous dust, stopping within heaving
+distance of three coal-laden barges which in their day had reared
+"royal s'ls" to the wayward winds of the seven seas.
+
+Near-by lay Horace Howland's ocean-going steam yacht, _Veiled Ladye_,
+which had put into Norfolk from Caribbean ports, to replenish her
+bunkers.  There were a number of guests aboard, and most of them arose
+from their wicker chairs on the after-deck and went to the rail, as the
+great tug pounded alongside.
+
+Grateful for any kind of a break in the monotony of the long morning,
+they observed with interest the movements of a tall young man, in a
+blue shirt open at the throat and green corduroy trousers, who caught
+the heaving line hurtling from the bow of the nearest barge, and hauled
+the attached towing-cable dripping and wriggling from the heavy waters.
+
+He did it gracefully.  There was a fine play of broad shoulders, a
+resilient disposition of the long, straight limbs, an impression of
+tiger-like strength and suppleness, not lost upon his observers, upon
+Virginia Howland least of all.  She was not a girl to suppress a
+thought or emotion uppermost in her mind; and now she turned to her
+father with an exclamation of pleasure.
+
+"Father," she cried, "look!  Isn't he simply stunning!  The Greek
+ideal--and on a tugboat!"  Her dark eyes lightened with mischief.  "Do
+you suppose he'd mind if I spoke to him?"
+
+"He'd probably swear at you," said young Ralph Oddington, with a grin.
+Then, seized by a sudden impulse for which he afterwards kicked
+himself, being a decent sort of chap, he drew his cigarette case from
+his pocket and, as the tug came to a standstill, tossed a cigarette
+across the intervening space.  It struck the man in the back, and as he
+turned, Oddington called,
+
+"Have a cigarette, Bill?"
+
+The tugman's lips parted, giving a flashing glimpse of big, straight,
+white teeth.  Then they closed, and for an instant he regarded the
+speaker with a hard, curious expression in his quiet gray eyes, and the
+proffered cigarette, as though by accident, was shapeless under his
+heel.
+
+It was distinctly embarrassing for the yachting party; and partly to
+relieve Oddington, partly out of curiosity, Virginia Howland leaned
+over the rail with a smile.  "Please pardon us, Mr. Tugboatman.  We
+didn't mean to offend you; we--"
+
+The young man again swept the party with his eyes, and then meeting the
+girl's gaze full, he waited for her to complete the sentence.
+
+"We," she continued, "of course meant no harm."
+
+He did not reply for a moment, did not reply till her eyes fell.
+
+"All right--thanks," he said simply and then hurried forward.
+
+At sunset the _Veiled Ladye_ was well on her way to New York, and the
+_Hydrographer_ was plugging past Hog Island light with her cumbersome
+tows plunging astern.
+
+It came to be a wild night.  The tumbling blue-black clouds of late
+afternoon fulfilled their promise of evil things for the dark.  There
+were fierce pounding hours when the wrath of the sea seemed centred
+upon the _Hydrographer_ and her lumbering barges, when the towing-lines
+hummed like the harp strings of Aeolus.
+
+It was man's work the crew of the _Hydrographer_ performed that night;
+when the dawn came and the wind departed with a farewell shriek, and
+the seas began to fall, Dan Merrithew sat quiet for a while, gazing
+vacantly out over the gray waters, wrestling with the realization that
+through all the viewless turmoil the face of a girl he did not
+know--never would know, probably--had not been absent from his mind;
+that the sound of her voice had lingered in his ears rising out of the
+elemental confusion, as the notes of a violin, freeing themselves from
+orchestral harmony, suddenly rise clear, dominating the _motif_ in
+piercing obligato.
+
+When he arose it was with the conviction that this meant something
+which eventually would prove of interest to him.  One evening some
+three months before, he had visited the little sailors' church which
+floats in the East River at the foot of Pike Street in New York, and
+listened to a preacher who was speaking in terms as simple as he could
+make them, with Fate as his text.
+
+Fate, he said, works, in mysterious ways and does queer things with its
+instruments.  It may sear a soul, or alter the course of a life in
+seeming jest; but the end proves no jest at all, and if we live long
+enough and grow wise with our years, we learn that at the bottom, ever
+and always, in everything, was a guiding hand, a sure intent, and a
+serious purpose.
+
+It was a good, plain, simple talk such as longshoremen, dock-rats,
+tugmen, and seamen often hear in this place, but it impressed young
+Merrithew; for, although he had never accepted his misfortunes, nor
+reasoned away the things that tried his soul in this philosophical
+manner, yet he had always had a vague conviction that everything that
+happened was for his good and would work out in the end.
+
+The words of the preacher seemed to give him clearer understanding in
+this regard, taught him to weigh carefully things which, as they
+appeared to him, were on the face insignificant.  This had led him into
+strange trends of thought, had encouraged, in a way, superstitious
+fancies not altogether good for him.  He knew that, and he had cursed
+his folly, and yet on this morning after the storm, on the after-deck
+of a throbbing tugboat he nodded his head sharply, outward acquiescence
+to an inward conviction that somehow, somewhere, he was going to see
+that face again and hear that voice.  That was as certain as that he
+lived.  And when this took place he would not be a tugboat mate.  That
+was all.
+
+Whatever he did thereafter he had this additional incentive, the future
+meeting with a tall, lithe girl with dark-brown hair and gray
+eyes--brave, deep eyes, and slightly swarthy cheeks, which were crimson
+as she spoke to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+DAN'S SEARCH FOR THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
+
+Daniel Merrithew was one of the Merrithews of a town near Boston, a
+prime old seafaring family.  His father had a waning interest in three
+whaling-vessels; and when two of them opened like crocuses at their
+piers in New Bedford, being full of years, and the third foundered in
+the Antarctic, the old man died, chiefly because he could see no clear
+way of longer making a living.
+
+Young Merrithew at the time was in a New England preparatory school,
+playing excellent football and passing examinations by the skin of his
+teeth.  Thrown upon his own resources, his mother having died in early
+years, he had to decide whether he would work his way through the
+school and later through college, or trust to such education as he
+already had to carry him along in the world.
+
+It was altogether adequate for practical purposes, he argued, and so he
+lost little time in proceeding to New York, where he began a business
+career as a clerk in the office of the marine superintendent of a great
+coal-carrying railroad.  It was a beginning with a quick ending.  The
+clerkly pen was not for him; he discovered this before he was told.
+The blood of the Merrithews was not to be denied; and turning to the
+salt water, his request for a berth on one of the company's big
+sea-going tugs was received with every manifestation of approval.
+
+When he first presented himself to the Captain of the _Hydrographer_,
+the bluff skipper set the young man down as a college boy in search of
+sociological experience and therefore to be viewed with good-humored
+tolerance--good-humored, because Dan was six feet tall and had
+combative red-gold hair.  His steel eyes were shaded by long
+straw-colored lashes; he had a fighting look about him.  He had a
+magnificent temper, red, but not uncalculating, with a punch like a
+mule's kick back of it.
+
+As week after week passed, and the new hand revealed no temperamental
+proclivities, no "kid-glove" inclinations, seemingly content with
+washing down decks, lassooing pier bitts with the bight of a hawser at
+a distance of ten feet, and hauling ash-buckets from the fireroom when
+the blower was out of order--both of which last were made possible by
+his mighty shoulders--the Captain began to take a different sort of
+interest in him.
+
+He allowed Dan to spend all his spare moments with him in the
+pilot-house; and as the Captain could shoot the sun and figure latitude
+and longitude and talk with fair understanding upon many other elements
+of navigation, the young man's time was by no means wasted.  Later, Dan
+arranged with the director of a South Street night school of navigation
+for the evenings when he was in port, and by the time they made him
+mate of the _Hydrographer_, he was almost qualified to undergo
+examination for his master's certificate.
+
+Mental changes are not always attended by outward manifestations, but
+all the crew of the _Hydrographer_, after that mad night off the
+Virginia Capes, could see that something had hit the stalwart mate.
+The edge seemed to be missing from his occasional moods of abandon;
+sometimes he looked thoughtfully at a man without hearing what the man
+was saying to him.  But it did not impair his usefulness, and his
+Captain could see indications of a better defined point in his
+ambitions.
+
+So that was the way things were with him when, on a gray December
+afternoon, the day before Christmas, the _Hydrographer_, just arrived
+from Providence, slid against her pier in Jersey City, and the crew
+with jocular shouts made the hawsers fast to the bitts.  Some months
+before, the _Hydrographer_ had stumbled across a lumber-laden schooner,
+abandoned in good condition off Fire Island, and had towed her into
+port.  The courts had awarded goodly salvage; and the tug's owners,
+filled with the spirit of the season, had sent a man to the pier to
+announce that at the office each of the crew would find his share of
+the bounty, and a little extra, in recognition of work in the company's
+interest.
+
+"Dan," said the Captain, as the young man entered the pilot-house in
+his well-fitting shore clothes, "you ought to get a pot of money out of
+this; now don't go ashore and spend it all tonight.  You bank most of
+it.  Take it from me--if I'd started to bank my money at your age, I
+would be paying men to run tugboats for me now."
+
+"Oh, I've money in the bank," laughed Dan.  "I'll bank most of this;
+but first I'm going to lay out just fifty dollars, which ought to buy
+about all the Christmas joy I need.  I was going to Boston to shock
+some sober relations of mine, but I've changed my mind.  About seven
+o'clock this evening you'll find me in a restaurant not far from
+Broadway and Forty-second Street; an hour later you'll locate me in the
+front row of a Broadway theatre; and--better come with me, Captain
+Bunker."
+
+"No, thanks, Dan," said the Captain.  "If you come with _me_ over to
+the house in Staten Island about two hours from now, you'll see just
+three little noses pressed against the window pane--waiting for daddy
+and Santa Claus."  The Captain's big red face grew tender and his eyes
+softened.  "When you get older, Dan," he added, "you'll know that
+Christmas ain't so much what you get out of it as what you put into it."
+
+Dan thought of the Captain's words as he crossed the ferry to New York.
+All through the day he had been filled with the pleasurable conviction
+that the morrow was a pretty decent sort of day to be ashore, and he
+had intended to work up to the joys thereof to the utmost of his
+capacity.
+
+Now, with his knowledge as to the sort of enjoyment which Captain
+Bunker was going to get out of the day, his well-laid plans seemed to
+turn to ashes.  The trouble was, he could not exactly say why this
+should be.  He finally decided that his prospective sojourn amid the
+gay life of the metropolis had not been at all responsible for the
+mental uplift which had colored his view of the day.
+
+It had come, he now believed, solely from the attitude of the Captain
+and Jeff Morrill the engineer, and Sam Tonkin the deck-hand--soon to
+become a mate--and Bill Lawson, another deck-hand; all of whom had
+little children at home.  Well, he had no little children at home.
+That settled the matter so far as he was concerned.  Blithely he began
+to plan his dinner and select the theatre he should attend.  But, no;
+the old problem returned insistently, and at length he was obliged to
+confess that he could devise no solution, and that he did not feel half
+as good as he had a few hours before.
+
+At all events he would be as happy as he could.  After leaving the
+company's office, where he received a hearty "Merry Christmas" and a
+fat yellow envelope, he went to the neat little brick house on Cherry
+Street where he had rooms, and learned that Mrs. O'Hare, his landlady,
+had gone to her daughter's house on Varick Street to set up a Christmas
+tree and help to start things for the children.  Dan was sorry.  He had
+rather looked forward to meeting this cheerful person with her
+spectacles and kindly old face, who mothered him so assiduously when he
+was ashore.
+
+Why the devil had he not thought of finding out about those
+grandchildren and of buying them something for Christmas?  But he had
+not, and now he did not know whether they were girls or boys or both,
+nor how many of them there were.  So he had no way of knowing what to
+buy, or how much.  Somehow he had here a feeling that he had been on
+the verge of an interesting discovery.  But only on the verge.
+
+He walked slowly out of the house and turned into South Street.  In the
+life of this quaint thoroughfare he had cast his lot, and here he spent
+his leisure hours; not that he had ever found the place or the men he
+met there especially congenial.  But they were the men he knew, the men
+he worked with or worked against; and any young fellow who is lonely in
+a big city and placed as Dan was is just as liable, until he has found
+himself and located his rut in life, to mingle with persons as strange,
+with natures as alien, and to frequent places which in later years fill
+him with repulsive memories.
+
+At all events Dan did, and he was not worrying about it a bit, either,
+as he sauntered under the Brooklyn Bridge span at Dover Street and
+turned into South, where Christmas Eve is so joyous, in its way.  The
+way on this particular evening was in no place more clearly interpreted
+than Red Murphy's resort, where the guild of Battery rowboatmen, who
+meet steamships in their Whitehall boats and carry their hawsers to
+longshoremen waiting to make them fast to the pier bitts, congregate
+and have their social being.
+
+Here, on this day, the wealthy towboat-owners and captains are wont to
+distribute their largess to the boatmen as a mark of appreciation for
+favors rendered,--a suggestion that future favors are expected,--and
+here, also, punch of exalted brew is concocted and drunk.
+
+An occasional flurry of snow swept down the street as Dan reached the
+entrance.  Murphy was out on the sidewalk directing the adornment of
+his doorway with several faded evergreen wreaths, while inside, the
+boatmen gathered closer around the genial potstove and were not sorry
+that ice-bound rivers and harbor had brought their business to a
+temporary standstill.  They were discussing the morrow, which logically
+led to a consideration of the ice-pack, among other things, and thence
+to Cap'n Barney Hodge's ill luck.
+
+"Take a hard and early winter," old Bill Darragh, the dean of the
+boatmen, was saying, "then a thaw in the middle o' December, and then a
+friz-up, and ye git conditions that ain't propitious, as ye may say,
+fur towboatmen--nur fur us, neither."
+
+"True fur ye," said "Honest Bill" Duffy.  "Nigh half the tugs in the
+harbor is in the Erie Basin with screw blades twisted off by the
+ice-pack, or sheathin' ripped.  And it's gittin' worse.  They'll be
+little enough money for us this year--an' I was countin' on a hunder to
+pay a doctor's bill."
+
+"Well, maybe you'll get more than you think," said Dan, whose words
+always carried weight because he was mate of a deep-sea tug.  "Captain
+Barney Hodge's _Three Sisters_ was laid up yesterday; a three-foot
+piece of piling bedded in an ice-cake got caught in her screw,
+and--zip!  The other fellows are feeling so good about it that I think
+they'll be apt to be generous."
+
+"We'll drink to Barney's bad health," said Darragh, raising his glass.
+"I saw him half an hour gone.  He looked like a dead man.  Cap'n Jim
+Skelly o' the _John Quinn_ piloted _Gypsum Prince_ inter her dock last
+night.  No one ever handled her afore but Cap'n Barney.  An' the
+_Kentigern_ from Liverpool is due to-night.  Skelly's layin' fur her
+too; an' he'll git her.  That'll take two vessels from Barney's private
+monopoly."
+
+Darragh was right.  The towboatmen had Captain Barney where they wanted
+him, and they meant to gaff him hard.  He had always been too sharp for
+the rest, too good at a bargain, too mean; and what was more, he was in
+every way the best towboatman that ever lived.  No one liked him; but
+the steamship-captains engaged his services for towing and piloting,
+nevertheless, for the reason that they considered him a disagreeable
+necessity, believing that no other tugboatman could serve them so well.
+
+As a matter of fact, there were several tugboat-captains hardly less
+skilful than Captain Barney, and in the time of his idleness they bade
+fair to secure not a few of his customers.  It was an old saying that
+Captain Barney, touched in his pocket, was touched in his heart and
+brain also--they meant to touch him in just those places.
+
+"I see him this morning," said Duffy, "when he heard that Cap'n Jim
+Skelly 'd come in on the bridge of the _Gypsum Prince_.  He was
+a-weepin' and cursin' like a drunk.  Hereafter he'll have to divide the
+_Gypsum_, and she arrives reg'lar, too."
+
+"And he'll lose the _Kentigern_ to-night," laughed Dan.  "Well, I don't
+care.  It'll do him good.  I hope they put him out of business."
+
+"Thankee, gents, for your Christmas wishes.  I'm glad my friends are
+with me."  The words, in low, mournful cadence, came from the doorway;
+and all eyes turning there saw the stout, melancholy figure of Captain
+Barney, his great hooked nose falling dejectedly toward his chin, his
+hawk eyes dull and sombre.  He had been drinking; and as Duffy made as
+though to throw a bottle at him, the fallen great man turned and
+stumbled away.
+
+A few minutes later Dan left the resort, faced the biting north wind,
+and walked slowly up South Street.  Somehow he could not get Captain
+Barney out of his mind.
+
+The year before, in violation of an explicit agreement, Captain Barney
+had worked in with an outside rowboatman from West Street, towing him
+to piers where vessels were about to dock.  This, of course, got that
+boatman on the scene in advance of the Battery men, who had only their
+strong arms and their oars to depend upon.  Thus the rival had the
+first chance at the job of carrying the lines from the docking
+steamships to men waiting on the pier to make them fast.  Captain
+Barney received part of the money which this boatman made.  It was
+little enough, to be sure, but no amount of money was too small for
+him.  And so Dan, the Battery boatmen being his friends, was glad to
+see Hodge on his knees--yet he was the slickest tugboat-captain on
+earth.
+
+Dan could not help admiring him for that; and now he could not dismiss
+from his mind the pitiable picture which Murphy's doorway had framed
+but a few minutes before.  He tried to, for Dan was an impressionable
+young fellow and was worrying too much about this Christmas idea,
+endeavoring to solve his emotions, without bothering about the troubles
+of a towboat-skipper who deserved all he got and more.
+
+All along the street were Christmas greens.  The ship chandlers had
+them festooned about huge lengths of rusty chains and barnacled anchors
+and huge coils of hawser, and the tawdry windows of the dram shops were
+hidden by them.  A frowsy woman, with a happy smile upon her face,
+hurried past with a new doll in her arms.  Dan stopped a minute to
+watch her.
+
+Something turned him into a little toyshop near Coenties Slip and he
+saw a tugboat deck-hand purchase a pitiful little train of cars, laying
+his quarter on the counter with the softest smile he had seen on a
+man's face in a twelvemonth.
+
+"Something for the kid, eh?" said Dan rather gruffly.
+
+"Sure," replied the deck-hand, and he took his bundle with a sort of
+defiant expression.
+
+He saw a little mother, a girl not more than twelve years old, with a
+pinched face and a rag shawl about her shoulders, spend ten cents for a
+bit of a doll and a bag of Christmas candy.
+
+"Going to have a good time, all by yourself?" growled Dan.
+
+"Naw, this is fur me little sister," said the girl bravely, if a little
+contemptuously.  A great lump came into Dan's throat, and feeling
+somewhat weak and ashamed, he left the shop.  Elemental sensations
+which he could not define thrilled him, and the spirit of Christmas,
+now entirely unsatisfied, rested on his soul like an incubus.  He began
+to feel outside of everything--as though the season had come for every
+one but him.
+
+Near Pike Street a little group of the Salvation Army stood on the
+curb.  One of them was a fat, uncomely woman, and she was singing,
+accompanying herself upon a guitar.  The music was that of a popular
+ballad, and the verses were of rude manufacture.
+
+There were perhaps half a dozen listeners scattered about the sidewalk
+at a distance sufficient to prevent possible scoffers from including
+them in the service.  Two of them were rough workmen, and they stood in
+the middle of the sidewalk staring vacantly ahead, trying to look
+oblivious.  Two longshoremen sat on the curb ten feet away, and a man
+and a woman leaned against the door of a near-by warehouse.  When the
+song was finished the two workmen hurriedly approached and threw
+nickels on the face of the big bass drum lying flat on the street,
+retreating hastily, as though ashamed; the woman did likewise, and one
+of the longshoremen.
+
+"Buying salvation," grinned Dan, as he walked on up the street.  But
+the pleasantry made inadequate appeal.  Every one was getting more out
+of the season than he was.  Once he drew a dollar from his pocket and
+started back.  But no.  What was a dollar to him?  He knew where there
+were more.  That wasn't it.  He put the money in his pocket and walked
+on.
+
+Dan's mental processes leading to a determination to help Captain
+Barney were too clouded for clear interpretation, but he knew there was
+no more uncertainty in his mind after he had sought the Captain out and
+offered to put him on board the _Kentigern_.
+
+Hodges fairly wept his gratitude.  "Dan, Dan, you say you can put me
+aboard the _Kentigern_!  You'll save my business if you do.  I don't
+care about the towing part, because if I can get aboard and pilot her
+in, I can hand the towing over to those who'll take care of me.  Dan,
+you're a good boy.  How'll you do it?"
+
+"No time to tell now," said Dan.  "Meet me at Pier 3 in an hour."
+
+"Say," cried Captain Barney, as Dan hurried away; "how much'll it be?
+Not too much--"
+
+Dan stopped short.
+
+"Nothing!" he roared.  "It's--it's a Christmas present."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A FIGHT IN THE DARK
+
+The short gray December twilight was creeping over the bay as Dan
+pulled out from the Battery basin in a boat which he kept there for
+recreative jaunts about the harbor.  Hard pulling and cold it was, but
+the boatman bent his back and shot up the East River with the strength
+of the young giant he was.  He could see Captain Barney, muffled to the
+ears, stamping impatiently about on the end of the designated pier.
+Without a word he swung his boat in such a position that the Captain
+could drop into it.
+
+Barney was delighted, so far forgetting himself, indeed, as to attempt
+to establish cordial understanding.
+
+"Hello, my boy," he said genially, "we're a-goin' to fix 'em!"  Then
+noting a blank expression on Dan's face, his jaws closed with a click
+and he lowered himself from the pier and into the boat without further
+words, while Dan shoved out into the river and started for the pier
+above, where Captain Jim Skelly's tug, the _John Quinn_, was lying.
+She had steam up and was all ready for her journey to meet the
+_Kentigern_.  That vessel had been reported east of Fire Island and
+would be well across the bar by eight o'clock.  She would anchor on the
+bar for the night, and it was there that Captain Jim Skelly meant to
+board her in order to forestall any possible scheme that wily Captain
+Barney might devise to gain the bridge of the freighter.
+
+As Dan paddled noiselessly around the other side of the pier, they
+could see the pipe lights of the Quinn's crew.  Finally the rowboat
+turned straight under the pier, threading its way among the greasy
+green piles.  Reaching under the seat, Dan drew out a stout inch line.
+
+"When I back in on the _Quinn_," he whispered, "make that line fast to
+the rudder post.  We'll let her tow us to the _Kentigern_."
+
+"What!" hissed Captain Barney, and his face turned pale.  But it was
+only for a second, after which he chuckled.
+
+Slowly, gently, quietly, the rowboat slid among the green piles until
+the stern of the big tug loomed overhead.  When it was within reach
+Captain Barney leaned out, made one end of the line fast to the tug's
+rudder post and then, paying out about twenty feet, he fastened the
+other end to the bitts in the bow of the rowboat.
+
+It seemed an hour's waiting before the _Quinn's_ crew cast off the
+lines, but in reality it was not more than ten minutes.  As the screw
+began to thresh the water and the tug to move swiftly out into the
+river, it required rare skill on the part of the young boatman to
+manoeuvre the boat so she should not be upset at the start.  But Dan
+had the skill required and more besides, as he knelt in the stern with
+one oar deep in the water to the port side.
+
+In the course of a few minutes they were fairly on their way, and
+Captain Jim Skelly was losing no time.  He had full speed before the
+tug was a hundred yards from the pier, and the spray and the splintered
+chips of ice flew back from the sharp bow, smiting the faces of the two
+men in the little boat dragging astern with three-quarters of her
+length out of water.  Dan, kneeling aft, watched with eagle eye each
+quirk and turn of the tow-line.
+
+It is the hardest thing a man has to do--to tow behind a tug or
+ferryboat, even under fair conditions.  In this case, the conditions
+were far from fair, for there was the ice, lazily rolling and cracking
+in the heavy wake of the tug, grinding against the sides of the
+rowboat, until it seemed that they must be crushed.  There was great
+danger that they would be.  There was danger also that the tow-line
+might slue both men into the icy waters and upset the boat.
+
+Captain Barney was tingling with fear.  Dan knew it, and smiled.  It
+was not often that any one had the privilege of seeing Captain Barney
+frightened.
+
+As the tug veered to starboard to round Governor's Island the tow-line
+slued to port and thence quickly to starboard.  The rowboat was snapped
+over on her gunwales and the water poured in like a mill-race.  A roar
+of an oath escaped Captain Barney's lips, but before he had closed them
+the boat had righted.
+
+"Shut up, will you?" hissed Dan.  "Do you want them to discover and
+drown us?  Ugh--she skated clean over that ice-cake!"
+
+"You've got me out here to kill me, Dan," whimpered Captain Barney.
+"'A Christmas present!'  I see--now."
+
+"Will you keep still?" whispered Dan.  "If they hear us, you'll find
+out who wants to kill you.  The root she took that time was nothing.
+There'll be worse ones--this boat is not through rooting yet."
+
+Neither was she.  Ahead the tug loomed, a great dark shape; and the
+pulse of her engines was lost in the roiling water rising from the
+screw blades and the hiss of it as it raced by the row-boat.  There was
+a dim blur of light from one of the after-cabin portholes and the
+shadow of figures passing to and fro inside could be seen.  The decks
+were deserted.  It was too cold to brave the night wind except under
+necessity--a night wind that cut through the pea-jackets and ear-caps
+and thick woollen gloves of the two men in the rowboat.  Captain Barney
+felt a fierce resentment that the _Quinn's_ men should be so warm and
+comfortable while he was shivering.
+
+"Christmas Eve!" he exclaimed.  "Fine, ain't it?" and he flailed his
+arms about to keep the blood in circulation.
+
+"Christmas Eve," said Dan solemnly, as though to himself, "the finest I
+ever spent"; and he added apologetically, "even if I am making an
+eternal fool of myself."
+
+On they sped.  Frequently the tug would hit a large stretch of clear
+water, and at such times the jingle-bell would sound in the engine-room
+and the _Quinn_ would shoot forward at a rate that fairly lifted the
+rowboat out of the water, while Dan, kneeling astern, oar in hand,
+muscles tense, and mind alert, was ready to do anything that lay in his
+skill to prevent an untoward accident.
+
+Swish!  Zip! and the rowboat would suddenly shoot to one side or the
+other, compelling Dan to dig his oar way down into the water, bending
+all his strength in efforts to keep the bow straight.
+
+"She's rooting every second," he grumbled, opening and shutting his
+hand to drive away the stiffness and then casting a vindictive glance
+at Captain Barney, the source of all the trouble.
+
+And as for the tugboat-skipper, he sat and watched his companion, and
+resolved that, after all, there were a few things he did not know about
+watermanship.
+
+Between the shadowy banks of the Narrows shot the _Quinn_.  Out of the
+harbor in a rowboat!  Even professional Battery boatmen do this about
+once in a generation.  The immense, shadowless darkness smote their
+eyes so that they turned to the cabin light for relief.
+
+There was likely to be little ice out there, and the northwest wind had
+knocked the sea flat, as Dan knew would be the case when he figured his
+chances at the start.  It was bad enough though, for there was certain
+to be something of a swell--and other things; and now that he was in
+the midst of it, he had grave doubts as to what would happen.  But his
+strange exaltation rose supreme to all fears; no danger seemed too
+great, no possibility too ominous, to dampen the ardor of this, his
+first big act of self-sacrifice.  The song the Salvation woman sang
+passed through his mind.
+
+  "Gawd is mighty and grateful;
+    No act of my brother's or mine
+  Escapes His understandin',
+    In the good old Christmas time."
+
+"As soon as we get near the _Kentigern_," he said, "we'll cut loose
+from the _Quinn_, and while she is warping alongside we'll make a dash,
+and you can hail 'em and get 'em to lower a ladder.  You can beat
+Skelly that way.  That's what I'm banking on."
+
+"You just put me alongside and I'll see to the rest," replied the
+Captain impatiently.  He would have attempted to scale the steel sides
+of the vessel themselves, if only to escape from that little boat,
+tailing astern of the _Quinn_ in the heart of the darkness, rooting,
+twisting, threatening to dive under the water.
+
+"What are you goin' to do after I get aboard?" asked Captain Barney,
+rubbing his hands as though the victory were already won.  "I declare,
+I never thought of you!  You can't row back."
+
+Dan raised his head angrily and started to utter a sneering reply, when
+the first good swell caught the boat--a great lazy, greasy fellow.  The
+_Quinn_ went up and then down, and after her shot the rowboat, like a
+young colt frisking at the end of her tether, then careening down the
+incline on her side as though to ram the stern of the tug ahead, which,
+fortunately, was climbing another hill.
+
+What the rowboat had been through before was child's play to this, and
+Dan's face grew very stern.  Reaching down with one hand, he seized the
+other oar and shoved it along to Captain Barney.  "Put that down on the
+port side.  Hang on for your life and keep her steady!" he cried.
+
+Then he gave his attention to his side of the boat while Captain Barney
+struggled in the bow.  It was a fight that would have thrilled the soul
+of whoever could have seen it.  But that is always the way in the
+bravest, most hopeless fights--no one ever sees them.  They are fought
+alone, in the dark, on the sea; and sometimes the lion-hearted live to
+make a modest tale of it around a winter's fire; but more often the
+sequel is, "Found drowned"--if even that.
+
+Captain Barney, frightened into desperate courage, and Dan, in grim
+realization that the measure of his good deed this night was the
+measure of the soul he was getting to know, fought sternly.  They were
+on the open sea with all its mystery and lurking fate, and the dark was
+all about.  There was not even the impression of distance; the swells
+arose as though at their elbows, tossed them with great, slimy ease,
+let them down again, plucked them this way and that, while the humming
+tow-line ran out to the vague, phantom, reeling tug ahead.
+
+There was a suspicion of snow in the veiled sky, and the wind stabbed
+like a knife.  Twice the tug cut through a field of ice making out on
+an offshore current, and the thumping the little row-boat received
+seemed likely to rend her into drift-wood.  But that was only one of
+the chances; and the two men went on into the icy blast with jaws so
+tightly clenched that their cheek muscles stood out in great knots.
+
+The silence, the danger, the vagueness hung heavily.  As Dan cast his
+eyes gloomily into the wake of the tug, he saw a dark object shoot out
+of the foam and dart down upon them like a torpedo; in fact a torpedo
+could not have worked more serious effect upon the boat than did that
+heavy, water-soaked log.
+
+"Starboard your oar!" shouted Dan, at the same time digging his own oar
+deep down on the port side and pulling upon it with all the magnificent
+strength of his arms until it bent like a reed.  There was just time to
+avert the direct impact, not to escape altogether.
+
+It was a glancing blow just above the water line; it punched a great,
+jagged hole and gouged out the paint clear to the stern.  Dan drew a
+long breath and murmured in a half-sick voice, "They might as well kill
+a man as scare him to death," while Captain Barney's face made a gray
+streak in the darkness.
+
+The _Quinn_ was now past the point of Sandy Hook and was skirting the
+shore.  The muffled beat of the breakers could be heard through the
+gloom, which was riven every second by the great, swinging search-light
+in the Navesink.  Not a mile ahead was the bar; and the masthead light
+of the _Kentigern_ could be seen, twinkling like a planet.
+
+In twenty minutes the dark hull of the _Kentigern_ came looming out of
+the night.  A hail shot from the _Quinn_, and a faint reply came back.
+Dark figures could now be seen, outlined by the cabin lights in the
+forward section of the tramp.
+
+"Hello, what tug is that?" sounded from the bridge.  "Is that you,
+Captain Barney?"
+
+"No, it's the _Quinn_, Cap'n Jim Skelly.  Hodge is laid up to-night;
+I'll take you into dock."
+
+"All right; come aboard," and after a minute's scurrying of figures on
+the deck a flimsy companion-ladder rattled down over the side of the
+freighter.
+
+Dan heard it and ground his teeth in disappointment.
+
+"Gripes!" he exclaimed.  "They've that ladder down an hour before I
+thought they would.  Now we're up against it, sure."
+
+With a growl Captain Barney whipped out his knife and made a pass at
+the tow-line.  He missed it and dropped back in the stern as Dan struck
+at him with his oar.
+
+"Wait!" hissed the young boatman.  "We'd have no chance at all.  We've
+got to get nearer.  The tug 'd beat us a mile.  Sit tight, you old
+fool!"
+
+Captain Barney recognized the wisdom of the words with a groan.  He was
+far past the arguing point.  The tide was boiling past the side of the
+vessel, swashing like a mill-race.  All they could do under present
+conditions was to cast off when the tug was very near the freighter,
+cut in across, and get under the ladder before the tug could properly
+warp alongside.
+
+Nearer lumbered the _Quinn_.  When within twenty feet of the
+_Kentigern_ she swung broadside on, ceasing all headway and drifting
+into position on the tide.
+
+"Now, then," cried Dan, suddenly leaping into the thwarts and manning
+the oars.  "Haul on the line.  Bring her right under the Quinn's stern
+and then cut, quick!"
+
+Hand over hand hauled Captain Barney and the rowboat came under the
+stern with a jump.  Then he cut the line.  Dan dug his oars into the
+water and the slim boat shot for the ladder, while the great tug came
+down, more slowly, on the side.  Ten, twenty strokes; and then, as Dan
+with a great sigh unshipped his oars, Captain Barney chuckled, seized
+the sides of the ladder, and hauling himself on the bottom rung,
+skipped up with the agility of a monkey.
+
+With a swish and a splash up pounded the _Quinn_.
+
+"Look out!" roared Dan, "there's a boat here!"
+
+It saved him; for a bell clanged in the engine-room, and the tug began
+to make sternway.  It saved him for but a minute, though.
+
+Thoughtless, selfish, and for once an utter fool, the exultant skipper
+of the _Three Sisters_ sought to gloat over his rival.
+
+"On board the _Quinn_," yelled Barney.  "Say, Jim Skelly, this is
+Barney Hodge talkin'.  You didn't know he had friends in the rowboat
+business, did you?"
+
+A curse rang from the Quinn's pilot-house, and Dan did not wait for
+anything else.  Well he knew what would happen next, and he bent all
+his strength to his oars.  He heard the jingle of a bell, and the tug
+started right for him.
+
+"Look out!" yelled Dan, working the oars like a madman.  But not a word
+came from the tug, moving silently, inexorably upon him like, some
+black, implacable monster.
+
+Suddenly Dan cast aside his oars and dived over the side.  The next
+instant the sharp, copper-bound nose of the tug struck the rowboat
+fairly amidships, grinding it against the steel side of the freighter,
+crushing it into matchwood.
+
+A great numbness passed over the man.  He was dazed; and as wave after
+wave splashed over his head, he struggled dumbly to reach the ladder.
+Then under the reaction from the icy shock, an electric thrill of
+energy and vitality passed through his body.
+
+He saw that he had been carried to about amidships, and the ladder was
+well toward the bow.  With lusty strokes he struck out along the steel
+sides, rising over the waves like a duck.  Five minutes elapsed, and
+then with a sudden fear, Dan realized, in glancing at the bow, that he
+had not made ten feet in all that time and effort.
+
+It was the current, which was ripping along the hull at the rate that
+would have affected the speed of a powerful steam launch.  Dan had not
+noticed it before.  He struggled desperately, but to no avail, and then
+he uttered his first cry for help.  He could not see the deck, being so
+close to the hull; and for the same reason he could not have been seen
+had his cry been heard.  Again he called for assistance, but there was
+no answer, no sound, save that of the water buffeting past the vessel.
+
+He ceased to waste his strength in fruitless cries, devoting all that
+remained to his struggle to reach the ladder.  But his strokes were
+weaker than before and he found he was being carried back upon the
+current instead of making headway against it.  Fight as he would, he
+could feel that sliding, hopeless drag against which he was powerless
+to combat.  His strength vanished ounce by ounce.  His arms grew so
+numb with fatigue and cold that he could do nothing but move them up
+and down, dog fashion.  On he went, down toward the stern of the vessel.
+
+He was moving as swiftly as the current was, whirling, twisting like a
+piece of wood.  His mind dulled.  He longed for death now.
+Instinctively he wished to get out of all the worry and struggle
+against dissolution.  His one dominant idea was to throw up his hands
+and go down, down the deep descent.  With a great cry of relief he
+yielded to the alluring thought.  Up flew his arms above his head--and
+he felt so warm and cheerful!  Something struck his outstretched hand
+and the fingers closed upon it.  For a minute they gripped the swinging
+piece of rope.  Then he opened his eyes to find he was hanging to a
+flimsy Jacob's ladder, suspended from the stern.  With a new strength
+born of hope he flung up his feet, shooting them through the hempen
+rungs; and there he stayed for a while--it seemed almost an eternity.
+Then laboriously climbing the ladder, he made the deck and there
+dropped as insensate as a log.
+
+
+It was the happiest Christmas Day that Dan had ever known, and he told
+himself so as he walked slowly down South Street.  Unschooled in the
+ethics of self-sacrifice as he was, he yet knew he had done something
+for a fellow man, for a man he despised; and something indefinable yet
+unmistakable told him it was very good.  He felt bigger, broader, felt
+as though he had attained new stature in something that was not
+physical.  And always, vaguely, he had been as anxious to feel this as
+he had been to get on in a material way.  He had lost his rowboat in
+the act.  And yet withal there was a certain fierce satisfaction in his
+loss--he had caught the spirit of Christmas.  How much wiser, how much
+stronger he was to-day than on the previous afternoon.
+
+So deep were his thoughts that he almost ran into Captain Barney.
+
+"Hey, there!" snarled the tugboatman, most ungraciously, "I just left a
+new rowboat down in the Battery basin for you."  And that was all he
+said.
+
+And Dan, as he trembled with rage, knew that Captain Barney might have
+said the right word and made Christmas Day all the more glorious.  But
+he had said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing, and he had by his
+words and in his act taken much from Dan's Christmas happiness.  Dan
+knew it well; something told him so.  He gazed at the tugboatman
+silently for a minute,--and then he knocked Captain Barney to the
+sidewalk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+DAN STAKES HIS LIFE, AND WINS
+
+Before the Winter passed, Dan had taken his master's examination with
+flying colors and was made Captain of the _Fledgling_, owned by the
+Phoenix Towboat Company.  She was a new boat, rugged, powerful, one
+hundred and twenty-five feet water line, designed and built to go
+anywhere and do anything.
+
+The Phoenix Company was known as a venturesome organization, as willing
+to send its fleet ramping out through the fog to the assistance of a
+distressed liner as to transport arms to West Indian or Central
+American revolutionists.  Before Dan had commanded the _Fledgling_ many
+months he had done both, and was beginning to be known up and down the
+coast as a captain to be called upon in emergencies verging upon the
+extraordinary, not to say extra-hazardous.
+
+All of which he accepted joyously, as the portion of youth in search of
+experience that life has to offer.  He was sufficiently introspective
+to rate the temper of his spirit at something approaching its real
+value, and he knew it was to be cherished, guarded, lest the fine edge
+be lost.  As the world reckons things it was a humble calling upon
+which he had entered, a calling hardly qualified to enlist the pride of
+the family whose name he bore.
+
+As a matter of fact, the pride of his few relations was not enlisted.
+He had been made to feel that.  He did not complain.  He appreciated
+their attitude.  But that did not curb a high-hearted ambition to lift
+his vocation to the ideals he had formulated concerning it--and the
+future lay before him.
+
+But he was not thinking of these things now.  The face of the sea was
+gray in sullen fury.  From a blue horizon, dulled and almost
+obliterated by long, jagged layers of steely clouds, came the ceaseless
+rush of deep-chested waves, as even, as fascinating as the
+vermiculations of a serpent.  And the wind, tearing along the floor of
+the sea, whipped off the wave crests and sent them shivering,
+shimmering ahead, like the plumes of hard-riding cavalry.
+
+The storm had passed.  The effects remained, and Dan Merrithew shifted
+his wheel several spokes east of north and took the brunt bow on.  She
+bore it well, did the stout _Fledgling_; she did that--she split the
+waves or crashed through them, or laughed over them, as a stout tug
+should when coaxed by hands of skill, guided by an iron will.  The Long
+Island coast lay to port, a narrow band of ochre, and all about lay the
+heaving gray of mighty waters, in which the _Fledgling_ was a black
+speck.
+
+Dan's hat was off and his red-gold hair was flying wild; his teeth were
+bared.  He was always thus in a fight.  This was one; a dandy--a
+clinker!  He gave the wheel another spoke and the _Fledgling_ slued
+across a sea and smashed down hard.  From below came a sliding rattle,
+a great crash of crockery, and then a series of imprecations.  The next
+instant Arthur M'Gill, the steward, dashed up the companionway and
+burst into the pilot-house.
+
+"Doggone it all, Cap'n!" yelled the angry man, "why in hell don't ye
+let me know when ye're goin' to sling 'er across seas?  Here I had the
+table all set fur breakfast, an' ye put 'er inter a grayback afore I
+could hold on to anything; and smash goes the hull mess on the
+floor--plates, forks, vittles.  Holee mackerel!" he exclaimed under
+increasing impulse of anger, "what am I?--a steward, or a--or a monkey?"
+
+Dan, clutching grimly at the wheel, turned a genial smile upon his cook.
+
+"Sorry, old man.  Fact is, I forgot.  But never mind.  Pick up the best
+you can."  He smiled again.  "Just a little bit dusty out here, eh,
+Arthur?"
+
+"That's what it is, Cap'n," replied Arthur, mollified by Dan's words of
+regret.
+
+The steward looked at Dan admiringly.  In a way he was the skipper's
+father confessor, not alone because he had a glib, advising tongue, but
+because he was possessed of a certain amount of raw, psychological
+instinct and knew his Shakespeare and could quote from Young's "Night
+Thoughts."  Arthur had something of a fishy look and a slick way with
+him; but he was a good cook.
+
+"It seems funny to call such a kid 'Cap'n,'" he said.  And then he
+added apologetically, "It's 'cause I've sailed under so many grayheads,
+ye know."
+
+"Oh, I'll be gray enough before long," laughed Dan, and his momentary
+inattention to his duties at the wheel was promptly seized upon by the
+wily sea, which smacked the rudder hard and nearly spun the wheel out
+of his grip.  "Stop talking, will you!" roared Dan, wrestling at the
+spokes.  "Do you want me to put you all into the trough?"
+
+Mulhatton, the mate, stumbled into the pilot-house and glared at the
+cook.
+
+"Artie," he cried, "you go below, or I'll just gently heft you down!  I
+went in to git grub just now and 't was all on the floor.  Go on
+now--git!"  And Arthur went, grumbling and sighing that a man's stomach
+should govern his temper.
+
+"Take the wheel a while, Cap'n?" said the mate; and as Dan nodded he
+stepped in close, braced his feet, and took the strain as Dan's hands
+left the spokes.
+
+"We'll both be on the wheel together before long," remarked Dan,
+sitting heavily on the chart locker and opening and shutting his
+stiffened fingers.
+
+"Where is she and what's ashore?" asked Mulhatton.  "You jumped us out
+in such a hurry this morning, I ain't had time to ask you."
+
+"It's an old lumber hooker, and she's ashore on Jones Inlet bar;
+stranded just before midnight last night.  Lord knows how much there is
+left of her by this time.  But I took it a good salvage job to go
+after.  Cripes!"  The _Fledgling_ on her altered course had topped a
+wave forward, which wave, travelling swiftly aft, had withdrawn from
+the bow the support of its mighty shoulder.  Down went the bow with a
+great slap and up went the stern, screw racing and racking the engines,
+sending Mulhatton crashing to the floor.  But bruised as he was and
+dazed, he was on his feet with the quickness of a cat, and seizing the
+spokes, assisted Dan in bringing up the tug's head to where it ought to
+be.
+
+"It's a-goin' to be lively work salvin' any hooker to-day," said the
+mate.
+
+"It is," replied Dan, "but I'll tell you this, Mul; we'll land her if
+anybody can.  For I've a tug under me built under my very eyes.  I know
+every beam and bolt in her.  And I've a crew of rustlers," he added,
+gazing proudly at Mulhatton's broad back--Mulhatton, with round, red,
+bristly, laughing face and eyes like raw onions.
+
+The next minute Dan, in all the delight of the struggle, was making his
+way along the lower deck to the engine-room door.  The water was racing
+past the rail like a wet blur and the deck sloshed ankle deep.  High up
+a wave climbed the _Fledgling_, and as she paused on the top for a
+downward glide, Dan hastily opened the door and clambered down the iron
+ladder.
+
+"Well, Sam, how are they working?" he shouted to Crampton, the chief,
+bending over a fizzing valve bonnet.
+
+Sam rose, pushed back his oily peaked cap until the straight raven hair
+flowed out from under like a cataract, and gave his thin, waterfall
+moustache a twist, while his swarthy, parchment face cracked into a
+hundred smiles.
+
+"Workin'," he said, "as sweet as a babe breathin'."
+
+Up reared the stern, lifting the propeller clear of the water.  The
+engines expending their force in air, raced free.  The clatter was
+infernal; the pistons seemed trying to jump out of the cylinders, while
+the throws and eccentrics lost all semblance of good order.
+
+"Oh, damn!" cried Sam, who, being hurled to the iron floor, swore as
+though he enjoyed it.
+
+Whitey Welch, the fireman, burst into a huge guffaw, in which Sam
+finally joined.
+
+"You're all right down here," laughed Dan, "as happy as a sewing
+circle!  There may be some pulling to do later."
+
+"You get something to pull; we'll tend to the rest," and Sam Crampton
+grinned.
+
+Emerging on deck, Dan collided with Pete Noonan, the deck-hand, with
+shoulders as big as Dan's and a bigger chest.  Pete smiled genially.
+
+"This'll put hair on yer teeth, eh, Cap'n, this will," he said, while
+from the galley below floated Arthur's voice in a deep sea chanty:
+
+  "I'll go no more a-roaming,
+  No more a-ro-o-o-a-ming with you, fair maid."
+
+"Go on back to harbor, you little lobster pot; we'll take care of the
+wreck."
+
+The corpulent captain of the great wrecking tug _Sovereign_, lying
+outside the breakers off Jones Inlet, megaphoned this insult to the
+deck of the _Fledgling_, as she drew near the scene of the wreck,
+rising and falling on the waves like a piece of driftwood.
+
+It was a deadly day.  The promise of the sunlight had waned with the
+earlier hours, and heavy blue-black clouds palled the heavens.  Not one
+hundred yards apart lay the two tugs, rolling and pitching in the
+seaway; the _Fledgling_ trim and stanch, the _Sovereign_ big and
+cumbersome, the funnel belching thunderclouds of sepia, her derrick
+booms creaking and rattling and slatting infernally.
+
+Straight on ahead, where the line of swelling waves burst into
+breakers, where the spume sang like whip-lashes, and where the whine of
+the wind tore itself into a nasty snarl, lay the wreck of the schooner
+_Zeitgeist_.  She lay half on her side and the waves licked up and over
+the faded gray hull, completing the work that time already had begun.
+One mast was very far forward, the other very far aft--Great Lake rig;
+and between the two was a deck-load of thousands of feet of Maine
+lumber.  The topmasts had snapped off, leaving the stumps.
+
+Lashed in the foremast were two men; and in the mainmast were Captain
+Ephraim Sayles and three more of his crew.  At first glance they seemed
+lifeless; at first glance, indeed, they seemed nothing more than faded
+lengths of canvas.  But an occasional lifting of a hand, a flash of a
+gray face, showed that they were men and that they still lived and
+hoped.  Under them, over the deck raced the breakers, waist deep, each
+one a swift, excited trip-hammer.  It was only the lumber that was
+holding the aged hull together.  As it was, sections of the sides had
+ripped out and planks and pieces of deal issuing from the gashes
+littered the waters.  Three times had the life-savers launched their
+boats, and three times they had been cast on the beach like logs, while
+thrice had the lines from their mortars fallen short.
+
+"Go on back; we'll take care of her."
+
+And Dan, his teeth bared and coated with blood from anger-bitten lips,
+gave the wheel to Mulhatton, ran from the pilot-house, and shook his
+fist at the big wrecking tug.
+
+"Why don't you take care of her then, curse you!  Why don't you take
+care of her?  Don't you see there are lives to save?  Oh, you cowardly
+beasts!"
+
+"Nothin' doin' till the sea goes down," came the reply, and Dan sobbed
+aloud in his rage as he entered the pilot-house, where most of the crew
+were gathered, peering out of the windows at the tragedy across the
+waters.
+
+The men in the rigging could be seen plainly now.  There was no
+excitement.  They kept very still, watching the futile efforts of the
+life-savers, waving their hands occasionally as though in token of
+their thanks and their knowledge of the utter futility of human
+efforts.  No, there was no excitement; the uncertainty that breeds that
+was lacking.  Fate was simply clamping its damp hand down over those
+men.  Such things are always quiet--there is nothing to thrill the
+heart or stir the soul in them.  It is just a mighty thing dealing
+death to weaklings, that is all.  And we wonder whether the All-seeing
+Eye does not sometimes close in sheer pity, to shut out the inequality
+of it.
+
+While they looked, a venomous wave got under the bow and lifted it
+high.  Then down it went as a man would crash his palms together,
+bursting out the forepeak like a rotten apple.  Thus weakened forward,
+the loss of the foremast was an imminent certainty.  And there were two
+men in the fore rigging!  Captain Ephraim leaned far out from the
+mainmast; the tug men could see him plainly as he pointed at the
+tottering mast and then at the deck.
+
+"He wants them to leave the mast and go into the mainmast," cried
+Mulhatton.
+
+"But they won't--see, they are shaking their heads 'no,'" shouted Dan.
+"They couldn't; the breakers would sweep them away in a minute."
+
+"Look!"
+
+For man is brave and man does fight, even in the face of injustice, in
+the face of odds.  Thus did Martin Loughran, in the fore rigging of the
+_Zeitgeist_, as with set jaws he struggled upward toward the stump of
+the topmast.  Between the trucks of the fore and maintopmasts ran a
+horizontal line of wire.  It is called the "triatic stay," and Loughran
+was climbing to it.  Dan--all the _Fledgling's_ crew and the crew of
+the _Sovereign_--foresaw his intention, and stentorian shouts, "You
+can't do it!" bounded over the water.  But the sailor did not pause,
+if, indeed, he heard their warnings.
+
+Slowly, laboriously he climbed.  He stretched up one hand and grasped
+the stay.  Up went the other hand.  Then out against the glooming sky
+was limned the swaying form, working its way along the triatic stay
+hand over hand, in an effort to reach the mainmast.  A faint cheer came
+from the men in the main rigging, while two of the _Fledgling's_ crew
+cheered, and two bowed their heads in agony, and Dan sobbed aloud.
+
+"Look at him," cried Dan.  "Oh, God!"
+
+"A sandy man cashin' in," muttered Mulhatton solemnly.
+
+Out, out worked the swaying form.  But he had more than one hundred
+feet to go.  Twenty-five feet--progress ceased.  It hung there silent,
+that figure--it seemed almost an eternity.  It hung as silent as a
+piece of sail and as fitfully swaying.  Suddenly one hand relaxed and
+fell limp.  It was as though something had sucked the breath from every
+onlooker.  The hand was feebly raised in a futile clutch to regain the
+lost hold.  It fell again.  Still there was silence.
+
+A dark form cleaved the gloom and lay in a black huddle upon the lumber
+amidships, until a boarding wave kindly removed it and spurned it upon
+the beach as it would a drowned dog.  Ten minutes later the foremast
+went and the life-savers, dashing into the surf, took out of the
+rigging a dead sea-cook.
+
+And still the tugs lay like vultures awaiting carrion.  Both had come
+down to the wreck in the hope of getting a line over her and pulling
+her from the sands, for which there would have been ample reward.  But
+it was too rough to approach her and she was too far gone to warrant
+salving, even were it possible.  But there were men dying before their
+eyes and no one was lifting a hand.  Dan was in a red-headed glare of
+emotion.  He was too young to look upon such things calmly.  He turned
+his eyes from the wreck to the _Sovereign_, just as her bow went up on
+a wave, showing the red underbody.  And it reminded him of the yawning
+mouth of some sea monster hungry for prey.
+
+"We're lying here like bloodsuckers!" he yelled.  "Waiting for salvage
+while good men are dying!  Dying--and we're doing nothing!  Fellows,"
+he roared, "I'm going to take the tug in to her.  I'm not afraid of a
+risk to save the lives of brave men."
+
+"All right, Cap'n," said Mulhatton, "you know we'll go with you.  But
+there's no use in bein' fools.  Take the tug in--yes.  But how'll you
+take her out again?"
+
+Dan glared across the heaving waters with bloodshot eyes.  "No use; you
+couldn't, couldn't get her out again.  No, you couldn't."  He repeated
+this several times.  "Is there anything that could?" he added finally.
+
+He looked at his men for the answer, but their eyes were still fastened
+on the wreck with almost hypnotic fascination.
+
+"Her deck-load's beginning to shift.  It'll be clear off soon and
+that'll take the other mast," announced Noonan.
+
+One of the men in the rigging, a giant, tow-headed fellow, suddenly
+went crazy,--at least so it seemed.  For his lips writhed in a haunting
+scream as he whipped out his knife and cut his lashings.  Then he
+turned a bloodless face toward the _Fledgling_, uttered a short,
+rasping shout, and jumped into the sea.  A great wave seized him
+greedily and swirled him high.  Dan caught a fleeting glimpse of that
+face, turned reproachfully, it seemed, toward him.
+
+It set him crazy too.  His mind was working like lightning.
+
+"Mul," he screamed, "launch the lifeboat, with you fellows holding on
+to a line from her bow!  We're to windward, and she'll drift right down
+to the wreck.  Then you can haul us back again.  It's been done before.
+God, why didn't I think of it sooner!"
+
+Mulhatton looked at his Captain closely.
+
+"One chance in a thousand that our boat would live to make the trip,
+Cap'n," he said.
+
+Dan snarled his impatience.
+
+"One chance in ten thousand, one chance in a million, I'll take it!" he
+cried in a sharp, metallic voice.  "I never saw a man die until
+to-day--I'll see no more, God willing."
+
+Without a word Mulhatton turned and rushed for the lifeboat.
+
+"Remember, I go in that boat," yelled Dan as he followed his mate.  But
+Mulhatton only turned back a defiant look.  Together they wrenched the
+boat from its blocks and lowered it to Noonan, standing below on the
+main deck astern.  Crampton, the engineer, was at the wheel, while
+Whitey Welch stood by the engines.  As the lifeboat was straining on
+the top of a swell, Mulhatton attempted to leap in, but was viciously
+punched back by Dan, who then sprang out five feet and sprawled in the
+stern sheets.
+
+"Damn!" cried the disappointed mate as he sprang to Noonan's side and
+seized the line, which was already paying out.
+
+Into the riot went Dan.  There was neither mercy nor tolerance in the
+waters,--the waves ripped all about in wanton fury; the spume cloaked
+the face of them in wet clouds and the sea hollows lay like black pits.
+But merciless and intolerant as were the waters, Dan asked no odds of
+them.  Crouching in the stern with one oar dug deep, he was hurled on
+his errand of mercy.  The _Sovereign_ whistled its commendation, while
+ashore the spectators and life-savers stood breathless.  A stealthy
+wave slashed the oar, almost pulling his shoulder from its socket, but
+he kept the oar.  Aye, he kept it and cursed the wave that sought to
+take it away.  On, on, as determined, as indomitable as the elements.
+A wave cut the boat full.  It skidded on its side and righted.  A
+comber rose green behind, hiding the _Fledgling_.  It caught the
+lifeboat before it broke.  It hoisted it high and then, passing on,
+expended its crushing force against the wreck ahead.  And Dan laughed,
+and the spindrift flying like buckshot beat against his teeth.  On, on,
+until the wreck, boiling in water, loomed ahead.  On past the stern of
+the wreck shot the small boat, until it was just under the lee of it.
+There he signalled to his men to pay out the line no more.
+
+"Jump!" he called to the three men in the rigging.  First jumped Daniel
+James, and Dan caught him out of the waters and hauled him in.  And he
+caught the next, the boat careening, shipping a rush of water.  As
+Captain Ephraim crouched for the leap, the sough of the rotten hull,
+working and heaving like the carcass of a shark, was bursting out in a
+score of places and the lumber deck-load rose and fell and quivered and
+flailed huge planks into the waves.  The end was near.  Dan shouted the
+skipper to hurry.  Ephraim obeyed, and had fought his way through the
+caldron to the boat and was dragged aboard, when suddenly, with a great
+straining sigh, the hull of the wreck parted amidships, both ends
+sinking in the waters.  A comber rushed in between, swelling and
+hissing.  The lumber deck-load rose in the air like a living thing.
+The remaining fastenings holding it to the deck parted, and there was a
+rending and grinding as it slued off into the sea, carrying with it the
+main-mast, which crashed down and impaled the bar on which the wreck
+rested.
+
+The currents had carried the rowboat almost--quite, in fact--in front
+of this terrible heaving mass of wood, one hundred feet long and
+chained together to a height of ten feet--and only the mainmast, which
+seemed to be serving as a sort of anchor, held it.  Dan saw the danger,
+and the shouts of those on the _Fledgling_ told him that they had seen
+it too.  The line leading from the boat to the tug was taut and
+singing, evidence that the men were hauling upon it.  But the pull of
+the shoreward rushing waters was as great as their strength.  The boat
+made no movement out of her dangerous position.  Dan was sculling like
+mad, but his efforts, compared to the might of the sea, were puny.  In
+deep silence the mass of lumber worried at its unforeseen anchor.  It
+ripped free and, rolling and twisting in spineless abandon, bore down
+upon the lifeboat with crushing momentum.  On it came.  They began to
+pay out the line in order that the boat might keep ahead of it for a
+few extra minutes.  But Dan knew there could be no salvation in that.
+He could see every foot of the advancing mass.  He could see the
+hundreds of planks flailing out in the air like arms; he could see the
+thick water spurting through thousands of cracks and crevices; could
+hear the gnashing of plank on plank.  Nearer it came, as powerful, as
+inexorable as the glacial drift.  It rose before him in all its
+crushing might.
+
+Then he felt the boat, as though suddenly endowed with life, start
+forward, and, glancing at the _Fledgling_, saw that she had made a
+tangent course to the wreck in order that the boat could be pulled
+outward from it and away.  Dan knew in an instant that they had lashed
+the line to the stern bitts and had taken the desperate chance, the
+only chance, of making the tug pull her lifeboat from danger.  Could
+the little line stand the strain?  That was the question.  It was so
+tight that it vibrated like thin wire, and it was humming musically,
+monotonously.  It held--the boat was moving!  But the lumber was moving
+too.  On it came.  Ten feet--a plank wrenched clear of the mass and
+shot on ahead, ramming out the lifeboat's stern-board, above the water
+line.  Another plank, as though hurled by some sinister force, sailed
+clear over Dan's head.  Ten feet--the line was fraying out at the ring
+bolts.  Just a second now--five feet.  With one bound the lumber swept
+down, and past the stern of the boat, and Captain Ephraim fell to his
+knees and thanked his God.
+
+
+The fight off Jones Island Inlet came at a time when it meant much to
+Dan.  It was the deep sea, and he had measured his might with it.  And
+as a man is dignified by the prowess of his opponent, so was Dan
+dignified by the prowess of the sea.  Perhaps that was why the sea had
+always called Dan--faintly, dimly; far away sometimes, but always
+unmistakably.  It came in every wind that blew; a voice that involved
+not the sea alone, but the things it stood for--a broader, deeper life
+and bigger things; more to do, a final and definite place to make.  He
+had never met or been influenced by the big men--the men who think and
+teach and sing and do the world's work.  His environment in these, his
+early years of manhood, had been far from them.  He could touch them
+only in books, which were not entirely satisfactory.  And so he learned
+from the sea and it spoke to him of breadth, and power, and
+determination, and majesty of character.  Dan was instinctively seeking
+all these things, and in the work he was now doing he felt that he was
+nearer to them than he had ever been before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE LOSS OF THE "FLEDGLING"
+
+One Fall afternoon, six months after the rescue of the men of the
+_Zeitgeist_, the _Fledgling_, as though sentient with the instinct of
+self-preservation, was struggling through the riot of wind and waves,
+seeking the security of the Delaware Breakwater, while ten miles back,
+somewhere in the wild half gloom off Hog Island, three loaded coal
+barges which she had been towing from Norfolk were rolling, twisting,
+careening helplessly to destruction--if, indeed, the seas had not
+already taken deadly toll of them.
+
+Dan and two of his men were at the wheel spokes, which had torn the
+palms of their hands until they were raw and bleeding, and the dull
+light flooding in through the windows revealed the indomitable will of
+these men, the death-fight spirit which actuated them.
+
+Dan's face was bloodless and strained, and his hair fell across his
+eyes, while crouching beneath him, with hands on the under spokes, were
+the gigantic shoulders of his mate, the sweaty gray hair and the red,
+thick nape of the neck suggesting the very epitome of muscular effort;
+and on the other side, writhing and quivering, was the deck-hand, a
+study in steel and wire.
+
+The afternoon was still young, but the heavens were darker than
+twilight, and the rocking sea was as black as slate, save where a
+comber, as though gnashing its teeth in fury, flashed a sudden white
+crest, which crumbled immediately into the heaving pall.
+
+"Now, boys, together!  Catch back that last spoke we lost!"
+
+And while Dan's words were being shattered into shreds of sound by the
+shriek of the gale, the three men bent their backs in a fresh effort to
+put the _Fledgling's_ nose a point better into the on-rushing waves.
+
+They did it too.  With a hiss and a crunch the bow swung in square to
+the watery thunderbolts and the stanch craft, survivor of a hundred
+perils, a ten-foot section of her port rail gone, a great dent in the
+steel deck-house forward, began to climb over the water hills with much
+of her usual precision--down on her side, clear to the bottom of a
+hollow, then settling on an even keel with a jerk, climbing the slaty
+incline, stiff as a church, then down, down, half on her side again,
+then up once more.
+
+"She's making good weather of it," and Dan took his hands from the
+wheel, stood erect, and gazed through the after windows, searching a
+horizon which he could see only when the tug climbed to a wave top.  He
+turned to his mate.
+
+"There's no use hunting for those barges," he said tentatively.  "When
+that tow-line broke back there, it seemed as though one of my heart
+strings went too.  But there was nothing to do about it; nothing we
+could do.  It was all we could do to work the _Fledgling_ through."
+
+"Most captains would 'a' cut them barges adrift long before the line
+broke," replied the mate; "no use thinkin' about them now; they've
+gone, long ago."
+
+Dan worked his way along the pitching floor to the side windows.  His
+face was tense and drawn.  He had never lost a tow before--this was a
+part of his reputation.  And now. . . .  He turned slowly to resume his
+place at the wheel, when suddenly, as the tug was sidling down a wave,
+the tail of his eye caught a glimpse of a buff funnel protruding above
+the wave tops a good quarter of a mile away.  His first impression was
+that the water had claimed all but the funnel.  He was not sure.  He
+waited.  It seemed an age while the tug climbed to the top of the next
+comber.  Slowly, slowly the buff funnel again came into view, and then
+as the tug still climbed he saw it all--a white, broad-waisted yacht
+cluttering in the grip of the waters, throwing her stern toward heaven,
+reeling over, taking water on one rail, letting it through the opposite
+scuppers, sticking her bow into the waves and rising, shaking off the
+water like a fat spaniel.  Puffs of steam were escaping jerkily from
+the whistle valve, and, although Dan could not hear, he knew she was
+whistling for assistance.
+
+It was all a quick, pulsating scene, as one views something in a
+kinetoscope, and then it was lost as the waters rose between them.  Dan
+stumbled over to the wheel.  He was not a man of many words.
+
+"Boys, there's work for us to do.  There's a yacht in distress about a
+quarter of a mile off on the port hand.  We'll go over and see."
+
+"It'll mean throwing her head off from seas that we've been bucking
+since morning," said the mate.  And the inflection cast into the words
+suggested no protest, only a reminder that it would be no child's play.
+
+"Yes," said Dan simply, leaning forward to take advantage of the uproll
+of the tug to locate the yacht more exactly.   "There--there--throw her
+off three points----  That's it," he added, as the tug floundered on
+her new course,--a course no longer into, but across, the waves, which
+now began to come from everywhere, buffeting the tug, keel and bow,
+rail and pilot-house--crazy cross-seas, fighting among themselves,
+slashing, crashing, falling over one another.
+
+But on the _Fledgling_ went, climbing the waves insanely now, sometimes
+bow on, sometimes crab-wise--but ever on.  Each wave that was topped
+gave a better view of the yacht, also enabling those on that wallowing
+craft to see the tug, as evidence of which the continuous blasts of the
+whistle were borne to the towmen's ears.
+
+Nearer, until the yacht was never lost to view.  Evidently she was not
+under control; but, even so, it was plain that no high degree of
+intelligence was being exerted in handling her.  She was not steaming
+at all, merely drifting in the trough, and none of the means to bring
+her head into the seas which sailors utilize at a pinch had even been
+attempted.  Whatever was the matter with the yacht, Dan and his men
+were sure that the officers and crew were nothing less than blockheads.
+
+Making a wide detour, they brought the tug around under the lee of the
+craft and about fifty yards away, where Dan, leaving the wheel to his
+men, seized a megaphone and ran on deck.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" he shouted angrily through his megaphone,
+aimed toward a group of men on the shattered bridge.  "Are you trying
+to see how quickly you can sink?  Why don't you put her head up?"
+
+A young officer in a wet and bedraggled uniform crawled along the
+swaying platform to the megaphone rack and, seizing a cone, shouted
+from a kneeling posture:
+
+"Help us, for God's sake!  Our thrust shaft has cracked!"  The words
+came faintly.  "Our Captain was washed from the bridge. . . .  Tried to
+put out sea anchor, but couldn't make it hold without steerage
+way. . . .  It broke adrift. . . .  This . . . the _Veiled Ladye_, with
+Mr. Horace Howland and a party aboard."
+
+The _Veiled Ladye_!  Absorbed as Dan was, he felt a momentary flash of
+surprise that the announcement of that name came to him almost as a
+matter of course.  Through the long course of nearly two years the
+conviction that a time would come when he should once more meet the
+girl who had spoken to him from the _Veiled Ladye's_ deck at Norfolk
+had strengthened inexplicably, until he had come to accept it as an
+assured fact.  Was she aboard that yacht now?  Aboard that laboring
+section of gingerbread, in the hands of incompetents and poltroons?
+Was she?  It could not be otherwise.  And this was the nature of the
+meeting which had colored his dreams and intensified the ambitions of
+his waking moments!
+
+A strange thrill quivered through him, and he glanced dazedly at
+Mulhatton, as a stout man in yachting garb stumbled to the officer's
+side and snatched the megaphone from his hands.
+
+"On board the tug!" he cried.  "I'm Horace Howland of the Coastwise and
+West Indian Shipping Company.  We're helpless; we can't last an hour
+unless you hold our head up.  Engineer making a collar for cracked
+shaft . . . have it made and fitted in twelve hours.  Twelve hours.
+Hold us up that long and we are safe!  Do you hear me . . . twelve
+hours!"
+
+Dan looked at the yacht, rolling to her beam ends almost every minute.
+It would be a bad business fooling with that craft; and with iron will
+he fought back his surging emotions.  He had his tug and his men to
+consider, if not himself.  His tug was weakened by her long struggle,
+and to the best of his judgment he knew it would be wiser for his own
+interests to go his way, leaving the yacht to her life fight, while the
+_Fledgling_ fought hers.  And yet he could not go away.  Aside from the
+wild theory that the girl might be aboard, there were lives to save
+over there.  That was it.  There were lives to save over there.  Duty
+called--a stern, clear call; at least, Dan so heard it, and he was
+willing to answer it with his life, if necessary.  But he did not think
+of that part of it.  It was the lives of those imperilled persons that
+concerned him.  He and his tug were there that they might live.  There
+were women aboard; he had seen their white faces gazing imploringly at
+him through the cabin portholes--bright, beautiful lives--and men in
+the glorious prime of their youth.  His heart went out to them, and as
+Mr. Howland laid aside his megaphone the problem was clear.  He waved
+his megaphone in assent and then, levelling it at the yacht, he cried:
+
+"All right.  Float a hawser down to us; you are pitching too wild-eyed
+to come within heaving-line distance."  Passing the pilot-house on his
+way below, he nodded and smiled at the men inside.  There had been no
+need to question them.  They had been too long with Dan, and too
+faithful, not to catch his drift of mind in all emergencies long before
+he expressed it in words; too brave and hardened to danger, in fact, to
+care what Dan wanted, just so that he was willing to lead them--to
+share with them the work to be done.
+
+In the course of a few minutes a small raft, bearing a heaving-line
+which the yachtsmen had streamed, drifted down upon the tug, clearing
+the bow by a few feet.  Dan leaned out and caught it with his
+boat-hook, bringing the line aboard.  Then he and his fireman tailed on
+to the end of it, bringing in the attached hawser hand over hand.  This
+they hurried to the stern bitts, taking a pass also around the steam
+winch.  Leaving the fireman to watch it, Dan dashed into the
+pilot-house and sounded the jingle-bell in the engine-room.
+
+For a few minutes the churnings of the screw were discounted by the
+bulk of the yacht plus the elemental forces which sought to keep her
+head just where it was--in the trough of the sea.  The tow-line
+vibrated itself into a blur, the tug strained and quivered and groaned.
+
+"Why don't you help us in some way, you fools!" roared Dan, struggling
+at the wheel.  "You can at least steer, or--"
+
+Before he could proceed there was a report like the bark of a cannon
+and a torn and shredded end of hawser came writhing and twisting up out
+of the sea, sluing across the face of the pilot-house as though
+possessed of all the venom of the living thing it resembled--a python.
+
+There was silence on both the tug and the yacht for a full minute.  Dan
+watched the distressed craft as she tossed up her bow and glided
+sternward from his view behind a jet of black wave, while the
+_Fledgling_ seemed to slide from under his feet in the opposite
+direction.  As the yacht came up again he could see that this mishap
+had scattered all semblance of fortitude to the winds.  Except for the
+young second officer, Mr. Howland, and a sailor, all holding their
+places pluckily on the bridge, terror reigned.  Sailors, men in
+yachting costumes, and women with hair flying flashed along the decks
+or in and out of doorways, while forward a group of three young men
+lashed to a big anchor held out their hands toward the tug.
+
+Dan turned to his deck-hand, his face hard and determined.
+
+"Pete," he said, "go down and get out the double cables.  Welch is
+astern and will help you.  I'm going to swerve the tug in close and you
+heave the lines aboard when we re near enough.  We won't trust any more
+to their rotten hemp."
+
+As a knight, with reckless abandon, might have urged his steed into the
+very midst of his foes, so Dan urged the _Fledgling_ up to the wildly
+pitching yacht.  Nearer the tug advanced, so near that the tugmen could
+see the streaks through the red underbody.  Nearer yet, head on, and
+then the wheel was swung broad, while Dan leaned out of the
+pilot-house, looking down at the two men forward, who were whirling
+weighted heaving-lines about their heads like lariats.  "Now, now
+then!" yelled Dan, as the mate in response to a wave of his hand began
+to sheer off from the yacht.  "Aye, aye," came the replies from below,
+and a second later two lines whistled clean over the forward decks of
+the white craft.  Eager hands seized them and hauled in the great
+cables and made them fast.
+
+Just for an instant Dan and the mate peered at the yacht to see if the
+lines had carried, an instant of which the wily sea took full
+advantage.  An oily wave reared the bow of the yacht while the swell of
+its predecessor slued the _Fledgling_ in and around and upward, so that
+the two craft reared, side by side, bows up and not more than five feet
+apart.  A scream fluttered from the bridge; men's voices raised in
+curses at the clumsy yacht were borne from the pilot-house.  Dan,
+however, had not time for words; he stood with hands on the wheel
+watching the red, reeking bow rearing almost in his face; watched it,
+cool, ready to take the first chance of escape, if the present danger
+offered such a chance.  Slowly, easily, the wave passed, and down came
+the two bows with a crash.  The bow of the _Veiled Ladye_ just grazed
+the _Fledgling's_ weather rail, tearing off a fender, while Dan
+signalled full speed astern.  It was fortunate that he had his wits
+about him, for the erratic yacht, instead of falling back as she
+naturally should have done, suddenly moved forward under the impulse of
+a swell, butting the tug, almost gently, about ten feet from the bow.
+Then the tug backed clear, and, breasting the waves, began to take up
+the slack cables.  A hundred yards she went and then stopped headway
+with a jerk as the men slipped the cables over the bitts.
+
+The collision had not hurt the tug apparently, although there was no
+telling whether or not the jolt had weakened her structurally.  But Dan
+was not the man to worry about eventualities.  An hour's straining and
+hauling resulted in bringing the yacht's head full into the seas, and
+then at four o'clock Dan snuggled his craft to, for the long eleven
+hours' fight.
+
+The afternoon waned into twilight, softly, impalpably, and the twilight
+wavered into night.  A few lights quivered from the reeling yacht and
+her mast-head lamps described glimmering arcs against the heavens.
+Silent and grim, the tug took the brunt of all the seas had to
+give--nose piercing the very heart of the waves, splitting them with
+beautiful precision, rising, falling, reeling, pitching, but, through
+all, hanging to the yacht with undying tenacity.  So she fought, as she
+had ever fought.
+
+Contrary to the promise of the afternoon, the gale had not abated; the
+seas, if anything, raced more fiercely, and the wind, which tore the
+dark with a wailing moan, departed with a venomous shriek.  Dan and his
+mate stood hard at the wheel, Noonan, the deck-hand, was stationed
+astern, and Crampton, the stanch old chief, and his fireman were down
+in the heart of things, nursing the engines.
+
+They were well nursed, too.  The steady throb, the clank of the throws,
+and the hum of the eccentrics rose to the pilot-house in cadence as
+regular as the heart-throbs of a healthy ox.  And the while Dan and his
+mate gingerly manipulated the wheel so that the strain on the tow-line
+was constant and even, with no slack or sudden jerks, which were truly
+to be avoided in the face of the mad sea.
+
+The sea grew indefinite in the dark,--as indefinite as the undulations
+of a black shroud.  It was as though the tug were tossing through some
+mysterious agency.  There were times when the tall mast-head lights
+astern showed not a foot above the rim of that more intense darkness
+which marked where the water ended and the horizon began.
+
+Again there were times when the glowing specks seemed to scale the
+heights of a sable vacuum.  Once a section of the rail went ripping
+away in the gloom and once a shredded small boat was torn and hurled
+into the waters.
+
+One hour, two hours, three hours, four hours--and still the wild night
+went on, and still the _Fledgling_ held to her work.  Crampton, the
+chief engineer, struggled up from the engine-room at nine o'clock, his
+swart face lined and creased.
+
+"She's like an old man dyin'," he said, and his voice quivered.  "The
+old injines are drivin' as hard and brave as a man with a club; but a
+lot of the kick has gone out of them.  Nothin' the matter of 'em that I
+can see--but just feel.  My old injines are feelin' about fur an excuse
+to cave in."
+
+"Well, hang on," replied Dan, "and don't tell me what you feel may
+happen; I can think up enough things myself."
+
+"Well," and Crampton hesitated.  "I didn't come up here fur anythin'
+I've said--Cap'n," he added in a low voice; "we're takin' in water."
+
+An imprecation trembled on Dan's lips, and one of his hands left the
+wheel in an involuntary gesture of resignation.  Then he shut his teeth
+tight and talked slowly through them.
+
+"Where the yacht hit us?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, forward; it's opened up a little under the floor plates--about
+twenty strokes a minute I should say; the force-pump's kept it level so
+far."
+
+"Good," said Dan; "there's nothing else to do but keep it going."
+
+"Nothing," said the chief, and he reeled out of the pitching
+pilot-house.
+
+Two, three, four hours more--the water had gained nine inches, so the
+chief reported through the speaking-tube.  But still the _Fledgling_
+held her tow, and Dan and Mulhatton stood silent at the wheel, the rush
+of the wind, which had long torn out the double windows, swirling their
+hair into their eyes and numbing their torn and bleeding hands.  The
+elements, as though divining the weakening of the tug,--a tug which
+often had laughed them to scorn,--were making mad work of it; there
+were strange sounds, unforeseen blows--but still the tug hung on.
+
+There came an hour in which she did not rise to the waves as she had
+been doing,--an hour when the leak gained terribly, and when the
+_Fledgling_, struggling bravely, if wearily, upward to meet a wave,
+would stop half-way with a jerk and a sigh, the wave gouging along the
+deck--breaking over the stern-board.
+
+They could feel her going in the pilot-house.  But she hung on to her
+lines with the grip of death.  Dan stood at his mate's side, his eyes
+fixed straight ahead into the darkness.  He had cast his die; he had
+chosen his lot--now the toll was to be paid.  He thought, too, of the
+men who, without question, had taken their stand with him.  He reached
+out his left hand and placed it gently on his mate's shoulder.
+
+"Good boy, old Mul," he said, in words which, however inadequate,
+revealed all the heart of his meaning.  And Mulhatton simply shifted
+his feet and gazed ahead, his hard, light eyes as expressionless as
+marble disks.
+
+The dawn came filtering across the raven waters as the bloodless hand
+of an old man quivers across a chess-board,--gray dawn, cold dawn, even
+more merciless than the night, in that it heralded the rise of the sun
+to smile over the evil wrought in the darker hours.  Astern, the white
+yacht alternately pierced the sky with her bow and sought the depths.
+
+Suddenly a long, triumphant scream of a whistle rang across the dawn--a
+roll of water parted a retiring wave.  The big white yacht moved of her
+own power.  Again the whistle sounded, as though in joy that the vessel
+had at last found herself.  Once more. . . .  She mounted the waves in
+proud defiance. . . .  The tow-lines slackened.
+
+"Cast off, cast off!" megaphoned an officer, while two of his sailors
+threw the ends of the cables into the sea.  The deck-hand and fireman
+started to bring them in, while Dan gave the signal for Crampton to go
+ahead.
+
+The tug started timidly forward and then hesitated and trembled.  A
+wave hit her, and she rocked like a cork.  The jump had all gone out of
+her.  Another wave struck her and almost hove her down, and then
+another wave snapped her back again, jerking out the funnel, which
+hissed overside into the sea.  Half on her side, she clanked into the
+trough.  She struggled to right herself and had partly succeeded, when
+a mighty wave smote her viciously on her listed side.  She went over to
+her beam ends and lay there a second, while Dan and his men shot
+through the windows, off from the deck, into the sea.  Another instant
+and the _Fledgling_ rolled her keel to the morning light and swiftly
+disappeared.
+
+As Dan rose on a wave he saw her go, saw too, the white face of his
+engineer framed in the engine-room doorway, which a wave filled just as
+she turned, obliterating the face forever.
+
+The next few minutes were nothing but a buffeting, swirling confusion.
+Suddenly a line struck Dan's face . . . his hands closed upon a
+circular life preserver. . . .  The next instant he lay gasping on the
+deck of the _Veiled Ladye_, beside his deck-hand and mate.
+
+Half an hour later, Dan, in warm clothes, sat upon the pitching deck of
+the yacht, at the doorway of the saloon.
+
+The _Fledgling_ gone and Welch and Crampton--that was all he could
+think of as he sat gazing into the gray of the waters, which in closing
+over the black tragedy immediately presented a surface as free from all
+evidence of guilt as the placid surface of a mill-pond.  He had made
+himself in the _Fledgling_,--had rounded to the measure of a man aboard
+of her,--had grown in the plenitude of man's strength and will and
+courage and success.  He felt the loss of his tug; it hit him hard; he
+suffered in every mental corner and cranny.  And when the two men who
+had given their lives for him and for the yacht came to mind in all the
+clearness of their personality and devotion to him, his head sank on
+his hand and he groaned aloud.
+
+A hand was laid gently on his shoulder, and looking up, he saw Mr.
+Howland and a tall, beautiful girl by his side, both gazing at him from
+the doorway with eyes filled with compassion.
+
+"You were the captain of the tug?" asked Mr. Rowland.
+
+"Yes, Captain Merrithew," and Dan ceased speaking and gazed at the deck.
+
+"You owned the tug?"
+
+"No," replied Dan.
+
+"Captain Merrithew, I cannot say anything adequate.  I appreciate what
+you have done--I cannot say how much."
+
+"Oh, father," broke in the girl, "tell him it was noble!"
+
+[Illustration: "Oh, father," broke in the girl, "tell him it was
+noble!"]
+
+"It was noble," resumed Mr. Howland.  "It was big and fine--you saved a
+score of lives, and for them you gave your tug and part of your crew.
+I cannot reward such men as you--I can pay just debts, though.  Your
+men shall not suffer; neither shall the families of those who were
+lost."
+
+Then he paused a minute and reached behind the door jamb, bringing out
+a water-soaked bit of plank.  "One of our best men picked this from the
+water.  You had been clinging to it.  I thought you might like to have
+it in your cabin."
+
+It was the name board of the _Fledgling_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR
+
+As Dan seized the strip with its gilt letters and was about to reply,
+the yacht slung sideways, and a wave arising amidships smote the
+deck-house a lusty, full-bodied blow.  It suddenly occurred to the
+tugboat captain that the craft, all the time he had been aboard trying
+to collect his bewildered senses, had acted strangely.  He turned to
+Mr. Howland.
+
+"What's the matter with your yacht?"
+
+Howland was a good deal of a thoroughbred, and yet he could not conceal
+his eagerness as he spoke.
+
+"The yacht was just what I wanted to speak to you about, Captain," he
+said.  "I know I have no right to ask anything more of you, but if you
+have pulled together, I think we seem to need your assistance.  Our
+Captain was washed off the bridge, and the first mate is below with a
+broken leg.  The situation, I am afraid, is beyond young Terry, the
+second mate; I--"
+
+As the import of what Mr. Howland was trying to say flashed across
+Dan's mind, he turned abruptly, without waiting for the completion of
+the sentence, and ran for the bridge.
+
+Without a glance at the second officer, who seemed on the verge of a
+complete funk, he shouldered the two sailors from the wheel and hauled
+on the spokes with all the strength of his long arms.  As the yacht
+began to respond he seized the indicator crank and called for full
+speed ahead.  The whistle of the bridge speaking-tube sounded
+viciously, and Dan, placing his ear to the receiver, caught the words
+of the old chief engineer as they flowed up in profane vehemence.
+
+"Say, do you know what you want up there?  If I had a man down here who
+knew an engine from a plate of fruit, I'd 'a' been up there and snaked
+you off the bridge long ago.  I've been on my back under that triply
+damned shaft for twelve hours and now--" the rest of the sentence was
+an assortment of well-chosen oaths.
+
+The outburst greeted Dan's ears sweetly.  Evidently Howland had a man
+down below the water line, anyway.  He grinned as he clapped his lips
+to the tube.
+
+"I've just come aboard to take charge of this craft," he yelled; "now
+you do as I say and do it quick.  See!"
+
+A great relieved, blasphemous roar came up the tube, and the next
+instant the engines were laying down to their work.
+
+The bow began to cut nicely into the waves, and Dan turned to the two
+sailors.
+
+"Here, you boys, tail on here and steer as I tell you."  Whereupon,
+fingering a pocket compass, he called the course, after which he
+fastened the little instrument to the wreck of the binnacle.
+
+"We will pull through," he said, turning to Mr. Howland, who, with his
+daughter, had followed him to the bridge.  "We are somewhere off the
+Winter Quarter Shoals; if I can get the sun at noon I'll know exactly;
+anyway, we will make Norfolk if that shaft holds.  If it doesn't--well,
+banking on that engineer you've got down below, I think it will hold."
+Then inclining his head in the direction of Miss Howland, he added,
+"I'd advise you to go below, Miss Howland."  He thrilled as he uttered
+her name, "You're wet; and then--I may have to swear."
+
+"I should love awfully to hear some one swear to some purpose," she
+replied.  "Oh, I want to stay," she cried, speaking to her father, as
+Dan suddenly turned his back and spoke to the second mate.  "Father, I
+am going to stay.  The rest are seasick or frightened to pieces.  I
+feel braver up here."
+
+She was perfectly candid.  She did feel braver there on the bridge.
+For Dan was the one dominant personality aboard the yacht.  In her eyes
+he typified bravery, skill, strength--safety, in a word, for all.  It
+was as though out of the wrack of despair and the overriding elements
+had arisen the spirit of a man and all that at best he stands for, to
+reclaim the lost honors of the darker hours.  And so she clung to him
+with her eyes and felt she could smile at danger; her soul went out to
+him and enveloped him with gratitude and tenderness.  And she neither
+knew nor cared whether in these emotions was the uprearing of woman's
+submerged, primal nature, giving all to the sheer power of the stronger
+sex, or whether it was the result of a burden of dread suddenly lifted
+from her heart--it made no difference which.  She was living the
+moment--here and now--clear, serene, justified, and ennobled.
+
+And standing thus she watched him as he snapped the yacht slantwise
+from the grip of succeeding sea hollows and guided her over the gray
+hills, panting and straining, with much of pudgy deliberation, but
+surely.
+
+"We will make it easily," said Dan, "if nothing happens."
+
+"Good," cried Mr. Rowland, and, taking his daughter by the arm, he
+added, "come below, Virginia, and give them the good news.  Your friend
+Oddington has forgotten his cigarettes for a full twenty-four hours,
+and the Dale girls are candidates for a sanitarium."  There was a
+chuckle of relief in his voice.
+
+Dan turned to watch the girl as she followed her father from the
+bridge.  He was certain he had never seen anything so inspiring as
+Virginia Howland standing braced square to the wind, her trim blue
+skirt winding and unwinding; her cap in her hand; the wind tossing her
+heavy hair in myriads of glowing pennons, which beat on the
+blush-surged cheeks, alternately hiding and disclosing the sparkle of
+the deep gray eyes or the flash of perfect teeth from between parted
+lips.
+
+It was a picture upon which he permitted himself to ponder but an
+instant, however, for the wind was shifting again from the northeast,
+growling ominously, and the yacht, humping along at a ridiculous speed
+of six knots, made the situation less satisfactory than it had been.
+He spoke to Terry over his shoulder.
+
+"As you see," he said, "we're running into some new sort of hell," and
+he glanced impatiently at the potential riot ahead.  "Have these men
+keep the course and look out for things, will you?  I'm going down to
+the engine-room for a few minutes."
+
+"Very well, sir," said the young officer.
+
+Dan found old Jim Arthur, the chief, swearing softly as he moved about
+his engines with a long-spouted oil can.
+
+"It is beginning to breeze again," said Dan.  "I'm the new Captain and
+I came down to tell you I don't think much of your machinery, and to
+ask if the shaft will hold out."
+
+"The shaft'll hold," said the engineer.  Then he paused and looked at
+Dan in supreme disgust.  "Engines!" he snorted.  "I've been holdin' 'em
+together with my fingers since we left San Domingo.  Cap'n, they'd been
+fine for a Swiss cuckoo clock.  Why, they're only held together by gilt
+paint and polish.  See how old Howland's had 'em painted--like a
+bedizened old maid!  I do believe he's got 'em perfumed.  Well, they
+may hold--"
+
+Dan, who had been glancing about the engine-room, interrupted the
+engineer's pessimistic outburst.
+
+"What are your force pumps going for?" he asked.
+
+"Well, it ain't fur to water no flowers," said Arthur, beckoning Dan to
+the shaft tunnel, where a foot and a half of frothy water was rolling
+to and fro, slushing against the stuffing box, laving the engine-room
+bulkhead.
+
+Leaking!  Dan's first impulse was to drop his hands then and there and
+let the yacht sink or do what she would for all he cared.  He had
+fought out his fight with a better craft than this and had lost her.
+He did not yield to this; in truth, before he could think of yielding
+there came a second impulse--to relieve his mind of several hundred
+accumulated metaphors, to which inclination he surrendered
+unconditionally, while Arthur, in the face of the verbal torrent, gazed
+at the source in humble admiration.
+
+"How--how much is she taking in?" the young man finally gasped.
+
+"About thirty strokes a minute.  I'd 'a' whistled up the tube about it
+before, only I thought you had enough to fill your mind."
+
+"How does it strike you?" asked Dan.
+
+"It's gained only six inches in the past hour.  I will say that much.
+But if you ask me my honest opinion, I'd say this rotten old pleasure
+hull is a-gettin' ready to open up and spread out like a--like
+a--balloon with the epizoötic."
+
+"All right, when she begins, come on up with your men without asking
+leave.  Report every half-hour.  I'll be on the bridge, of course.  If
+I can pick up a steamship I'll call her and desert ship; if not--well,
+we're somewhere outside the Winter Quarter light-ship.  I'll need about
+five hours of the speed we're making to pick up the light vessel and
+beach the yacht in the lee of Assateague; maybe not quite five hours, I
+can't say exactly."
+
+"I think we can keep ahead of the water we're makin' that long,"
+replied Arthur, cheerfully.
+
+As Dan regained the bridge, the bad news he had received below was
+slightly compensated for by the fact that the storm seemed to be taking
+a new kink, swirling away to sea.  The gray combers, however, were
+still disagreeably to be reckoned with.  The second officer had by this
+time pulled himself together, and as he reported to Dan, the young
+Captain was happy to feel that he had at least a lieutenant who could
+be counted on.  Now if Mulhatton were only with him--but "Mul" was
+below, flat on his back, suffering technically from submersion, and so
+were the other men of the _Fledgling_ who had been pulled aboard the
+yacht.
+
+At ten o'clock Arthur reported that the water had gained another six
+inches.
+
+As Dan snapped back the tube a burst of laughter from the saloon
+reached his ears.  Seasickness, fear, everything evil had been
+forgotten in the spirit of confidence and assurance of ultimate safety
+which Dan's skill and personality had infused throughout the wallowing
+craft.  He shrugged his shoulders, staring vacantly into the angry sea.
+
+At length his eyes turned to the distress signals he had ordered
+hoisted; and suddenly the gulf between his lot in life and theirs,
+which the merriment suggested, disappeared, and his emotions thereby
+aroused,--emotions not untinged with self-pity, changed to deepest
+sympathy for those light-hearted ones who might soon be plunged into
+that gloom which heralds death.  Grim, silent, he turned to his work,
+determined that so far as in him lay no shadow of death should invest a
+single one of those persons who must find so much in life to make it
+worth while.  Another hour passed while the yacht stumbled her clumsy
+course to safety.  Arthur reported another half-foot; in all three feet
+six inches of water swishing against the engine-room bulkhead.
+
+"It will keep seepin' through," he said, "and wop!  Suddenly the whole
+bulkhead'll go."
+
+"Don't get caught," replied Dan.  "Give us three more hours, chief.
+Oh, I say, there's not a drop getting into the fire room yet?  Thank
+God for that!"
+
+"For what?"
+
+He faced about quickly and looked into the eyes of Virginia Howland.
+She was pale, but her face was brave.  "I had just come out on deck,"
+she said, "because somehow I was getting nervous--I wanted to be--to be
+near the Captain."  She smiled.   "I heard you talking through the
+speaking-tube; I didn't mean to listen--pardon me; I couldn't help it.
+We're in danger, then, are we?  Don't hesitate to answer truthfully,
+Captain Merrithew."
+
+"Why," replied Dan, "we--steady there, Mr. Terry; you men at the wheel
+attend to your business.  Excuse me," turning to the girl,
+"danger--why, we've been in danger all the time; else I wouldn't be up
+here."
+
+"You are evading," said the girl, slowly.  "But perhaps you are right.
+I can say I trust you, Captain--we all do.  I want to tell you again
+how we all appreciate your--what you have done--putting the yacht
+straight and--"
+
+"I am doing it for myself as much as for you.  More, perhaps; who
+knows?"
+
+The girl gazed intently at his square-cut, bronzed face.  Then she
+looked straight into his steel-gray eyes, peering hard ahead from under
+the flat peak of a cap he had picked up on the bridge.
+
+"Yes," she said, as though speaking to herself, "I think I know."  Then
+she started with an involuntary gesture.
+
+"Haven't I seen you somewhere before, Captain Merrithew?  Yes, yes, I
+have.  Where could it have been?  Do you recall?"
+
+"Yes," was the simple reply.  "I recall.  It was about two years ago,
+at Norfolk, when you were at the coal docks on this yacht."
+
+Virginia flushed eagerly and was about to say something, when some
+flashing thought, perhaps a realizing sense of their relative
+positions, closed her lips.  "I remember very clearly now."  She spoke
+quietly, then she closed her eyes for a second; when she opened them
+they were stern and hard.
+
+"Captain Merrithew," she said, as though to hasten from the subject, "I
+know we are in danger.  Your silence has said as much.  Yet the yacht
+seems to be going finely--"
+
+Dan made no reply.
+
+"Do you think I am a coward?  Is that the reason you are silent?"
+
+Dan made no attempt to conceal his annoyance.
+
+"Well, Miss Howland, if you are not a coward, if you can keep what you
+know to yourself, listen: We're taking in a little water.  It's a race
+between the yacht and the leak; the yacht ought to win out.  Now you
+know as much as I do."
+
+"I am not frightened; my curiosity is natural.  Is there a chance that
+the yacht may not get where you are taking her?"
+
+"To the Assateague beach--no, I don't think there is--if all goes well."
+
+"If all goes well!  Then there is a chance--a chance we may--"
+
+"Oh, we'll be all right."  Dan was temperamentally straightforward and
+honest, and his assertions were uttered with a tentative inflection
+which fell far from carrying conviction to the aroused senses of the
+girl.
+
+She stepped closer to Dan.
+
+"May I say something?  We are in danger.  I have been thinking of
+things since you came aboard--since I have been sitting in the saloon
+with the men who are different--"
+
+Dan could see that the girl, always evidently one of dominant emotions,
+was overwrought, and something told him she had no business to express
+the thoughts which filled her mind, that she would be sorry later that
+she had spoken.  He had interrupted her by a gesture.  Now his voice
+came cool and even.
+
+"Miss Howland, don't.  I've got to take care of this yacht."
+
+A quick sense of just what he meant shot through the girl's mind.  She
+raised her eyes and looked at him straight.  They were blazing, not
+altogether with anger.  She trembled; she flushed and moved
+uncertainly.  Then, without a word, she turned and left him.
+
+"A half-foot more water in the last half-hour," reported Arthur.
+
+As Dan turned to Terry, that officer silently pointed to the northward,
+where a tall column of black smoke seemed to rise from the waters.  A
+steamship!  Yes, but was it coming toward them?  Was it going away?  Or
+would it pass them far out to sea?  For fifteen minutes he watched it
+through his binoculars, and then he glanced down to the deck and called
+to a sailor to send Mr. Howland to the bridge.
+
+"Mr. Howland," said Dan, as the owner approached him, "I suppose Miss
+Howland has told you our fix."
+
+"Yes, but she has told no one else."
+
+"Bully for her!" exclaimed Dan.
+
+"She said you were hopeful."
+
+"More so now than ever before, I was making for the beach, but
+now--there's a steamship coming down on us.  I wasn't sure at first, I
+am now.  That smoke out there is heading dead for us.  I am going to
+slow the boat down to steerage way and wait for her to come up.  It's
+better than trying to make for Assateague; it's better to wait."
+
+"Will the bulkhead hold?"
+
+Mr. Howland asked his question in the even monotone which had
+characterized all his questions.
+
+"I think so; if it doesn't, we'll get everybody off in the rafts and
+the launch; the sea is going down by the minute."
+
+Mr. Howland glanced down at the deck where the crew of Scandinavians,
+inspired by the cool, cheerful commands of their new Captain, were
+working nonchalantly in preparing for eventualities.  From amidships
+came the clatter of men trying to repair the launch, the one boat which
+had not been carried away in the night's storm.  Others were clearing
+the life rafts so they could be launched without delay.  He glanced at
+Dan with admiring eyes.
+
+"I want to compliment you, Captain Merrithew," he said.  "You have your
+crew well in hand."
+
+"Thank you," replied Dan, "if you will keep your party in hand there'll
+be no danger at all.  I don't care what happens, with the sea falling."
+
+Another half-hour.  The steamship, a stout coaster, had now climbed
+over the horizon.  Mr. Howland, through the glasses, had picked out her
+red-and-black funnel and recognized her as one of his own boats.  But
+it had plainly come to a race between the steamship and the straining
+bulkhead.  No need now to tell any one of the situation.  The _Veiled
+Ladye_ was plainly settling astern.  The engine-room bulkhead was
+quivering, ready to break.  Arthur and his men had piled up from the
+engine-room, the engines still pulsing with no one to watch them.  The
+sailors were splendid, going about their work quietly, calmly.  They
+had carried the injured mate, groaning with his broken leg, to the
+deck.  Mrs. Van Vleck, Mr. Rowland's sister, the chaperone, sat with
+her niece's arms about her, passing in and out of successive attacks of
+hysteria.  A sailor had knocked one of the young men of the party down
+to quiet an incipient exhibition of panic.  Ralph Oddington and
+Reginald Wotherspoon stood at the rail, trying with nerveless fingers
+to roll cigarettes.  Two of the girls were weeping in each other's
+arms.  The water bubbled under the turn of the yacht's counters.  Two
+of the sailors were discharging blank shells from the rifle astern in
+hopes of calling attention to the plight of the craft.  The deck was a
+conglomerate, nervous confusion of smart yachting costumes, uniforms,
+and greasy overalls.
+
+Dan, noting the flutter, leaned back from the wheel.
+
+"Don't get excited down there," he roared.  "If the bulkhead holds,
+we're all right.  If it doesn't, there'll be plenty of time for all.
+Do you understand?  We can float for a week on the ocean the way it is
+now."
+
+"It won't hold long, Mr. Howland," he added to the man at his side,
+"but it will hold until that steamship reaches us.  She's seen us and
+is coming like hell."
+
+A few minutes later a joyous shout sounded from the men on the bridge,
+a cry vibrant with electricity, which thrilled through the yacht and
+finally trembled on all tongues.  For the steamship had sized the
+situation and was fairly leaping toward them.  Great clouds of smoke
+were belching from her funnel.  They could see sparks mingling with the
+thunderclouds of sepia, and the _Veiled Ladye_ hobbled woundily to meet
+her.  On came the freighter; her hull was plainly discerned now,
+picking the waves from under her bluff bows and throwing them
+impatiently to either side.
+
+Cries of joy and appeals for the succoring vessel to hurry sounded from
+the yacht's decks.
+
+As the vessel drew nearer.  Miss Howland ran to the bridge and took her
+father by the arm.
+
+"Father!" she cried.  "You must come now.  Isn't there anything in your
+cabin you want to save?"  With a muttered "By George!"  Mr. Howland
+dived below and the girl faced Dan.
+
+"Captain Merrithew--"
+
+Oddington's voice thrilling in joyous, cadence sounded from beneath the
+bridge.
+
+"Virginia, Virginia, where are you?  Oh, up there!  Come down quickly!
+Don't you see we are coming alongside?  And Merrithew, old
+chap--Virginia, will you come!  You are to be put aboard after your
+aunt.  Hurry!"  There was a half-note of proprietorship in his voice.
+
+As the girl turned to leave, Dan gave the wheel to Terry and ran to the
+deck with a speaking-trumpet in his hand.  As he passed Oddington, who
+had assisted Miss Howland from the bridge, he spoke to him quietly.
+
+"The man with the broken leg leaves this ship first."
+
+Below there was a dull crash and clouds of steam burst through the
+ventilators and the engine-room gratings.  The bulkhead had succumbed,
+but no one cared now.  The steamship was turning in about a hundred
+yards away.  Dan directed his trumpet to the bridge.
+
+"Scrape close alongside," he yelled.  "Open one of your cargo ports and
+we'll board you through it."
+
+The freighter's Captain had already anticipated this suggestion, and as
+the vessel slid alongside, Dan ranged the sailors along the deck.
+
+In perfect order the mate with the broken leg was slid into the port as
+though he were merely being passed into another room.  Then went the
+women, then the men of the party, and after them the sailors.  Dan and
+Mr. Howland alone were left now.  As the elder man prepared to enter
+the port he looked at Dan a moment and smiled.
+
+"Some day I hope to cancel this debt."
+
+They were simple words, but potentially they meant much to Dan.  He was
+to find they involved the realization of dreams, ambitions he had long
+held; another rung on the ladder which eventually----  But there was no
+time to think of the future now.  Turning from the porthole he ran
+along the deck, calling to make sure that every one was off.  When he
+returned, Miss Howland and several others were leaning over the rail
+above.
+
+"For heaven's sake, Captain Merrithew, will you please come off that
+yacht!"  The girl's voice rang imperiously.
+
+With a last look at the bridge upon which he had passed the recent
+thrilling hours, he leaped aboard the freighter, and when ten minutes
+later the white _Veiled Ladye_ threw up her bow with a great clanking
+sigh and slid swiftly from view, Dan Merrithew was fast asleep in the
+Captain's cabin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+DAN IS COMMANDED TO A PARTY
+
+A week later, Dan, in accordance with an engagement made with Mr.
+Howland when parting with him at the railroad station at Norfolk,
+whither the rescuing vessel had taken the shipwrecked party, called at
+the office of the Coastwise and West Indian Shipping Company in the
+Bowling Green Building and asked to see the president.
+
+It was a large office, filled with clerks and all of them busy.  The
+young man who received the caller's request looked at him sharply and
+shook his head.
+
+"Mr. Rowland's engaged now," he said, "at a company meeting.  If you'll
+call in an hour or two I'll find out if he will see you."
+
+Dan drew from his pocket a card with a pencilled memorandum and glanced
+at it.
+
+"He made an appointment with me for eleven o'clock to-day.  So I guess
+I'll have to ask you to take in my card."
+
+The clerk shrugged his shoulders and walked away.  When he returned a
+few minutes later all signs of mistrust had vanished.  Opening the gate
+with a sort of flourish he said:
+
+"Mr. Howland says for you to come right in."
+
+As Dan entered the president's office, Mr. Howland arose from a long,
+polished oaken table littered with papers, at which several men were
+seated, and advanced to meet him.
+
+"Captain Merrithew," he said, "I am glad to see you again.  And now,"
+he added, the formalities of introducing Dan to the various officers of
+the company being completed, "I have gone into the matter of the men
+lost when the _Fledgling_ sank and have sent a check for five thousand
+dollars to the wife of your engineer, Crampton, who I understand
+carried some life insurance, and a check for three thousand dollars to
+Welch's mother."  His voice was crisp and business-like, but his manner
+intimated clearly the sympathy and gratitude which had dictated his
+gifts.
+
+"Yes, sir, they are adequate," replied Dan, feelingly.
+
+"I have sent checks to your mate, Mulhatton, who, I am informed, is
+still in the employ of the Phoenix Company, as well as that fellow
+Noonan and the steward; which brings us to you."
+
+"Mr. Howland," said Dan, flushing, "I'm simply not--"
+
+"Just a moment, if you please," interrupted Mr. Howland; "I assume you
+are qualified to navigate the ocean?"
+
+"Yes," replied Dan, trembling slightly; "I've the best of broad ocean
+papers and seven harbor endorsements."
+
+"That ought to be enough," smiled the vice-president, Mr. Horton, who
+seemed perfectly in touch with the trend of the situation.
+
+"Yes," resumed Mr. Howland, "what I am getting at is this, Captain
+Merrithew.  The Coastwise Transportation Company is looking for men
+like you.  We want you with us, in short.  As you probably know, we
+have a fleet consisting of steamers of various sizes, but all pretty
+much the same type; that is to say, seaworthy, comfortable, and well
+engined.  We cannot place you in command of one of our newest vessels,
+of course.  But there is the _Tampico_, the commander of which, Captain
+Harrison, we are to retire for age.  She is a good boat, running to San
+Blanco, and she is fitted for passengers; so you will find opportunity
+to develop your social proclivities, if you have any to develop."
+
+As Mr. Howland was talking the color had slowly departed from Dan's
+face, and now, as the president ceased speaking and regarded the young
+man, he spoke haltingly, with dry lips.
+
+"Do I understand you to mean that you are going to make me Captain of
+the _Tampico_?"
+
+"You are to understand that we have," corrected Mr. Howland.
+
+"Mr. Howland, gentlemen," said Dan, "I--I can't say anything
+except--thank you--I--"  He hesitated, confusedly.
+
+"There's nothing for you to say," interpolated the president, "except
+that you'll go down to the ship, which is loading at Pier 36, East
+River, and assume command.  Captain Harrison will remain aboard for two
+or three trips to break you in to the trade."  There was that in his
+voice which intimated the end of the interview, and Dan with a bow was
+turning to leave, when Mr. Howland uttered an exclamation.
+
+"Oh, by the way," he said, "here is a note my daughter asked me to give
+you.  It will explain itself, I think; and since you are now serving
+under the house flag of this company, I can say only that obedience to
+orders contained therein is imperative.  We all obey orders from that
+source," and with a chuckle Mr. Rowland turned to his confreres and was
+speedily immersed in other important affairs of the company.
+
+Dan did not open the envelope in the office.  First of all he wanted
+fresh air.  The quick, calm, business-like manner in which his
+promotion had taken place; the noiseless, well-ordered, automatic
+opening of another door leading to the future of his ambitions, so
+utterly at variance with preconceived ideas in this regard, had all but
+unnerved him.  He had always held it as assured that some day he should
+walk his own bridge.  But until a half-hour ago, this day seemed still
+to lie far ahead, a day to be attained, well, he could not say exactly
+how--but at least with a sort of metaphorical roaring of guns and
+waving of flags, and great spiritual exaltation.
+
+But now--a few short sentences, a handshake, and presto!  Captain
+Merrithew, of the Coastwise line steamship _Tampico_, by your leave.
+The wonder of it all dazed him; yet withal he knew he had never before
+been so stirred to the very depths of his being.  He was not yet in a
+position to estimate his good fortune in comprehensive terms.  As a
+matter of fact, he did not try.  One thought alone kept flaming through
+his brain--his age.  Twenty-six, twenty-six; the numerals flew through
+his mind as though the years of his life were the most important
+elements in the situation.
+
+By the time he reached the Battery sea-wall, he had somewhat adjusted
+his mental attitude, and, gazing with a degree of calmness over the
+waters of the bay toward the hills of Staten Island, he recalled the
+note from Miss Howland.
+
+All along it had lain a pleasant substratum in his mind, and now as he
+tore open the envelope and read the contents, a peculiar, grim smile
+lighted his eyes for a second.
+
+
+"DEAR CAPTAIN MERRITHEW:--Next Thursday we are going to have a reunion
+of the castaways at our house.  It will be for dinner, and we have all
+agreed it will not be complete without the man who made this gathering
+possible.
+
+"I am not going to let you make any excuse, for my dinner-party will
+have an empty space without you.  It will be very informal.  Father for
+several years has refused to wear evening dress at dinner, so none of
+the other men will.  Now remember, I shall expect you on Thursday
+evening, at seven; you need not bother sending an acceptance.
+
+"Very sincerely yours,
+
+"VIRGINIA WALTON ROWLAND."
+
+
+Virginia met her aunt at the foot of the stairs, and, slipping an arm
+about her waist, laughed nervously.
+
+"Well, my dear, to-night we entertain the tug-boat hero.  It's horrid
+to feel so, but do you know I wish I had suggested to father that we
+have the dinner on one of his vessels.  Do you remember last Fall, what
+fun it was?  I have the impression, don't you know, that things would
+be less strained than here.  He would find the atmosphere more
+adaptable."
+
+"He?  Oh, the tugman," laughed her aunt.  "I shouldn't worry if I were
+you."
+
+"I'm not worrying about that," protested the girl; "but oh, I don't
+know--I hate to have the success of a dinner in the air, especially
+when you have a sort of reputation in that way, don't you know."
+
+"Nonsense," replied the older woman, glancing admiringly at the tall,
+lithe girl in her white evening gown as she moved through the
+drawing-room to the dining-room, where the butler was adding the final
+deft fillips to a centrepiece of roses, in which a candy yacht was
+sinking.
+
+"You see," said the girl, pointing to a dinner card bearing Merrithew's
+name, "I am going to place him between you and me.  Will you--won't you
+arrange things so he'll take you in.  No; never mind!  I'll arrange
+that--you're always such a dear about such things, and you won't mind,
+will you?"
+
+"Certainly not," smiled her aunt, "I shall ask him to tow me in."
+
+They both laughed.  Their understanding was perfect.  Ever since the
+older woman had entered her brother's house, years before, to care for
+a motherless child, the bond of sympathy between the two had been of
+the strongest, and throughout she had remained the best friend and
+counsellor, if only because she was the wisest.
+
+When Dan entered the Howlands' drawing-room all the guests had arrived.
+He accomplished this difficult feat, which is considered an art in
+fashionable schools, with easy grace and unconsciousness and received
+Virginia's welcome courteously.
+
+He wore a well-fitting blue suit of conventional cut and neither his
+hands nor his feet seemed to bother him a bit.  And yet among the men
+of the company he stood out in sharp contrast.  Miss Howland marked
+this particularly when Oddington presented himself with an air of
+good-humored camaraderie,--he, the successful young lawyer, with a
+growing reputation as a man about town and the glamour which surrounds
+the most popular all-around man at his university still about him; a
+man who did well everything he tried to do, and able to give the
+impression that the things he could not do were not worth the attempt;
+whose every action, every word, every expression was marked with the
+undefinable stamp of the metropolis, and the various lessons it
+teaches.  Merrithew, on the other hand, standing tall and
+broad-shouldered, looking about him as he talked, with quick, observant
+glances; a face weather-beaten, but not rough, a typical Anglo-Saxon
+fighting face, but kindly withal; certainly not truculent.  Miss
+Howland had met young army and navy officers who had aroused in her
+similar impressions; she had, in fact, no difficulty in defining
+Merrithew's type.  He was of the class which does strong things out of
+the beaten track; men who in the process of civilization have retained
+some of the wandering or combative or predatory instincts of earlier
+ages and have been set apart in the scheme of natural selection to
+fight battles, explore countries, kill wild beasts, navigate waters, to
+the end that a greater proportion of their fellow men may peaceably
+advance the interests of commerce, science, the arts, and, other
+affairs of a humdrum world.
+
+Oddington took Miss Howland in.  At the last moment her father had
+telephoned from the office he would be late and not to wait for him.
+This necessitated a hasty rearrangement of the dinner cards; and Mrs.
+Van Vleck was further disturbed by the butler, who was batting his eyes
+fiercely at the cringing second man, token that something had occurred,
+or more probably had been about to occur, to mar that service which was
+his pride.
+
+Dan, therefore, who sat at her right, finding relief from the
+rapid-fire conversation which she had directed at him, obviously with
+intention to put him at his ease, found time to glance up and down the
+table.  There were perhaps a dozen persons, and he recognized most of
+them as members of the _Veiled Ladye's_ party.  Reginald Wotherspoon,
+upon dry land once more, out of danger, sure of himself, was bantering
+one of the girls across the table, in the dry, masterful tone of one
+who fancies he understands women; and the rest were laughing at the
+confused indignation which marked her replies.
+
+Dan recalled this girl.  She had been especially cool aboard the yacht;
+and certain pictures of Wotherspoon flashing through his mind, an
+amused smile lighted his eyes for an instant.  Miss Howland, who at the
+moment had turned from Oddington, caught the smile, and following his
+gaze, instinctively divined the cause.  She was not annoyed.  On the
+contrary, she was pleased, for it indicated to her that Dan was
+perfectly at ease, and she noted, moreover, that he was dealing with
+the various courses with a greater degree of _savoir faire_, so to
+speak, than she had thought probable.  She dismissed forthwith all
+fears she had entertained regarding Wotherspoon's prediction that
+"among the features of the dinner would be a lifelike imitation of a
+towboat skipper swallowing his knife."
+
+He followed Mrs. Van Vleck's leads in conversation, and once responded
+with crisp cleverness to a gay remark addressed to him by a girl across
+the table.  But he seemed to take it for granted that Miss Howland
+would be occupied with Oddington; and in fact he had spoken to her but
+once, and then to thank her when she pushed a dish of almonds toward
+him.
+
+The girl had noted a similar tendency of late on the part of other men,
+but had thought of it only in as far as it had impressed upon her the
+fact that she and Ralph had grown to understand each other rather well
+and were very good friends.  She had arrived at that age where she had
+begun to feel that perhaps, after all, this might be what the world
+called love and that women who attributed to the word emotions deeper,
+more absorbing, more thrilling, were mere sentimentalists, who derived
+their plans and ideas from a world of dreams or from fiction both
+classical and popular; or else they were women of deeper feeling than
+she knew herself to be.
+
+It was all a problem.  She had reason to feel that a time was
+approaching when Oddington might reasonably expect a clearer,
+better-defined relation.  Whether she would be willing to grant this
+was another matter.  It was possible she might; it was possible she
+might not.  She did not know.  It was a situation which perplexed if it
+did not inspire her, which interested if it did not thrill.
+
+And yet now Dan's tacit aloofness piqued her.  She admitted she did not
+understand him at all.  Here was a man, a tugboat captain, of course a
+product of the water front; primarily, no doubt, a dock-rat, and yet a
+man who had not tangled himself in the use of his forks, who spoke in
+even, well-modulated tones, and looked like a gentleman.  Miss Howland
+was not snobbish in these thoughts.  She had never been a snob; she was
+simply considering facts.  And she did not want him to be aloof.
+
+"Captain Merrithew," she said in a tone designed to draw him and the
+others into general conversation, "Ralph--Mr. Oddington, has been
+saying things again about my favorite cousin Percy Walton."
+
+Ignoring the polite chorus of mild expostulation, Miss Howland turned
+to Dan, speaking with great vivacity.
+
+"Percy, you know, was educated to win football games for Yale, and at
+the last moment went to Princeton.  But he did not play there, because
+Uncle Horace, his father, in a fit of disgust, made him go to work."
+She glanced smilingly at Oddington.  "Mr. Oddington and Mr. Wotherspoon
+say he was proselyted by Princeton.  We've had more fights about it--"
+
+"Well, he was proselyted," laughed Oddington, "stolen from us bodily."
+
+"Wasn't it some time ago?" asked Dan.
+
+"Why, that's just the point," said Mrs. Van Vleck.  "It was at least
+five or six years ago.  I am afraid Ralph and Reggie will never be able
+to realize they are not undergraduates."
+
+Oddington smiled.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," he said.  "At all events, it keeps us young.  As
+for Walton, I'd be ashamed to own him for a cousin," winking at Dan.
+"Why, Merrithew, all his family had been Yale from great-grandfather
+down."
+
+"There; you hear him, Captain Merrithew," cried Miss Howland; "don't
+you think that's a horrid way to talk?"
+
+Dan smiled, tapping lightly on the table with his fingers.
+
+"I don't believe he was stolen," he said slowly, as though not quite
+certain whether he ought to venture an opinion.  "Whether he was or
+not, I don't believe he'd ever have made the Yale team or the Princeton
+eleven either."
+
+Virginia started in her chair and glanced at him swiftly.
+
+"Indeed!" she said, flushing.  "You don't mean to say--what do you know
+about Percy Walton?"
+
+"Now you're in for it, Merrithew," grinned Oddington.  "What do you
+know about Walton?"
+
+Dan picked up his dinner card and spun it between his thumb and
+forefinger for a few seconds, and then with a slight smile replied:
+
+"Why, not a great deal.  Next to nothing, personally."  He paused a
+moment, and then glancing down at the table added, "I was captain of
+the eleven on which Walton played at Exeter."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+After the guests had gone, Virginia, her father, and Mrs. Van Vleck sat
+for a few minutes in a small apartment between the drawing and dining
+rooms.  The girl's eyes were bright.
+
+"Well, father, I actually believe you could have knocked me down with a
+feather to-night."
+
+Mr. Howland drew his cigar-cutter from his pocket and slowly inserted
+the end of a perfecto.
+
+"I suppose you refer to Merrithew."
+
+"Certainly," said Mrs. Van Vleck; "why in the world didn't you tell us,
+Horace?"
+
+"Yes, why didn't you?" The girl had arisen and approached her father's
+chair.  "You might have known, father dear, that both Aunt Helen and I
+lay awake nights wondering whether he would bring a boat-hook or a
+sou'wester to the dinner, and do--oh, all sorts of outlandish things,
+making us the joke of the season.  And to think--a football captain in
+Percy's class at prep school, quiet, easy-mannered--"
+
+Mr. Howland snapped the end from his cigar and placed the cutter in his
+pocket.
+
+"Are you quite through, Virginia?" he said.
+
+"Quite," replied the girl, who thereupon disproved her assertion by
+beginning where she had left off.  "And I do believe you knew all the
+time and were simply teasing us."
+
+"That is not exactly true," smiled her father.  "Of course I looked him
+up a bit before offering him the command of the _Tampico_.  He comes
+from near New Bedford.  You know my mother's family lived there."
+
+The girl nodded.  "Yes?  Go on."
+
+Mr. Howland lighted a match and held it burning for a while before
+applying it to his cigar.
+
+"You know," he said, "there are no better people in the world than some
+of those New England seafaring families.  The Merrithews, I believe,
+were very substantial. . . .  So you see where your supposed wharf-rat
+acquired the manner which you marked in him, and his good English,
+and--and well, whatever else you marked."
+
+"What is he going to do now?" asked Mrs. Van Vleck.  "Oh, of course,
+the _Tampico_.  Is he qualified to be a captain?"
+
+"Why, naturally; I haven't the slightest doubt of it.  But Harrison
+will stay with the ship for two or three more trips to break him in
+thoroughly.  Both companies by whom he was employed while in tugboat
+work speak of him in the highest terms.  It's all rather a departure.
+But I feel I owe it to Merrithew; and besides, I have an idea he is the
+sort of man we want.  This West Indian trade is not all beer and
+skittles."
+
+"It is very interesting," said Virginia, stifling a yawn.  "I hope to
+see something more of him; he's a new sort and worth studying.
+And--oh, father, is there any chance that we'll have that house-party
+at our San Blanco estate next Spring?  I mean--of course you've
+promised that.  What I meant was, will we go on the _Tampico_?  Now
+don't smile, father; you have said a dozen times you were through with
+steam yachts."
+
+"I'm not smiling," said Mr. Howland.  "It is quite possible we'll go
+down on the _Tampico_--unless Merrithew manages to sink her in the
+meantime."
+
+"Bully," cried the girl.  "Good-night. . . .  I think," she said,
+speaking slowly over her shoulder--"I think we had a very successful
+partee."  She paused and looked doubtfully at her father.  "The only
+difficulty is that, now we know he is not hopelessly impossible in one
+way, we have to face the fact that he is all the more impossible in
+others."
+
+"Yes," said her aunt, laughing, "as an interesting social freak we
+might have used him; but as an ordinary, well-behaved steamship
+captain--"  Mrs. Van Vleck shrugged her shoulders expressively and
+raised her eyebrows.
+
+"Well," said the girl, "he'll be eminently eligible for the Captain's
+table of the _Tampico_.  Somehow I wish he had done something unusual
+to-night.  I had developed all sorts of strange fancies concerning him."
+
+Now, as a matter of fact, she did not wish that at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WITS VERSUS MACHINE GUNS
+
+Dan brought to his new duties a well-grounded knowledge of the
+fundamentals of his calling, and his deficiencies, such as they were,
+were skilfully eliminated by his white-haired mentor, Captain Harrison.
+Among other things, this prince of ancient mariners, who had taken a
+great fancy to Dan, was at infinite pains to impress upon him the fact
+that in the duties of captain of a vessel calling regularly at the
+ports of small Latin republics many requirements aside from mere
+ability to navigate a ship are involved.  Seductive arts, such as
+verbal or financial propitiation; knowledge when to give a dinner and
+when to threaten to invoke the "big stick"; when to hold to a position
+and when to recede from it;--all these attributes of diplomacy were
+acquired by Dan under Harrison's tutelage, so that when the old Captain
+finally retired to his well-earned rest on a Long Island farm, he
+"allowed" that young Merrithew had the stuff in him of which smart
+officers are made.
+
+On his own account, Dan, by keeping his mouth shut and his eyes open,
+learned not a little of the methods which characterized the relations
+of his company with various Governments; and while not all that he
+learned could in the widest implication of the phrase he designated as
+morally--or, say, rather, ethically--elevating, it afforded an
+interesting side-light upon the business character of Horace Howland.
+
+In this connection it is well to state that the ultra clamorous days in
+San Blanco had long ceased, and that the new _Presidente_, Rodriguez,
+who had arisen to his honors out of the midst of the travail of fire,
+powder, and a modicum of bloodshed, was conducting affairs of state
+much to the liking of the San Blanco Trading and Investment Company, of
+which company Mr. Howland was the brains and guiding spirit.  Need it
+be suggested that this amounts to saying that Mr. Howland was the
+brains and guiding spirit of the San Blanco Republic as then
+constituted?
+
+At all events, with peace smiling over troublous San Blanco, Mr.
+Howland sent word to Dan that early in April he, his daughter, Mrs. Van
+Vleck, and a party of ten, would sail on the _Tampico_ for Belle View,
+the Howland estate, just outside of San Blanco City.
+
+Dan was not altogether surprised at this message.  The passenger
+accommodations of the _Tampico_ were elaborate, and hints of Mr.
+Howland's intention had reached him in one way or another.  But now
+with definite assurances in hand life took on added zest.  He had not
+seen Miss Howland since the dinner; but it would have been futile for
+him to attempt to convince himself that she had not formed a more or
+less vague background for many of his thoughts and moods since that
+epochal event.  Occasionally he saw her name in the newspapers, and one
+of them once printed a picture purporting to be her photograph.  But it
+was not.  Otherwise he might have been tempted to cut it out.
+
+Now, with her presence aboard the _Tampico_ assured, the steamship
+became involved with a new significance.  He pictured her on the bridge
+with him.  He selected her place at the table in the saloon, and
+dreamed of all the life and laughter and grace and beauty she would
+bring to it.
+
+As for himself, he had the proud realization that in measuring his
+opportunities on the broadest possible gauge, he had lived up to them
+sincerely, and he knew the results to be good.  On his own bridge he
+had faced the blind fog with the lives of passengers hanging upon his
+judgment; he had met the elements at their work, and out of the ordeal
+he had come with greater self-reliance, broader, kindlier, better.  For
+the first time in his life he was looking beyond his dreams, although
+the work in hand was all-absorbing; there would be more for him to do.
+He felt it, he knew it, for such is youth.
+
+One beautiful April morning, a company, wonderfully well selected
+according to the view-point of Virginia and her aunt, boarded the
+_Tampico_ and merrily set sail.  Not the least of that company was
+Howland himself, who, standing upon the bridge beside Dan, smiled as he
+thought of the dozen Hotchkiss guns and the two very grim eight-inch
+rifles resting in the darkness of the forward hold, and then spoke
+almost in parables.
+
+"It is always well, Captain, to divine the trend of the wind before
+weather vanes give information to all who care to look for it."
+
+"Yes?" replied Dan, not comprehending.
+
+"Yes.  Those playthings, strategically placed at the capital, will
+insure an era of Government integrity for some time to come; and that
+will be very good; for the kind of integrity existing there is much to
+my liking.  Vasquez is restless; Sanches is uneasy; but there will be
+no radical action for some time to come.  When it does--well, Captain,
+I have taken the liberty to store some pieces of ordnance below--they
+appear as household furniture in the manifest of cargo.  I consider
+them qualified to maintain all sorts of Government integrity."
+
+"No doubt," smiled Dan; "if you have any one down there to handle them."
+
+"I have a very large office staff in Domingo City, unusually large.  I
+did not hire the men for their penmanship, nor for their ability as
+clerks, either."  Here Mr. Howland raised his eyebrows slightly, and
+Dan, taking his cue, raised his eyebrows too.
+
+And so the _Tampico_ sailed peacefully south-ward.  The April sun
+softened the air, the sea was like glass, and by the time the steamship
+had picked up the Southern Cross, the little company had been tried in
+the balance of propinquity and found not wanting.
+
+It was brilliant moonlight, and eight bells chimed sweetly over the
+silvery waters from the forecastle head, as Dan, with a cheery good
+evening, followed the first mate to the bridge.  The second mate smiled
+genially, gave the course as south half east, and, with his dog-watch
+ended, went to bed.  A gruff voice rolled along the deck.
+
+"The watch is aft, sir!"
+
+Dan's voice hurled astern before the echoes died.
+
+"All right.  Relieve the wheel--and the lookout!"
+
+Virginia, addressing a merry group on the hurricane deck, just below
+and aft the bridge, paused in the middle of a sentence and listened to
+the sharp, crisp words.  Then she smiled slightly and resumed her
+discourse.
+
+Dan paced up and down with the mate, taking up the thread of the talk
+where it had been left the previous watch; but neither was in a talking
+mood, and they soon fell silent.  Presently a girl's rich voice rose to
+the accompaniment of Oddington's banjo, an instrument but poorly
+adapted to the motif of the music, which was plaintive, yearning.  The
+deep contralto notes brought full meed of meaning, although the words
+were German; low, deep, uncertain at first--the ponderings of love, of
+devotion, of doubt--then swelling loud and full and free at the end;
+love justified, undying, triumphant, overpowering.
+
+  "Könnt' fühlen je das Glück das ich würd nennen mein
+  Hätt' ich nur Dich allein!  Hätt' ich nur Dich, nur Dich allein!"
+
+Then suddenly in wild rapture she broke from the German, repeating the
+refrain in English--
+
+  ". . .  The rapture that would be my own
+  If I had you . . . if I had you . . . you."
+
+Piercing sweet it ended, filled with tenderness.  Just you, you, you,
+going on far across the moon-lit waters into infinity.  Dan walked to
+the lee of the bridge and with hands on the dodger's ridge, leaned
+forward, peering bard and straight to the rim of the sea.
+
+For every heart there is a song, and for every song a heart; for this
+earth is not so big that the dreams, the passion of some song-maker,
+humble or not, may not strike a responsive chord, at the other end of
+the world, it may be.  And this for Dan; this simple love song with its
+swelling iterations.  It awakened sleeping poetry in the heart of the
+young commander, awakened a tenderness long hidden under the rough
+exterior of a tumultuous life.
+
+There was no mistaking the identity of the singer, no mistaking those
+deep, full notes, vibrant, rounded, and so melodious.  To whom was she
+singing?  Could a woman sing like that, sing as Miss Howland sang, to
+no one?  Impersonally?  Dan turned his face down at the group.  The
+women were muffled in greatcoats, for the soft evening, which had
+tempted them to the deck, was growing chill, and he could see the dark
+forms of the men and the red lights of their cigars.  Wotherspoon had
+just finished a comic song, and they were all laughing and applauding.
+
+Somehow it all emphasized in Dan his aloofness.  He heard Oddington
+address some jocular remark presumably to Miss Howland, for he caught
+her laughing reply.  And the thought came, how eminently eligible
+Oddington was to sit at her side; how fitting that he should be
+there--wealthy, distinctly of her set, a good fellow at the university,
+and now a law partner in the practice which his hard-working father had
+prepared for him.  For the first time, perhaps, in his life Dan felt
+himself humbled, and a great wave of bitterness flooded his mind. . . .
+And yet Miss Howland had been very kind to him.  Ah, but that was not
+the point.  He did not want persons to be kind; that suggested charity,
+or pity.  No; he wanted exactly what he earned--what he could take with
+his bare hands and his bare soul.  He wanted equality--or nothing; and
+if at the end of his struggle it had to be nothing, all right--but the
+end was not yet.
+
+Toward nine o'clock the deck party began to break up.  Some one had
+suggested bridge, and some opposed the suggestion.  At the end of a
+laughing discussion Oddington and three others went to the
+smoking-room, while the rest dispersed in various directions.  Dan,
+filled with his thoughts, was in the act of lighting his pipe, when the
+clicking of footfalls and the rustling of skirts sounded on the bridge
+steps.  The next instant Virginia stood before him.  The moonlight fell
+upon her, outlining the girl distinctly in her long, blue,
+double-breasted coat and the wealth of rippling dark hair flowing from
+under an English yachting cap.  She was smiling.
+
+"Do I intrude upon your sacred precincts?" she asked, "or am I welcome?
+I want to talk to you."
+
+"You are welcome, Miss Howland," said Dan, knocking the fire from his
+pipe and stuffing the briar-wood into his pocket, at the same time
+glancing quickly toward the wheel where the mate and the quartermaster
+were busy over a slight alteration in course.
+
+"I feared that incident at the table--Reggie Wotherspoon's behavior, I
+mean, might have upset you.  Of course you know he meant nothing by it.
+We all understand how he hates to be beaten in an argument.  Really he
+admires you--which is well for him, I can assure you."
+
+Dan, deeply embarrassed, muttered something about understanding
+perfectly about Wotherspoon, and that he knew him to be a decent enough
+sort of chap.
+
+"Do you know," went on the girl, "I myself was rather startled at first
+when you said that no man--that you could not tell whether you would
+flunk in time of danger.  I was so glad when you made your reservation
+that in the past, at least, you had not shown the white feather.  'What
+the past has shown,'" she quoted, "'who can gainsay the future?'  Oh,
+it was glorious," she exclaimed impulsively, "the night you stuck to
+our yacht until your own tug was battered to pieces!  I suppose I have
+said that a hundred times; but it grows more thrilling every time I
+think of it."
+
+She looked at him with open interest.  His uniform became him well; the
+trim sack coat fitted his great, deep chest and almost abnormal
+shoulders snugly; and above were the square, smooth face, the steady
+gray eyes, and the red-gold hair; and the long, straight limbs
+supported a lithe, almost aggressive poise.
+
+She started slightly forward.
+
+"Have you ever thought how much we owe you?  Oh, I have so often wished
+I could show you how much we appreciate all you did, in some way!"
+
+"You must not think of it in that way."
+
+"Why not, please?"  Miss Howland was a straightforward girl who faced a
+situation squarely.
+
+"Why, because the debt is all on my side.  Your father has given me my
+first command; and you--you have been fine to me.  I have had more than
+an ordinary sailor deserves."
+
+"But you are not an _ordinary_ sailor," said the girl quickly.  "Father
+knows of your people--"  She paused.  "Oh, I beg your pardon," she
+cried.
+
+"Listen," said Dan, quietly.  "When I was younger, about to enter
+college, a careless, happy life ended.  I began all over again then.  I
+date everything from that beginning--from the time I went aboard a
+tug-boat--the Lord knows why--and tried to do something.  What I have
+done, what I shall do, dating from that time, I stand on.  Before that
+my battles were fought for me.  After that the fight was my own.  And I
+have never regretted one bit of it; nor am I ashamed of one single
+minute from the time I slung hawsers on the _Hydrographer_ until I
+commanded the _Fledgling_.  And I shall always rejoice, and my friends
+must rejoice, in that part of the fight, and never seek to hide a
+single incident.  It's all behind now, but it was worth while.  And a
+man must go on--"
+
+"Yes, I know," replied the girl, softly.  She turned her face from the
+silvery path on the water.
+
+"And you are not going to stop fighting.  Oh, you will not stop!  You
+will go on and on.  Men like you never stand still.  I know it is the
+truth.  What difference can your past life make to your friends?  It is
+never what a man was or might have been that counts, or what he may be;
+it is what he is."
+
+And then she turned and left him.
+
+One evening as the dark came creeping over the purple waters, the
+_Tampico_ cluttered up to the mouth of the harbor of San Blanco City.
+Captain Merrithew and Mr. Howland stood on the bridge, while Virginia
+and most of her guests were assembled at the rail, all eyes straining
+shoreward.  A rattle of musketry tore through the evening air--a
+muzzle-loading cannon spoke grouchily; then all was still.  A sailboat
+was drifting out to sea and the fishermen, being hailed, informed those
+on the steamship that revolutionists were pounding at the city walls
+and pounding hard, but thus far without avail.  The uprising, as usual,
+they said, had its inception in the fastnesses of Monte-Cristi and,
+spreading through the country, had brought up with a bang against the
+walls of the city itself.
+
+Mr. Howland was seriously perturbed.
+
+"We must get in quickly and land our guns, Captain," he said.  "It's
+too bad we have this party with us.  However, you must not consider
+their comfort.  If you land this cargo of ordnance, we can break the
+revolution easily and pleasantly."
+
+He glanced at the Blancan navy--two gunboats, formerly pleasure yachts,
+and a "battleship," once a steam-lighter--which lay at strategic
+intervals across the harbor mouth and moved impatiently.
+
+"The scoundrels!" he ejaculated.  "Why don't they shell those
+insurgents?  They could end this promptly if they wished to.  I shall
+have something pleasant to say to them and to Señor Gaspard of the
+Marine when I see him.  Still, perhaps they are waiting for me.
+President Rodriguez expects us."
+
+Mollified at this thought, Mr. Howland straightened to a dignified and
+commanding posture.  The honors accorded an arriving Howland vessel
+were the honors accorded a United States warship, and he scanned the
+fleet eagerly for the first sign of the invariable welcome.  He turned
+to Dan.
+
+"Better dive into your cabin, Captain, and get on your double-breasted
+regalia," he said.  "There will be a round of diplomatic calls and
+felicitations generally--and of course they will ask for wine; for of
+all half-starved, thirsty natives, give me those of this bob-tailed
+republic."
+
+The fighting had evidently stopped for the night, and Mr. Howland waved
+his hand at the flag-ship.  He dearly loved all the punctilio of
+international etiquette and the deference that had ever been his
+portion in San Blanco.
+
+And so this captain of industry smiled and hearkened for the first gun
+of the expected salute.  But it did not come.  There was silence
+somewhat grim and certainly sullen.  He ground his teeth impatiently,
+angry disappointment growing as they drew near the fleet.  "What is the
+matter with those rascals?" he growled, turning to Dan, who,
+resplendent in blue and gold, had just joined him on the bridge.
+
+"They don't seem to be happy to see us," replied the Captain, shortly.
+
+"Not happy!" exclaimed Mr. Howland, who began to feel that the
+situation approximated _lèse-majesté_.  "Not happy?  Confound them!
+When we're bringing guns to support their mangy and tottering
+Government!"
+
+"Well," replied the young commander, who scented trouble and thought of
+the party on board, "they don't seem to be, anyway."
+
+A sharp hail rang out from the nearest gun-boat, the flag-ship.
+
+"What vessel is that, and whither bound?"
+
+Mr. Howland tore at his collar and stuttered in purple fury.
+
+"Impudence!  Impertinence!  Lunacy!  Here, Captain, tell them they know
+very well what ship this is--and--and--wait!" as Dan raised the
+megaphone to his lips.  "Don't waste time talking to the villains.
+Tell them--tell them to go--well, you know what to tell them."
+
+And Dan demonstrated that he did--so vigorously, so eloquently that the
+answer came in the shape of a blank shot across the _Tampico's_ bows.
+
+Dan looked gravely at the owner.
+
+"The thing is pretty plain, Mr. Howland," he said; "the navy has
+evidently joined the insurrection.  Why they have not bombarded the
+city I don't know; but you can be sure they are going to.  We will have
+to stop," and without waiting for a reply he jerked the signal
+indicator, to cease headway.  Mr. Howland was at no pains to conceal
+his chagrin.
+
+"A mighty bad stumbling-block; a mighty bad stumbling-block if the navy
+has revolted, Captain Merrithew.  If this Government falls, it means a
+great deal to me; means the loss of considerable money--and prestige.
+I must look to you to land those guns, Captain."
+
+Dan did not reply, but gazed earnestly toward the city as though
+meditating a dash.  But that was out of the question, considering those
+aboard.  As the chug of the engines died out and the cough of the
+exhaust hit the glooming air and the clumsy black hull slid to a
+gurgling standstill, a gig was lowered from the _El Toro_, the
+flag-ship, and the officer, Admiral Congosto, was soon stumbling up the
+gangway of the freighter.  Mr. Howland was inclined to have him thrown
+overboard at once, but the better counsel of the Captain prevailed.
+
+"Very well," growled the ruffled owner, "have your fling."
+
+Admiral Congosto was a pompous Spaniard, obese, with bristling brows
+and moustaches, who wrinkled his forehead and winked his eyes
+constantly.
+
+"So," he said, with unctuous dignity, as Dan met him at the rail, "the
+Capitan?"
+
+"Yes; the Capitan," and Dan bowed courteously.
+
+"You are for San Blanco with supplies?--and--and--ah!"  The Admiral
+completed his sentence with a significant shrug of the shoulder.  Dan
+was equally cautious.
+
+"We were putting in for water, for fresh water," he said.  "Our
+condenser's filled with bread crumbs or something, and we can't make
+enough for our boilers, let alone drinking."
+
+With an ample shrug of his shoulders, the Spaniard suggested that the
+Captain might obtain all the water he wished if he would go in, leaving
+his cargo outside.  And then, as though weary of the subject, he turned
+to more congenial topics.  He thirsted for good wine; that fact was
+early elucidated, after which he rambled along indefinitely, allowing
+Dan to gather that all the officers of the fleet were also thirsting
+for wine.  At last he came straight to the point.
+
+"A case--a dozen bottles--it would suffice--it would be
+appreciated--ah!"
+
+Dan had an idea, and began to build upon it forthwith.
+
+"Admiral," he said, "there is much of what you seek aboard.  As you
+well know, Señor Howland never travels with empty lockers--there is
+much of a certain wine that sparkles--see?"
+
+"I see, but I do not hear what I mean," replied the perplexed Admiral,
+indulging nevertheless in anticipatory internal gratulations.
+
+"Why, hang it, man, champagne!"  The Admiral's beady eyes danced.  "Mr.
+Howland desires me to say that it is his wish that the friendly
+relations between his officers and those of the navy of San Blanco
+shall never wane.  There will, in short, be a dinner in half an hour to
+the officers of the fleet."
+
+"A dinnaire!"  Congosto sprang forward and embraced his prospective
+host, and five minutes later was speeding to his ship, the bearer of
+glad news.  For, behold, where he thought to meet an enemy, devious and
+tricky, he had encountered instead, a friend, generous, hospitable!
+
+"I fail to see your play, quite, Captain Merrithew," grumbled Mr.
+Howland.
+
+"Well," interpolated Virginia, "it was a very interesting play.
+Captain, I had no idea you could be so eloquent."
+
+"Thank you," laughed Dan.  "Mr. Howland," he added, "I shall make my
+play plain very shortly.  All I ask now is that you have your party
+assemble at the rail when the officers arrive and receive them as
+though they were representatives of the British Navy.  They will be
+conducted to the saloon.  Let no one of the party follow them in.
+Please make that clear."
+
+The guests came--in gigs, in launches, dinghies, and longboats--came
+with laughter, came with rejoicing, for they were to dine with the
+señor of the open hand, Señor Howland, who always opened wine as they
+would open tins of beef.  The gods never repaired more blithely to a
+Bacchanalian revel on Parnassus.  Two by two, in rigid order of rank
+they were escorted into the saloon, and the eloquent popping of corks
+was as music in their ears.  The Admiral took his place at the head of
+the table; the rest disposed themselves suitably.
+
+With a muttered excuse, Dan slipped out of a near-by door; the stewards
+disappeared; every one on the _Tampico_ stole quietly away.
+
+Admiral Congosto had no sooner raised his glass for the first toast
+than the two iron bulkhead doors slid together with a clang, followed
+by the rasp of bolts flying home.  The Admiral of the fleet and his
+lords commanders were hopelessly imprisoned amid the luxury of saloon
+surroundings, as hopelessly imprisoned as though they had been shut
+into the darkness of the lower hold.
+
+In the meantime, the _Tampico_, from hold to masthead, was blazing like
+a tall Sound steamboat.  Dan gained the bridge and gazed at the
+illumination with a smile; for all this splendor of electrical display
+was for a purpose.
+
+"You've locked them in, eh?" said Mr. Howland, abruptly.  He had been
+pacing the bridge, the victim of many doubts.
+
+"Yes," replied Dan; and there was a sharp inflection in the
+monosyllable which precluded further questioning.  The owner had
+instructed his Captain to land the guns which were lying in the hold of
+the steamship, and the young Captain was intent on the matter in hand.
+
+He pulled a certain crank, upon which the steam winches began to
+revolve with ghostly creakings, bringing the anchor up out of the mud.
+Then he signalled for full speed ahead.  There was a creaking, a sound
+of roiling water, and then, still blazing with light, the steamship
+made out for the open sea.
+
+They had gone but a quarter of a mile when those who were left on the
+fleet suddenly came to a realizing sense of the diabolical plot hatched
+under their very noses.  A gun boomed, a six-pounder shell squealed
+past the bridge, but the _Tampico_ slipped on her way seaward, while
+the funnels of the fleet belched clouds of smoke blacker than the
+velvet skies.  From the saloon came muffled shouts and ineffectual
+poundings on the bulkhead doors.
+
+"The walls are good and thick," said Dan, grimly.  "I doubt they will
+be heard--unless some one of the craft gets within a hundred yards of
+us.  They ought to have full steam up by this time.  I might as well
+stop her right here; this is about right."
+
+As the steamship swung heavily on the tide, the Captain shouted an
+order, which was taken up on deck and carried down a hatchway.  The
+next instant the lights in the lower part of the hull went out.  A few
+minutes later, another stratum of lights disappeared, and still later
+the deck lights.  Then out went the port and starboard lamps.  Then
+there was a ten-minute wait, while Mr. Howland, Virginia, and the rest
+of the party who had ventured on deck, thrilled and delighted with the
+situation, held their breath.  Dan pulled another switch and the
+masthead lights went out.  The _Tampico_ was now a part of the night.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Virginia, "I see.  You have given them an imitation of
+a vessel disappearing hull down in the darkness.  How clever!"
+
+An exclamation from Mr. Howland broke the silence.  "Oh!" he cried.  "I
+see."  And he placed his hand on Dan's shoulder.
+
+The stillness was intense.  The water swept softly past the hull; the
+extremities of the vessel were lost in a blur of black.  Mr. Howland
+became impatient.
+
+"What can be the matter with those fellows?  Why don't they chase us
+and be done with it?"
+
+Dan touched him on the shoulder.  From the outer darkness floated a
+mysterious bourdon, which rapidly outgrew that definition and became a
+veritable commotion.  One light twinkled, then another, and still
+another.  Finally the swift pulsation of engines at high pressure rived
+the night.
+
+"They are coming."  The Captain turned to those who had gathered on the
+bridge, adding, "Now I want this place cleared, please.  If this scheme
+falls through, we shall have our perch raked with machine guns.  Go
+down on deck and either keep below, or to the side of the forward steel
+deck-house, which is away from the warships--and no noise.  Not a
+sound!  Understand?"
+
+Virginia, Mrs. Van Vleck, Oddington, and two others of the party
+decided to take their position in the shelter of the deck-house, where
+they could see and yet be protected if the vessel were fired upon.  All
+amusement had gone from the situation for Virginia.  She knew that her
+father, who insisted upon remaining on the bridge, might at any moment
+be placed in jeopardy.  And there was another emotion, which she sought
+not to deny--the Captain, what if he should fall?  Ah, she did not want
+that--particularly now he was risking himself, not for honor, not for
+any interest of his own, but because he was her father's employee.
+Then, too, she wished to study, to know him better; yes, that was what
+she wanted, and she had been conscious of it all along, to see, to
+learn, to know more of him.  She could distinguish his tall, straight
+figure against the darkness, moving swiftly.
+
+She had forgotten about the pursuing warships and what might follow,
+until her aunt tugged at her sleeve.
+
+"They are coming, Virginia," she said.
+
+They were indeed, and angry craft they were, a spectacle to marvel at,
+viewed from the shrouded _Tampico_, lying black and motionless, with
+every light out, with tarpaulins over the engine-room hatches and
+gratings; with even the ventilator hoods blanketed.
+
+"There they are!"  The whisper shot through the _Tampico_ like a draft
+of cold air.  Virginia was quivering with excitement.  She could see
+the leading boat as it passed not three hundred yards away, and the
+next, both spouting flames from their funnels, throwing up water, which
+fell in silvery, phosphorescent spray--racketing, clawing the restless
+sea, chugging, hissing with shouts of vengeance hurtling from their
+decks, First ploughed the flag-ship _El Toro_, next _El Teuera_, and
+last the "battleship" _El Manuel_, sitting almost on her stern,
+plugging along doggedly in a Herculean effort to be first in at the
+death of the presumptuous kidnappers.
+
+It was alarming, too, and the young people, trembling behind their
+shelter, gave a great sigh of relief as the last avenger passed, and
+the head of the _Tampico_ swung slowly around in the direction of the
+harbor.  Virginia again turned her eyes to the bridge.  The young
+Captain was standing like a statue, with his hands on the engine-room
+indicator, jumping the _Tampico_ across the waves under full headway.
+He was looking back over his shoulder, and the girl, following his
+gaze, saw to her great trepidation that the flag-ship, _El Toro_, had
+ceased headway and was lying motionless, as if those aboard her had
+divined the trick and were pausing a moment for fresh bearings.
+
+Suddenly came a crash of heavy glass; a girl screamed.  One of the
+saloon dead-lights had crashed out, the thick glass rattling down the
+steel hull to the sea.  There was another crash and a yellow glow
+flared into a bright blaze, illuminating the hull of the shrouded
+vessel.
+
+"Now they've done it!" cried Oddington.  "They have soaked a
+table-cloth with kerosene; it's all off now!  So much for Captain
+Merrithew's scheme.  I--"  A voice rang from the bridge.
+
+"Everybody down, quick!"  The warning was none too soon, for a second
+later a rain of lead from the _El Toro_ swept through the top of the
+funnel.  Then with straining engines the gunboat made a swinging
+detour, with the intention, plain to every one, of heading off the
+freighter.
+
+The firing was incessant now, and every one of the Howland party, as
+well as the crew, grovelled flat on the deck and heard lead whistling
+above.  Virginia, glancing at the bridge in an agony of terror, saw the
+Captain crouching just a trifle, but still at his post.  One man, a
+quarter-master, knelt at the wheel.  But she missed her father, and a
+great dread filled her mind.  It was but momentary, however, for Mr.
+Howland joined the party behind the deck-house.
+
+"Oh father!" cried the girl, "I feared you were hurt.  Why doesn't
+Captain Merrithew stop the boat and leave the bridge?  Surely his life
+and those of his men there are of more value than your interests in
+Blanco!"
+
+"I told him to stop, to throw ourselves upon the protection of our
+flag," and Mr. Howland laughed nervously.  "But it was no use.  I
+believe I reared a Frankenstein monster when I selected him as the man
+to land our guns.  Frankly he as much as told me to mind my business.
+He's in a fighting mood now; his jaws are set like steel-traps--I know
+his kind.  And do you know, Virginia, he will land us and the guns,
+too.  You wait!"
+
+The _El Toro_ had stopped firing, and was bending all energies to
+heading off the freighter; it looked as though she would do it, too,
+for she had once been a private yacht and had evidently lost none of
+her speed.  It was a mighty race.  The _Tampico_ was by no means a
+slouchy craft, and she ripped her way through the waters, clawing for
+the harbor mouth and San Blanco City like a thing possessed.  Swinging
+on a tactical semi-circle, the trim little flag-ship flew like a white
+ghost, tearing the waters, curling them up on deck until they ran out
+of the scuppers.  She unlimbered another gun and the leaden hail swept
+away the _Tampico's_ port lifeboat, crumpling the stanchions and davits
+like thin wire.
+
+"Their marksmanship is bad, as usual," said Mr. Howland, trembling
+nevertheless, in suppressed excitement.
+
+But if their marksmanship was bad their speed was not.  The _El Toro_
+was, in fact, shooting up rapidly; and as she began to circle in on the
+freighter it was plain to every one that her path would cross that of
+the fugitive.  There seemed nothing to mar the success of the gun-boat
+in her efforts to prevent the steamship entering the harbor.  Dan could
+judge of this better than any one else.  And yet he kept on.  His
+spirit dominated the entire vessel.  Virginia, as she watched him, with
+all that anger that a loser must feel, knew that she was brave, too,
+felt that to be otherwise would be a sacrilege.  Suddenly her eyes were
+riveted on the Captain; she saw him run to the megaphone rack and take
+up a cone.  Then she saw him dash it to the deck and turn and speak a
+few words to the man still kneeling at the wheel.  The man nodded and
+moved aside, and Dan took his place, erect, immovable.
+
+As he did so, the pursuing gun-boat, not more than four hundred yards
+away, let fly another rain of lead, and a few minutes later she slowed
+down, swinging broadside across the course of the _Tampico_, firing a
+six-pounder shell over the bow of the advancing steamship.
+
+"Too late, too late!" exclaimed Mr. Howland.  "All this trouble and
+danger for nothing!  Now we are caught!  But some one will pay--"
+
+His daughter seized his arm.
+
+"Father!  Oh, father!  We are not stopping.  Look!"
+
+It was true.  The _Tampico_ was not stopping; she swept on as if
+endowed throughout all her length of great black hull with her master's
+burning energy and fierce resolve to succeed.  A sharp cry came from
+the gun-boat, a cry sharply in contrast with its crew's former yells of
+triumph.  There came another six-pounder shell, this time cutting
+cleanly through the Tampico's bow.  But that was the last.  On, on like
+an avenging sea-monster swept the _Tampico_, sullen, silent, with the
+potential energy of dynamite lurking in the force of her momentum.  And
+straight, inexorable, Captain Merrithew stood on the bridge with his
+hands on the wheel spokes.  No longer was he young in the eyes of
+Virginia Howland.  No, he was old, old as the avenging ages and as
+cruel, as cold as the march of time.  Straight he made for the pretty
+white side of the gun-boat, as some grim executioner might measure for
+the blow of the sword which was to sever the white neck of some captive
+maid, some Joan of Arc.  And the girl caught his spirit and became
+cruel too.  She laughed at the gun-boat, as she fired again; she
+laughed as the _Tampico_ quivered and went to the heart of the quarry;
+she laughed as Dan, with another twist of the wheel, made more sure of
+his victim.
+
+The screw of the gun-boat revolved desperately.  She was backing; but
+it was too late.  Another sound now!  A heaving swell rose in between
+and threw the bow of the steamship slightly off.  With an angry cry Dan
+jerked at the wheel.  But the lost point could not be regained, and the
+_Tampico_, instead of hitting the gun-boat amidships and cutting her in
+two as intended, struck the quarter obliquely, slicing off a triangle
+of the hull and stern as a big knife cuts a cheese.
+
+There was a terrible crash and grinding, shrill screams, with the
+sharp, taunting laughter of Dan ringing clear, as his vessel swept
+clear of the wreckage, flashing by the crowded small boats which had
+been lowered a few seconds before the crash came.  Hardly knowing what
+she was doing, utterly beside herself, Virginia turned to her friends,
+her lips parted, her eyes flashing.
+
+"There!" she cried, "did you ever see a man?  I recommend you to look
+at Captain Merrithew--"
+
+"Yes, Virginia, it was bully."  Oddington's cool, thoroughbred manner
+chilled her ardor like a cold blast.  "It was mighty fine.  You are
+excited, girl."  And the young man removed the cigarette which had been
+between his lips.  Virginia regarded him steadily.
+
+"You are right, Ralph," she said at length; "I was excited."
+
+In the meantime, the _Tampico_ was dashing into the harbor at full
+speed, her whistle blowing like mad, bringing all officialdom,
+including the _Presidente_, to the water front; for, as Mr. Howland had
+said, they were expected.  Soldiers from the guard-boats swarmed aboard
+and took the rebel admiral and his fellow-officers ashore, and a few
+hours later well set-up mercenaries were dragging Mr. Howland's machine
+guns and eight-inch rifles from the quay to strategic points, where in
+the morning the insurrection would be broken as a strong man breaks a
+rattan cane.
+
+Later, at the end of a sunrise collation, _Presidente_ Rodriguez rose
+and, with one hand on his heart and the other clutching the stem of a
+wine glass, metaphorically presented the keys of San Blanco to the
+"Saviour of his country," and intimated not only a permanent suspension
+of tariff regulations in his favor, but a future statue of heroic size
+in the palace plaza.  Whereat Mr. Howland turned swiftly to Dan at his
+side, and from behind his napkin momentarily altered an expression of
+beatific if humble gratitude, and winked almost grotesquely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+AN ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION
+
+The next morning Dan stood at the rail of the _Tampico_, gazing out
+over the quay to the distant walls of the city, over which hung a heavy
+saffron pall.  The faint pat-a-pat-pat-pat of machine guns and the roar
+of heavier ordnance was incessant.  At first he had been disposed to go
+out and participate in the fighting.
+
+But second thought had altered his inclination.  He had come to know
+something of the business methods of Mr. Howland and men like him; and
+while he had no doubt that his employer considered them legitimate, and
+could, if he had to, submit many strong reasons for various measures
+which capital seems to find it necessary to employ in its relations
+with Latin-American Governments, yet he decided that the wholesale
+slaughter then in progress had far better be left to those who were
+employed for that purpose.
+
+How did he know but the men who had been fighting to capture the city
+and were now being shot down like sheep were not the real patriots,
+anxious to govern their own country in their way and not in the
+interests of foreign corporations?  As for Rodriguez, he knew enough of
+him to--
+
+Virginia Howland, coming up from behind, touched him on the arm, while
+her father, who followed her, placed his hand on Dan's shoulder.
+
+"Captain," said the girl, "I am disappointed.  I wagered a box of candy
+with father that you were already out fighting."
+
+Dan, unable to suppress the thoughts which had filled his mind, smiled
+grimly.
+
+"I don't think I have any desire to turn butcher," he said, with just a
+tinge of bitterness.
+
+The girl flushed and regarded Dan for a moment with a curious
+expression, and then glanced at her father.
+
+"Is it really--that?" she said.
+
+Mr. Howland smiled easily.
+
+"Butchery?  It seems to amount to about that.  Poor beggars!  But war
+is war," Mr. Howland tapped the rail with his finger by way of
+emphasis, "and those who attempt to overthrow governments generally do
+either one of two things: they succeed, or they pay the penalty of
+failure."
+
+"In this case," said Dan, coolly, "they seem to be paying the penalty."
+
+"Yes, thanks to you," replied Mr. Howland, "which is what I wish to
+speak to you about."
+
+He paused, and as Dan made no reply he continued:
+
+"You did a mighty fine piece of work for us in landing those guns--you
+have placed my company considerably in debt to you; but of that more
+later.  At the present time I want to tell you that these infernal
+revolutionists have burned Belle View--which," turning to his daughter,
+"may alter your sympathies a trifle, Virginia--and therefore
+necessitates more or less of a change of programme--"
+
+"Belle View burned!" interpolated Virginia.  "Why, father, what--"
+
+"As I was saying," resumed Mr. Howland, "we've got to shift things
+about.  In the first place, if Belle View were not burned, I should
+hardly feel safe in having the crowd there with conditions as they
+are--and things are not especially pleasant in this city.
+However,--how long will it take to get away from here, Captain?"
+
+"We must take on some coal, and Hendrickson has drawn the fires and is
+reaming in some new boiler-tubes.  We could get away inside of
+forty-eight hours, I think."
+
+"Good; let's do it, then.  We'll call at San Domingo, Hayti, Jamaica,
+and other places to make up for spoiling your house-party, Virginia.
+In the meantime I have secured good quarters for our guests at the
+Hotel Garcia, where to-night I give the Government a dinner.  I shall
+expect to see you there, Captain."
+
+Dan would have preferred to stay away from that dinner.  The thought of
+his practical connivance at the day's slaughter, so obviously suggested
+by Mr. Howland, grated on him, and the implied command in the
+invitation to the dinner bothered him too.  The day was to be filled
+with duties about ship, and he wanted the evening to himself, to sit in
+his cabin with his pipe and his books and mull over these and other
+things.
+
+Of course he might have known what would follow the landing of the guns
+from the _Tampico_.  He did know, as a matter of fact, but orders are
+orders, and duty is duty; and when you are employed by a man you accept
+your salary and any other accruing benefits solely upon the
+understanding that you shall serve his interests to the best of your
+ability.
+
+Yes, Dan could see that perfectly, and he could also see the bad taste
+that lay in intimating dissatisfaction with his employer's methods
+while wearing the uniform of Mr. Howland's company and receiving good
+pay therefor.  And anyway, Mr. Howland had not asked him to cut Blancan
+warships in two and endanger the lives of the entire ship's company and
+guests.  No, that was on his own head, his own hot head.
+
+In the days of the present voyage he had felt a strong tendency to look
+beyond the bridge of the _Tampico_ into the future.  Of course he liked
+adventure, but of late he had begun to feel that perhaps he had had
+enough of the strenuous life to last him the remainder of his years.
+He certainly did not intend to grow gray on coastwise lines.  Bluff,
+gnarled old Harrison, his predecessor on this vessel, had served as a
+striking object lesson.  He could spin yarns of his adventures by the
+hour, but at best no one would call him anything but an interesting old
+character, a retired shell-back on half pay.  Dan found no pleasure in
+looking forward to anything of the sort.
+
+Since he had gained a command in the famous Coastwise and West Indian
+Shipping Company, he had begun to commend himself to persons who never
+before had played a part in his life, principally a cousin of his
+father's, a wealthy merchant of Boston, who had written him a long
+letter, received just before the _Tampico_ sailed on her present
+voyage, expressing a desire to meet him.
+
+"It is not possible," the letter read, "you will want to follow the sea
+all your life.  There must be plenty of opportunities ashore for men of
+your evident executive ability and initiative.  I want you to come to
+Boston at your first opportunity.  I know I can give you good advice,
+and it may be I can prove of material assistance to you."
+
+When he first read the letter, Dan smiled to himself, not failing to
+note the interest taken in him by relatives, now he seemed to be
+proving his ability, who, heretofore, had known little about him and
+cared less.  But that is life, and he had a great deal rather be
+accepted for what he had done than because of mere ties of blood.  Thus
+thinking, he came to attach greater significance to the letter.  He
+would go on to Boston when the _Tampico_ returned to the United States.
+In the meantime he was Captain of a Howland boat, and he would obey
+orders, he smiled grimly, and go to the dinner.
+
+The dinner was a memorable one in San Blanco City.  The revolution had
+been shattered.  The Rodriguez Government was supreme.  The
+_Presidente's_ palace was a blaze of lights.  Conspirators were being
+arrested and cast into prison.  Vehicles of all sorts were bearing
+dinner guests to the Hotel Garcia and dashing away.  There were foreign
+consuls in uniforms, and their wives; there was Rodriguez and his
+cabinet, and officers of the army in resplendent garb, and women who,
+when they threw their mantillas aside, revealed tawny necks and
+shoulders.
+
+The _Presidente_, Mr. Howland, and high officers of the Government sat
+on a long dais at the head of the room; the other guests, including the
+_Tampico's_ party, were at round tables with red-shaded lamps.  It was
+a pleasing picture, and Dan, for the first few courses, was glad he had
+come.  However, when he found that those with whom he was seated could
+not speak English, while he could understand little of Spanish, the
+evening began to wear.  At length, with the long post-prandials at
+hand, he arose.
+
+Flanking one side of the room, which was large, were windows reaching
+from the floor almost to the ceiling, which, when the weather was fair,
+were opened, giving access to a garden of small, twisted trees and
+tropical plants with small tables beneath, to which the pleasure-loving
+population came at night, to sip iced drinks and listen to the music of
+the orchestra as it flowed out of the dining-room.
+
+Here Dan made his way and, stepping out of one of the windows, paused
+on the garden's edge.  The cool air was grateful, and with a sigh of
+relief he drew a cigar from his pocket and lighted it slowly, From
+beneath the trees came little patters of conversation, and the red
+lights of cigarettes and the glint of white gowns enlivened the
+darkness.
+
+As he stood there, Virginia Howland and Oddington came out of one of
+the windows.  The girl was talking vivaciously, familiarly, and
+Oddington was laughing.  She was in what she would have termed one of
+her "Oddington moods," when his personality appealed to her most, when
+the congenial bond seemed closest.  To-night the lights, the music, the
+soft air rustling the lampshades, after all the long days on shipboard,
+exalted her.  She looked at her companion with kindling eyes.
+
+It seemed hardly the moment to run full upon the Captain of the
+_Tampico_, who had just thrown his cigar away with the intention of
+returning to the dining-hall.
+
+Dan realized this instinctively.  He smiled at the two in an abstracted
+manner, as though his mind were occupied with thoughts which he did not
+care to interrupt, and turned toward the window, when Virginia, who had
+greeted him simultaneously with a smile obviously designed to convey a
+similar impression, and, piqued to perversity by the fact that Dan had
+so readily interpreted her wishes, paused in the middle of a sentence
+and looked back over her shoulder.
+
+"Captain," she said, "is it possible you prefer speeches in Spanish to
+our company?"
+
+Dan paused.  Oddington was smiling in an exceedingly perfunctory
+manner, and the young Captain was about to make some laughing
+acknowledgment when the girl, still looking at him, said:
+
+"Mr. Oddington and I were just arguing about the night air of San
+Blanco.  He says it is filled with malaria.  Is it?"
+
+Dan walked slowly toward them.
+
+"Not any more than the day air," he replied, declining Oddington's
+proffered cigarette case and drawing his pipe and pouch from his
+pocket.  "I should say that San Blancan air is filled with malaria at
+all times--and with other bad things."
+
+Oddington laughed.
+
+"It is like most of these cities," he said; "things get pretty messy
+here, I imagine.  I could not exactly commend its sanitary--"
+
+A voice calling him from the window broke the sentence.  It was Reggie
+Wotherspoon.
+
+"Yes," said Oddington.
+
+"That you, Ralph?  Oh, I see you.  Say, come in here like a good chap,
+will you?  I've run across a sort of an anarchist circular about
+Rodriguez.  I want you to come up with me while I put it up to him."
+
+"All right," replied Oddington.  "Will you go in, Virginia?"
+
+"Thank you, I'll wait here for you.  I've had enough of that dreary old
+dinner; at least until father speaks.  And now," said the girl, smiling
+at Dan, "what have you to tell me that is thrilling?"
+
+Dan looked at her as she stood framed against the light of the window,
+tall, straight, in the full glow of youth and health and animal
+spirits.  One bare arm was stretched down, clutching the train of her
+dress.  With the other hand she was idly lashing her gloves against her
+skirt.  As she spoke she reached out a gleaming slipper, extremely
+small for a girl of her height, to push an overturned flower-pot away,
+and Dan caught the flash of the silk ankle and a foam of lace.
+
+He felt he was viewing the girl in a new way.  Hitherto he had regarded
+her as something almost intangible, an essence of elusive femininity,
+radiant, overpowering, and in nowise to be considered as a material
+embodiment of young womanhood.
+
+But now, while the old spell was still potent, with the moods of the
+day still strong, he found new viewpoints struggling for mastery.
+Clearly the girl had shown a deep interest in him, and entirely on her
+own initiative.  If it was to be in the future an interest born of
+friendship, why, it should be, he told himself, an engaging future for
+him.  But he did not desire that her interest in him from now on should
+be offered as a sort of largess, or that he should be placed in the
+position of posing as an object of merely charitable attention from
+her.  As these thoughts formulated themselves flashingly in his mind,
+he could not but marvel at the sudden transition in his attitude
+concerning her.  But nevertheless, the transition had taken place, as
+well defined as though it had come of weeks of pondering--and
+unchangeable.
+
+"I can't think of anything thrilling to talk about--unless I select you
+as a subject."
+
+The girl glanced at him swiftly and then turned her face toward the
+harbor, where a few lights quivered on a velvet floor.  She caught the
+new note perfectly and her bosom rose in a quick breath.
+
+"I am sure we might select a more interesting topic.  I detest
+personalities.  Tell me how you have enjoyed your first dip into
+Blancan society."
+
+"But that would be personal," smiled Dan.
+
+The girl laughed.
+
+"The women here to-night are a great deal less dowdy than one would
+imagine, don't you think?"
+
+"I wonder if you realize your responsibility?" said Dan.
+
+Virginia did not reply for a moment.  She had not considered this
+outgrowing phase of her unreserved interest in the young Captain.  So
+long as he had remained a sort of quiescent _protégé_, there could be
+no possible harm in her attitude toward him.  Evidently he did not
+intend so to remain.  There was of course, therefore, nothing to do but
+reestablish their relations.
+
+"I am afraid my responsibilities are too varied and serious for
+discussion with--with any one," she said at length.
+
+"But where they concern me?"
+
+The girl stepped back slightly, drawing her skirts about her as though
+recoiling, or, rather, withdrawing from the question.  Yet despite her
+desire to end the conversation, she really was curious as to his drift;
+and, besides, he made the most romantic sort of picture as he stood at
+her side, clean cut, bareheaded, and as self-assured evidently as any
+man she had ever talked with.  Her wish was to dismiss him with
+admonition, gently, if plainly to be understood.  But this she could
+not do just then, and the realization of the fact irritated her.
+
+"I suppose," she said slowly, "at least I have read that our
+responsibilities do not cease with one's friends, but extend,
+sometimes, even to--to acquaintances, or to persons, perhaps, whom one
+does not know.  What have I done or not done that suggested in your
+mind ideas of my responsibility to you?"
+
+Dan shook the fire from his pipe and smiled.  "Why, you haven't done a
+thing or left a thing undone," he said.  "I thought the humor of my
+suggestion would strike you as funny, make you laugh.  But it didn't,
+so I'll be serious.  You were decent to me on the _Tampico_ and before;
+and to-night, I don't know, but the lights and the music and the night
+and all seemed to have gone into me, and I wanted to talk to a
+woman--to you--out here in the moonlight, not as we've talked before,
+but as a man and woman who feel pretty much the same way about many
+things might talk.  This was what I had in mind when I spoke of
+responsibility.  Not an alarming one, would you say?"
+
+The girl gazing out into the darkness did not speak.
+
+"I wanted you to look down at the harbor there and exclaim over the
+path the moon is cutting from the horizon to that queer little
+lighthouse on the point; and I wanted you to talk enthusiastic nonsense
+about the big, soft stars and the cigarette lights under the trees; and
+I--I just wanted to listen and, of course, agree with all you said."
+
+Dan was smiling as he spoke; but the girl, whose eyes had fallen
+beneath his steady gaze, was aware that no jest underlay his light
+words.  By no means could she construe what he had said into
+impertinence, but she did feel he was presuming upon the kindly
+attention she had paid him.
+
+"Captain Merrithew," she said at length, "I have been thinking.  I have
+been wondering whether I do not think you more inspiring on the bridge
+of the _Tampico_, cutting warships in two, or fighting a storm than--"
+
+"Than talking with you in the moonlight?" interpolated Dan.
+
+"_About_ the moonlight," corrected the girl. . . .  "If we are to be
+friends you must not devise responsibilities--unadvisably."
+
+Dan made a slight gesture, as though to assure her she had made her
+meaning quite clear.
+
+"If we are to be friends, Miss Howland, you must not devise
+restrictions unadvisably."
+
+Dan was still smiling, and he was speaking easily.  But no man had ever
+spoken to her in that way before.  She flushed, and her eyes sparkled
+angrily as he ceased.  Her glance did not disconcert him.  He stood
+looking at her--not masterfully, but with the quiet dignity of
+conviction.  It was plain that if their association were to continue,
+it must be at the price of something more than the scientific, aloof,
+touch-and-go interest which had hitherto characterized her attitude
+toward him.
+
+She must be his friend in all that the term implies.  Until to-night,
+had the alternative been proposed, she would have had no hesitation in
+deciding, if only because she had no viewpoint other than their
+relative positions in the past year.
+
+But his words had opened a new perspective.  She could see that he
+might be regarded in a different light, that he already so regarded
+her.  The transformation bewildered her, and when the heated reply died
+behind her lips and she smiled quiveringly instead, she felt for the
+first time in her life the thrill which all women, however strong, have
+when they yield to the dominant personality of a man.  She tried to
+fight back the overpowering, undefinable surge; she succeeded
+partially.  All she could now ask was time to think to recover her
+equilibrium.  She put out her hand involuntarily and touched Dan
+lightly on the arm.
+
+"Let us not say anything more about it," she said.  "Tell me--tell me
+something about San Blanco."
+
+As she ceased speaking, she turned slowly toward the banquet hall.
+Dan, following her, complied with what he knew to be a purely
+perfunctory request, talking in an easy conversational tone.
+
+"I have looked into the history of the country a good bit," said he.
+"It is quite interesting.  They have had just twenty-three
+_presidentes_ and four dictators, and there have been twelve
+assassinations.  I believe candidates for the office are liable to
+arrest for attempted suicide--"
+
+The girl paused at the window.  She had not been listening.  Her eyes,
+were fastened upon the figure of a man whose skulking form she had made
+out where the glow of the window almost opposite the speakers' table
+fell upon the garden.  Now she saw him again.  He had a gun in his
+hands and was beginning to kneel.
+
+Breathless and rigid the girl slowly stretched out her hand and touched
+Dan on the shoulder; with the other she pointed silently at the
+crouching figure.  The gun was now being raised to aim, probably at the
+_Presidente_, who was speaking, possibly at Mr. Howland.  Dan
+apprehended the situation at once.  In the flash of an eye he was
+making for the assassin like an antelope.  Hearing the approaching
+footfalls, the man turned his head, and then, with a cry, Virginia saw
+him arise and shift his weapon toward Dan.
+
+[Illustration: In the flash of an eye, Dan was making for the assassin.]
+
+But he was too late.  At least ten feet away Dan left his feet and
+launched himself into one of those old-time tackles which even in
+Exeter had attracted the eyes of the football authorities of three
+universities.  Hard and straight he went, head to one side, jaws shut
+tight.  Then he struck, one brawny shoulder snapping full into the
+man's midriff.  You have to know how to fall when tackled by a good
+man.  This San Blancan did not.  He went down like a falling tower.
+The gun was discharged in the air with a resounding report and flew
+into the bushes.  The man lay still, gasping.  The dinner ended
+abruptly and in great confusion.  Guests poured out of the windows,
+tables were overturned.
+
+Dan quickly dragged the prostrate man into a clump of mesquite.  His
+first impulse had been to turn him over to the soldiers.  But the
+defiant, if faint murmurs of the patriot, "Long live San Blanco; death
+to Rodriguez!" bringing back to him his emotions of the morning, caused
+him to decide differently.  He seized the man by the collar.
+
+"Stand up," he said, "you are not hurt; only a bit winded.  I guess
+Rodriguez has had enough heads without yours.  You thought you were
+acting for your country's good; I guess you were, from all I hear."
+
+The man had been looking at the speaker wonderingly, not understanding
+a word.  Dan turned to him impatiently.
+
+"Get out!" he said.  He pushed the man, searching his brain for the
+Spanish equivalent.  "What the mischief--oh," he glared at the
+trembling prisoner.  "_Vayase Vd!  Largo de aqui!_"
+
+The poor wretch needed no more.  With a quick, smiling gleam of white
+teeth he bowed, and the next instant was loping through the garden.
+Dan sauntered slowly toward the hotel.  Soldiers acting upon
+information given by Miss Howland were beating the grounds, and there
+was much shouting and occasionally a pistol shot.
+
+But the hotel was deserted of the brilliant guests who had filled it
+but a quarter of an hour before.  The spell of darkness lay upon the
+banquet hall.  A few men and women were loitering in the court,
+awaiting developments.  Oddington was there, and another man of the
+party, but the rest, including the Howlands, had evidently gone to
+their rooms.
+
+"Miss Howland told us you made rather an interesting tackle,
+Merrithew," said Oddington as Dan nodded to him.  "I am sorry I missed
+it.  Where is your prisoner?"
+
+Dan smiled.  "The tackle was so artistic," he said, "that I jarred most
+of my senses out of me.  He got away.  Here's his gun," and Dan held up
+an old-fashioned carbine.
+
+Oddington glanced at the weapon.
+
+"Howland will be sorry you let your man escape, if only because he
+prevented the carefully prepared speech he had been laboring over.  It
+was pretty nervy of you, although Howland tells me they are all the
+time potting at Rodriguez and missing him.  Still, I should think they
+would give you the Order of San Blanco."
+
+"I think I can struggle along without it," said Dan.  "Good-night."
+
+He turned toward the harbor and the _Tampico_.  The moon had now broken
+from the clouds which had partially hidden it all evening, and the
+hotel grounds and the slope leading to the water front were bathed in
+light.  Dan's mood was rather bitter.  They might have waited for him,
+he thought.  At least, Miss Howland and her father might have, in view
+of what had happened.  But still, why should they?  The old feeling of
+aloofness filled him, and all the self-assurance which had
+characterized his attitude with Miss Howland a half-hour before
+vanished.  He was angry with himself for having dared to maintain such
+an attitude.
+
+He turned to look at the hotel and bowed gravely.
+
+"It seems that one Daniel Merrithew has been forgetting he is a mere
+steamship captain.  He will remember it in future--at all times."
+
+And then he walked slowly to his ship.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE WRAITH IN THE MOONLIGHT
+
+Twenty-four hours later the _Tampico_ was at sea.  The itinerary proposed
+by Mr. Howland had been altered for the reason that cable despatches from
+New York had contained financial tidings that made it incumbent upon him
+to return to the United States without more delay than was necessary; and
+Ralph Oddington's firm had been retained by a corporation seeking
+protection against assaults of the Attorney-General's office, and he was
+wanted in the city at his "earliest convenience," which he had
+interpreted as meaning "right away."
+
+And so there was to be no stopping at various ports, but a quick run to
+the States.  Mr. Howland imparted this information to Dan as the two sat
+at table in the saloon over cigars and coffee the evening after the
+departure from San Blanco.  The other members of the party had gone on
+deck.
+
+"They can do their sightseeing at Galveston and Savannah, where you can
+call for your cotton and naval stores as usual."  As Dan raised his
+eyebrows, Mr. Howland shook his head emphatically.  "Can't help it," he
+said.  "You see by this despatch," pointing to a pile of papers on the
+table, "that the _Tybee's_ out of commission for a month; and business is
+business, party or no party.  And now, Merrithew," stuffing the papers
+into his pocket as though all matters concerning them were finally
+settled, "I want to ask you about something else.  Of course you're in
+this Central American service here and will be for a time.  I've been
+thinking what you said about the fighting the other morning." He lit a
+cigar and pushed his case toward Dan.  "I gathered you did not exactly
+approve of it.  Didn't you?"
+
+"Mr. Howland," replied Dan, "it was not the fighting that bothered me, it
+was the idea I had landed guns which your men were using to shoot down
+other men like sheep.  It was a new sensation, and it got into me, I'll
+say that.  Still it was none of my business; I was carrying out your
+instructions.  I am sorry I was so unwise as to give you the impression I
+did."
+
+"Not at all."  Mr. Howland gazed at his cigar a moment, flicking the
+ashes off with his little finger.  "Is that why you let the assassin go?"
+
+Dan rose to the situation without hesitating.
+
+"Mr. Howland, you were fishing when you asked that question.  You don't
+have to do that.  I did let that chap go.  I believed he had attempted a
+good job.  I saved Rodriguez's worthless life and took a risk in doing
+it.  I would not have done so, but I thought the man was aiming at you;
+but since I did, the only reward I was entitled to, or wanted, was to do
+as I pleased with the man."
+
+"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Howland.  "Of course it occurred to you that
+Rodriguez's life, however worthless you hold it in other ways, might be
+extremely valuable to the San Blanco Trading and Investment Company,
+which is myself?"
+
+"Yes, I did think of that," replied Dan, "although I am employed by the
+Coastwise Company, I know you practically own both.  I realize, too, your
+kindness to me in the past; but I did look on the fellow as a man
+honestly trying to serve his country; and when it came to deliver him up
+to be hanged--why I simply could not do it."  Dan rose slowly.  "I showed
+myself ungrateful to your interests.  As I say, I appreciate what you
+have done.  I am going to show that I do by asking you to consider my
+resignation in your hands to act upon as soon--whenever you please."
+
+"Sit down, Captain Merrithew," said Mr. Howland, as though he had not
+heard the last words.  "In the first place, you recognize that where
+there is no law and order legitimate business cannot be carried on.
+Where a country is governed in a haphazard manner, while it may be easy
+to secure contracts, it is impossible to collect on them.  Business
+interests having connections with such countries find conditions
+intolerable, and where we can we rectify them.  If you have studied San
+Blancan affairs you know that under Rodriguez (who, despite his cruelty,
+is honest) business here, whether controlled by myself or any one else,
+may for the first time in history be conducted on an honest and reliable
+basis.  That is all I ask or have asked.  I have no benefit of
+discriminating duties.  I am largely interested in the business affairs
+of this country; but I obtained those interests fairly, and it is my duty
+to myself and my daughter and my business associates to maintain and
+develop them.
+
+"I talk to you this way, Merrithew, because I have felt you were going
+wrong, and I wanted to set you right.  I'll say frankly I know I'll not
+lose anything in so doing.  I owe you a great deal.  I am glad I do; for
+I like your sort.  I wish I had a boy growing up as you have grown.  You
+have a future before you--if you will only watch that damned hot head of
+yours."
+
+Much that Mr. Howland had said in regard to the disinterested nature of
+his business activities was true; some things involved tactical evasion.
+In expressing his attitude toward Dan he was sincere.  The Captain did
+not attempt to analyze.  He was completely won, just as Mr. Howland
+wanted him to be.  As he essayed to speak, Mr. Howland placed his hand on
+Dan's shoulder.
+
+"Now, not a word, Merrithew.  We'll forget it all and start fresh."
+
+In the days of the voyage that followed, while it might not have been
+said that Virginia Howland snubbed Dan, neither could it have been said
+she was not at pains to see that she was never alone with him.
+
+In fact, the attitude of either in relation to the other might in no way
+have been termed receptive.  So far as Dan was concerned, he felt that,
+whether unwisely or not, he had made quite clear to her the terms upon
+which their friendship could continue; she had expressed her views no
+less clearly.  The stand of both was irrevocable.
+
+The second day out, feeling it to be his duty, he made tentative advances
+which, if not directly declined, at least left him the impression he had
+been gently and skilfully rebuffed.  Since then he had been careful not
+to place himself again in a similar position.
+
+At the table she would address him in the line of general conversation,
+and was at pains to greet him cordially whenever they met about the ship.
+But otherwise she left no doubt as to her wishes concerning him.  Once
+she came into the saloon for breakfast before the rest of the party had
+taken their places.  Dan was in his accustomed seat at the head of the
+table; he arose and wished her good-morning.  She replied faintly, and
+then she sat toying idly with her rusk, her eyes for the most part
+fastened upon Dan, who had resumed his breakfast as though oblivious of
+her presence.  She seemed trying to make up her mind to speak; but she
+failed.  When Dan arose, bowed slightly, and left the saloon, she was
+still sitting silent with her breakfast untasted.
+
+At Galveston Oddington left for New York by train, but Mr. Howland,
+receiving more assuring despatches, decided to remain with the party.
+They crammed cotton into the _Tampico's_ holds, and later at Savannah
+they put pine-tar and pitch and other naval supplies aboard; thereby
+increasing Dan's responsibilities a hundredfold.  But business was
+business, as Mr. Howland had said; and Dan had but to accept his worries
+and keep them from the party, which had fared well at the hands of
+friends in the two ports.
+
+The _Tampico_ left Savannah one afternoon about an hour after a trim
+Savannah liner had dropped down the river.  At dinner that night the
+merriment was supreme, for in four days the _Tampico_ would be in New
+York, and the Howlands' guests had had about all the excitement and salt
+air they wanted.  The air was soft; there was brilliant starlight.
+
+Dan had spent most of the evening on the bridge, Mr. Howland having
+requested him to make up the coast well out to sea in order to give the
+party a "final soaking" of real ocean air.  He had not complied
+absolutely.  Still, the Tampico was a good ninety miles off shore, well
+outside the track of south-bound vessels.
+
+Shortly after nine o'clock he left the bridge and walked along the deck.
+The party was breaking up.  Miss Howland had sauntered away from the
+group, and was leaning over the rail with her chin resting on her hands.
+
+"Good-evening, Miss Howland," said Dan, pausing.
+
+Virginia looked up quickly, and then resumed her former position.
+
+"I don't know whether I ought to be nice to you or not, Captain
+Merrithew," she said.
+
+Something in her voice gave Dan encouragement to make his reply.
+
+"Won't you please try to be?  In less than four days now you will be
+ashore--and then you'll probably never have any more opportunities."
+
+The girl settled her chin more deeply into her palms.
+
+"But _you_ have not been nice.  You have been horrid, ever since we left
+San Blanco."
+
+Here was a phase of feminine character which Dan, not knowing, had not
+reckoned upon.  However, he instinctively said the tactful thing.
+
+"I--I am sorry.  I thought I was pleasing you."
+
+The girl slowly dragged her chin sidewise along her palms until she faced
+the Captain.
+
+"Oh, you did!  Has your experience with women taught you that is the best
+way to please them?"
+
+Dan, now completely at sea, simply regarded her in silence.  Virginia,
+inwardly triumphant, smiled.
+
+"Now what can you do in four days to atone?"
+
+"I might jump overboard."
+
+"That would be romantic, but hardly--"
+
+As the girl was speaking she turned her eyes to the water rushing past
+the hull, just as a dull, wallowing shape flashed by the bow, assuming
+form right under her eyes--a dark, soughing, coughing derelict, moving in
+the waves spinelessly, like a serpent; black, slimy, repulsive, with
+broken, hemp-littered masts and rusty chains clanking over the bow.
+
+"Oh!"  Virginia jumped back with a startled cry and looked fearfully at
+her companion.  He was smiling, and intuitively she recognized that it
+was not a smile of amusement, but of sympathy, reassurance.
+
+"Oh, wasn't it horrid!"
+
+"Yes, it was not a pretty sight," replied Dan.  "Derelicts never are.
+There are lots of them around here; they travel in currents, sometimes in
+short orbits, sometimes hundreds of miles in a straight line."
+
+The terror had not left her eyes, and she glanced astern to where the
+ugly shape was burying itself in the gloom.  She was an impressionable
+girl, and that loathsome object, rising as it were out of the bottom of
+the deep, clanking, sighing, brought to her an epitome of all the fear
+and mystery of the great, dark, silent waste.  And she looked at the
+Captain with new interest.  Here was one of the men who brave these
+things, who brave great big problems, who face the unknown and a future
+as full of mystery, as fraught with evil possibilities as when the first
+mariner put out to the Beyond in a boat hollowed from a tree.  In a flash
+that derelict taught her to read Dan better; gave her a better insight
+into the look that she sometimes caught in his steely, inscrutable eyes,
+and the grave lines in his sun-bronzed face.  And in the light of this
+knowledge her soul went out to this man, this type of man, so strange, so
+utterly foreign to a girl brought up in an environment where such types
+do not exist.
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+"I am going to my stateroom now, Captain.  Good-night.  We are going to
+be better friends, aren't we?"
+
+"Thank you," said Dan; and he watched her tall, white form as it
+disappeared down the deck.  He gazed moodily out at the dark horizon.
+Friends!  He searched himself thoroughly, and he could not deny the truth
+as formulated in his mind.  Friends!  How hollow the word sounded!  He
+knew how hollow it would seem all through his life.
+
+Better it should be nothing.  Yes, far better, instinct told him that.
+Miss Howland had come into his existence, radiant, pure, beautiful, and
+so utterly feminine; as a meteor flashing across the night pauses for a
+brief instant in the sky before shivering to nothingness.  This simile
+occurred to Dan, who, though no poet, was at least a sailor and as such a
+student of the heavenly bodies.  Yes, a meteor which had illumined his
+life.
+
+He had never permitted himself to think in this way before.  It is
+doubtful if before to-night he could have felt as he now did.  It had all
+come over him suddenly with a rush.  When he talked with her at the hotel
+in San Blanco he was filled with thoughts of his future, and assumed as
+granted his footing upon her plane.  How absurd, how ridiculous this
+seemed now!
+
+Why, why was it, he asked himself, that society or convention or whatever
+it was had drawn the grim _chevaux de frise_ between those who had
+accomplished, or whose forebears had accomplished for them, and those who
+were yet to accomplish; with hosts eager to applaud the achievements of
+finality, but who had no adequate encouragement for those who had yet to
+achieve their mission, who fought their battles in the dark and won them
+in the glorious light, or losing, sank back into that oblivion out of
+which they had striven to emerge?
+
+If fate had been different--yet if fate had been different he would never
+have seen her, perhaps.  Yes, he should be satisfied; he had seen his
+star.  And when it faded, as fade it must, in the vastness of the
+dark--why, what then?  Well, at least he had seen his star; even this
+much is denied many.  So, he would live it out and be thankful he had
+been permitted to feel the great thrill--to know that at least he had the
+heart for the greatest passion the world knows.  Poor consolation, he
+told himself with a grim smile.  And yet he who hitches his chariot to a
+star might well be content with less.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE BURNING OF THE "TAMPICO"
+
+Just an hour later the _Tampico_ lay burning at a point in the Atlantic
+where if the white lights of Cape Fear and Cape Lookout had converged
+ninety-two miles farther out to sea they would have rested full on the
+reeking hull.
+
+Dan had been fearful of the results of Mr. Howland's policy in loading
+the _Tampico_ with inflammable cargo.  He had been reared with the fear
+of fire in his heart.  From one of his voyages his grandfather, Daniel
+Merrithew, had never returned.  A charred name board had told the grim
+tale, and so Dan had gone out into the world with a long, red, flaming
+line across his fate, as in knightly days a man might have included the
+bar sinister or some other portentous device among his symbols of
+heraldry.
+
+Pacing the forward deck with his pipe, thinking deeply of his talk with
+Virginia, Dan had seen pitch bubbling out of the deck seams and
+spilling into rich black pools.  And thus the fire was discovered--some
+fifteen minutes too late, however, to effect the rescue of several of
+the crew, who shrieked and pounded at the bulkhead door, warped and
+welded tight by the heat; shrieked and pounded, until the throttling
+smoke bade them hold their peace.
+
+First, Dan had the vessel swung about with her stern to the wind, the
+fire being forward; and the crew had piled up on deck and rushed
+without confusion or undue noise to their various stations.  Some
+unscrewed deck valves over the burning hold, fastening thereto the ends
+of seven-inch rubber hose; while below, the engine-room staff, with
+soldierly precision, attached the other ends to the boilers and stood
+like statues until a signal gong sounded through the black depth.
+Whereupon they handled certain valves, and with a hissing scream great
+volumes of hot vapor poured into the blazing compartment.  On deck
+other seamen dragged lengths of hose forward, forced the nozzles
+through narrow deck-vents, and held them there while the force pump
+sent up thousands of gallons of brine.
+
+Dan, ubiquitous, cheerful, commanding, lending a hand to one set of
+men, directing another, came upon a station two short of its quota.
+
+"Where are Phillips and Fagan?" asked Dan, sharply.
+
+"They bunked in the steerage," replied a sailor, choking in the smoke
+weltering up through the hose vent.
+
+The young Captain's breath caught; but there was no time for sentiment.
+He inspected the vessel, bow and stern, marshalled the members of the
+Howland party into the saloon and bade them stay there until otherwise
+ordered, and then went up to his men and fought with them.  An hour
+passed, and twenty more minutes.  The lurid tinge to the smoke,
+bellying up through the deck-vents, gave sharp hint of the undiminished
+fury of the flames raging below.
+
+"It's like pouring in oil," muttered Dan to himself; and then he added
+aloud, "Keep right to it, men, you're holding it," and thus saying he
+left them and ran aft to where the second mate and the reserve section
+of eight men were growling impatiently.
+
+"Take up your hose, men, and come with me down into hold No. 2.  The
+fire's going to clean out No. 1 to the skin, sure.  We'll have to keep
+it from breaking through to the other holds.  Come on!  Hurry!"
+
+Without a word the men picked up the three lengths of emergency hose
+and followed their Captain.  As Dan ran along the deck, leading the way
+to the hatch, he heard his name called, and looking up quickly, saw Mr.
+Howland and Virginia approaching.  The girl's hair was flying loose and
+she had a long blue coat thrown over her shoulders.  The deck was
+filled with heavy smoke.
+
+"Captain," said the shipping magnate, "how are we now?"
+
+Dan paused just an instant.
+
+"Fighting hard," he replied, and then he added quickly, "Mr. Howland,
+we need men.  Two of the crew are gone.  Ask some of the men of your
+party, please, to go forward and report to Mr. Jackson.  And you, Miss
+Howland, go into the saloon right away--and stay there.  Tell the
+others that if they appear on deck before I give the word I shall have
+them locked in."
+
+The girl obeyed silently, but Mr. Howland paused irresolutely a second,
+in which time Dan had turned and was hastening after his men.
+
+"I will do as you say," Mr. Howland called after the retreating form of
+the Captain, "but I want to talk to you first."
+
+"All right, sir, come on then.  You'll have to talk to me down in the
+hold, I'm afraid."
+
+The second mate and his men had in the meantime pried the battens from
+the hatch and thrown it open.  The hold was about half full of cotton
+bales, railroad ties, oakum, resin, and the like, and they descended to
+them by means of a scaling ladder, clambering thence toward the forward
+bulkhead.  One of the men had a lantern which cast a pallid glow about
+the immediate vicinity, bringing into vague relief the well-ordered
+masses of cargo, and ending suddenly against a hard wall of dark as
+palpable as a barrier of stone.  The air was heavy with musty sweetness
+and with yellow smoke which streaked lazily past the lantern globe--and
+with silence, save for the dull roar in the adjoining hold.
+
+"Make a stand right here," and Dan's voice sounded hollow through the
+gloom.  "Stand right here.  You've got water in your hose; I want that
+bulkhead kept soaked.  Let her go."
+
+As the streams of water plunged against the steel wall Dan turned to
+his employer.
+
+"You wanted to speak to me, Mr. Howland?"
+
+"Yes, I want to compliment you on your discipline and--and what is the
+exact situation?"
+
+"Not so good; but a working chance.  It will be a short and sharp go;
+for the hold's lined with tar and sugar reek--otherwise the cotton
+might go for days.  It won't in that hold, though.  The fight'll be
+right here.  If it breaks through into this we've got to run; if not,
+it will burn out where it is."
+
+"What are the chances that it won't?"
+
+"Why, you know more about the structural strength of this boat than I
+do.  To be honest, I never liked your bulkheads, else I would have
+opened a stop-cock and flooded the hold long ago.  Still, what water
+would burst through, fire might not."
+
+Horace Howland, who had paid his own price for the _Tampico_, and who
+by the same token had his own opinion of her, said nothing.
+
+"I have arranged about the boats," resumed Dan.  "If the worst comes,
+my men know what to do and they are the men to do it.  It's not too
+rough to launch safely.  Now, Mr. Howland, I've wasted too much time
+talking.  Don't forget to send two men to Mr. Jackson," and he sprang
+up the ladder and hurried forward.
+
+The feet of the men at work over the burning hold were blistering.  Dan
+yanked out an inch hose and set a cabin boy to sluicing the deck where
+they stood, sending up dense clouds of enveloping steam.  A broad
+tongue of blue flame curled out of the port hawse-hole, licked along
+the half-protruding anchor, rose above the rail, and then burst into a
+puff of red fire which floated away in the wind.  A cargo port door
+warped in the heat, buckled outward, tearing plates and rivets with a
+rasping screech, and dropped hissing into the black waters; and the
+wind, blowing from astern, was sucked into the opening, fanning the
+flames to screaming ferocity.
+
+The tale was plain for every one, and Dan read it to the last word.
+Water would be of more service elsewhere, that was certain.  So he
+withdrew the four crews from their hose vents, ordered two of them to
+take their lines into the second hold, and set the others flooding the
+deck.  He shifted two of his seven-inch steam lines to the midship
+plugs, and then followed the hose men, who had joined their comrades in
+the darkness of the second hold.  Streams of water were hissing against
+the steel barrier and flying back at the faces of the nozzle men in hot
+spray.
+
+"There's a bulge in the centre," reported the second officer.
+
+"Yes," said Dan, who seized a lantern and held it above his head,
+pointing out new objective marks for the water.  The smoke had grown
+thicker.  One man gagged at a nozzle; but drinking from the pipe the
+air which the water brought, he lowered his head and fought on.
+
+They fought as men should fight, in the pungent half-gloom, colliding
+or falling prone as the vessel pitched, eyes fixed straight ahead,
+following the powerful silver lines of water which ribbed the dark and
+splashed against the steaming steel; white-yellow smoke spirals writhed
+about their heads like some grotesque saraband; coatless, shirtless,
+their streaked, sweating bodies gleamed dull and ghastly.
+
+One of them straightened from the nozzle and glared at his side
+partner; and Dan, whose eyes were everywhere, saw him and moved close
+to him, where his fist could do best work if necessary.  Any sign of
+mutiny now called for decided measures.
+
+"Say, Mike," said the man in a rich brogue, "give us a hunk o' yer
+'bacca--this makes the mout' dry"; and Dan chuckled his admiration for
+the fighting spirit of the Irish.
+
+Once a tiny lance of flame leaped out through some hidden
+crevice--leaped far out at the men as a rifle spits its deadly fire,
+and then, curling about a sugar sack like a serpent's tongue, withdrew
+so suddenly, so silently, that it seemed to those who saw it as
+something which had flashed through their imaginations.  A stream of
+water sought the outlet and the flame came no more then.
+
+Suddenly a cry came from one of the men, and all eyes turned to a point
+in the bulkhead where a hectic flush glowed like a death's head.  Four
+streams struck it simultaneously.  It went out, but reappeared in
+another place.  The water quenched this also, but it came back again
+and widened, and the plunging water was dried to mist at the instant of
+contact.  The glow grew brighter, then dim, and then brighter, rising
+and falling as life pulses in a fevered body.  A flood of smoke choked
+in from a viewless breach.  Two of the men cried out, gurgled, fell on
+their faces, and turned over on their backs, struggling; then they lay
+still.  Dan carried them to the deck, and returned with a sailor.  The
+two had just gained the sugar sacks when the centre bulkhead quivered.
+A cross section collapsed into a V.  A score of rivet holes yawned wide
+and red-hot bolts fell on the sacks and set them on fire.  A line of
+plating, separating from its fellows, sagged open in a red grin and
+gave view of the raging hell within.
+
+"Now, into it, boys!" yelled Dan, and the men, bowing their heads,
+advanced five feet, directing the streams into the fiery pit.  For a
+minute the flames were driven back by the concentrated rush of water;
+two minutes, and then a gush of fire flared through the break.  It
+broke as a stream hit it, but its ghost, in the guise of hot gases,
+choked the men.
+
+A great roar of flame almost enveloped them, and the heat crisped their
+hair and seared their bodies, and they dropped their hose and raced for
+the ladder.
+
+"Go on, men!" shouted Dan as they struggled out of the hold.  "You've
+done all I can ask.  Hurry!  Get out!" and they got out and then turned
+to batten the hatch cover down.  But the rush of fire was too swift to
+be denied.  A thick-bodied pillar choked through the opening and
+spouted to the top of the funnel--great gouts of the devouring element
+pulsed softly, but with lightning swiftness, down the deck, and
+shrivelled a life raft.  Long tongues and jets of fire were bursting
+everywhere out of the forward deck.
+
+It had come at last, just as Dan had seen it coming all through the
+night--all through the years.  His voice roared from the bridge:
+
+"To the boats--every man to his station!"
+
+The command was taken up and carried along, and noiseless shapes limned
+briefly in the fire glow, scuttled quickly to their appointed places.
+Mr. Howland and his party stumbled out of the saloon with blanched
+faces and parted lips, but quietly.
+
+"Women to the rail!"  The cry echoed out over the sea,--over the sea,
+which has heard these chivalrous words so often.
+
+"Women first--women to the rail!"  Dan's cry was taken up by the
+officers.  Silent figures in trailing garments moved as they were bid.
+
+From the port quarter a gruff voice sounded.
+
+"Ready, men--ease away."  Came the creak of tackle, the thud of iron
+upon steel--then a silence--then a rattle of oars in thole-pins--then a
+clear hail from the darkness: "All's well, Captain Merrithew!"
+
+Another boat clattered down the steel sides and cleared safely, and
+still another.  The last boat was filling with the last of the crew.
+
+"Everybody accounted for?" Dan's shout as he rushed down from the
+curling bridge brought Mr. Howland up with a sudden fear.  He had taken
+his daughter to the starboard boat only to find it full, and had sent
+her across to the third boat, while he superintended the adjustment of
+a wedged block.  This done, he had hurried to the starboard, only to
+find the third boat overboard and well away.  He had assumed that she
+was all right.  But a cold rush of doubt assailed him.
+
+"Virginia, Virginia--are you all right?" he called in tones of agony.
+
+"I saw her at the third boat," said the first officer.  "You must look
+alive, Mr. Howland--we'll have to lower directly the Captain comes.
+The deck's going now."
+
+The ship-owner heard these words with a sigh of relief and stepped into
+the boat without further ado.
+
+"Every one accounted for?" repeated Dan as he dashed along deck to the
+boat.
+
+Something, a faint suggestion of sound rather than sound itself caused
+him to pause.  He heard nothing more, though he listened for a full
+minute.  Instinctively he turned to a stateroom in the midship
+deck-house.
+
+"Captain Merrithew--are--you--coming?" The first officer's voice arose
+in impatient cadence.
+
+"Yes--hold there a minute!" replied Dan, twisting the knob of the door.
+It was locked.  He ran back a few paces and sprang at it with his
+shoulder.  It trembled and gave.  He rushed again and the door crashed
+inward.  The room was filling with smoke.
+
+And on the bunk sat Virginia, her hands on her knees, her head hanging
+low and swaying dazedly from side to side.  She was on the verge of
+collapse; but she looked up and smiled faintly as Dan burst in.  Then
+her head fell again.
+
+"I knew you would come," she muttered.
+
+Without a word Dan seized her by the arm and led her swiftly to the
+shattered door.  As they reached the threshold there came a dull boom
+from below--the vessel shivered.  A sheet of flame swept the entire
+forward deck, and Dan looked out into a red, pulsing wall.
+
+In terror the men in the fourth and last boat, the fire licking their
+faces, let go the falls, and the little craft struck the water with a
+crash, but on an even keel.
+
+Knowing he could not reach the boat even were it still on the davits,
+Dan left the stateroom and half led, half carried the girl toward the
+stern.
+
+The forward deck was now a seething inferno.  The foremast, a pillar of
+thin name, flickered like a pennon of gold until it broke in the middle
+and sent up a shower of sparks.  The shrouds and ratlines which went
+with it had barred the black heavens with ruddy lines.  From all the
+openings dull red clouds rolled and bellied skyward, cloud upon cloud;
+the funnel spouted like a blast furnace.
+
+But the vessel slowly, but very surely, was falling off the wind; it
+would soon blow astern.  The shelter of the after deck-house would
+serve for a while, perhaps until some vessel, attracted by the terrible
+light, would bring them succor.  Dan placed the girl behind this steel
+structure and then, running to the taffrail, leaned far out and called
+to the boats.  But the roar of the flames drowned his cries, and the
+boats, which had moved out to windward, could not see him.  Foot by
+foot crept the fire; but the stiff wind which finally came over the
+stern did its work well, and the red avalanche began to slant toward
+the bow.  This meant respite.  But he knew that at the very best it
+could be only a respite, and short at that.
+
+Again and again and again he called for the boats, until his voice grew
+husky and faint.  Then, hopeless of aid from his men, he returned to
+the girl.  She was exactly where he had left her, slightly crouching as
+though to shut from her eyes the fearful red light.
+
+The wind rush had revived her smoke-dimmed senses.  When she was
+approaching the star-board boat to which her father had directed her
+she had lost her head, as persons will do in time of fire, and had
+wandered mechanically, unconsciously, to her cabin and locked herself
+in.  But she was not frightened now.  There was that in Dan which she
+trusted.  She looked at him strangely and smiled.  She caressed him
+with her eyes, trusting in, hanging upon, the strength of a man who
+possessed in divine measure all of man's strength.
+
+A half-hour they crouched together, until the steel walls of their
+shelter burned to the touch, until the flames licked up over the
+forward end, ran over the roof, and looked down upon them.  But still
+they remained as they were, while the _Tampico_ circled again and
+brought the wind in their faces, which they drank greedily.
+
+There came a time when the fire hissed constantly on the
+deck-house--when, indeed, flames plunged around it and touched the two
+figures.  Swiftly Dan reached out his arm and encircled the waist of
+his companion and drew her to the taffrail.
+
+Four feet below the gilded name on the stern was a six-inch ledge.  He
+lifted the girl as he would a child and placed her on this ledge,
+bidding her hold to the rail.  Then he passed a section of small chain
+about a stanchion, allowing the end to hang over.  If the rail became
+too hot for their hands they could hold by the chain.
+
+As Dan joined Virginia on the ledge the vessel slued around, bringing
+the wind full over the bow.  With a roaring shout of exultation the
+fire bridged the last gap, bursting clear over the stern.  It bit at
+their hands; they withdrew them, supporting themselves by the swinging
+chain.
+
+The girl moaned.  Nearer drew the hot breath.  She felt Dan's arm
+tighten about her waist.  It was like a curved bar of steel.  Looking
+down, she saw the water racing below--she saw a wave leap up--she felt
+it touch her foot with its feathery head, gently, beneficently, and yet
+traitorously; for how quickly would it quench the lives that it seemed
+to tempt from the flames!
+
+"Put your face tight against my chest--put your hands over your nose
+and mouth--quick!"
+
+She obeyed upon the word and a thrill, not of pain, shot to Dan's
+brain.  He could feel her, soft and trembling, against him, and her
+warm hair brushed his cheek.  With an effort he choked back the
+flooding emotion.  Was it fair, was it right to her--now?  But his arm
+unconsciously tightened about her.
+
+The red glow shone through the girl's closed eyelids--a great heat
+scorched the back of her neck, and she felt a quiver in the body
+shielding her; but the grip of the arm remained.  There came a blast of
+God's merciful salt cold air, and she opened her eyes.  He was looking
+down at her--and he saw what he saw.  For they were two souls hanging
+together on the verge of eternity--alone; two souls with death all
+about fusing them until they were as one.  She looked at him long.
+
+"Are you hurt?" she asked.  The words sounded thick.
+
+"No--a little.  It got my neck and ears.  The ship was yawing, though,
+and that saved us.  It was like snapping your hand through a gas flame."
+
+"I'm afraid," said the girl with a sob catching her voice.
+
+"No--don't be afraid!  I'll save you--some way."
+
+She opened her eyes and looked in his face again.
+
+"My nobleman! my--"
+
+"Don't!" cried Dan, interrupting her.  "You don't know what you are
+saying.  It's so different now."  He well knew that impulses which
+might move a woman in the arms of a man, no matter who, battling for
+her life, might be for the moment only and lead to nothing but regret
+and alarm afterwards.  How could it be otherwise with Virginia Howland?
+The girl, as though she had not heard him, as though she had forgotten
+the emotions which had swayed her, closed her eyes wearily and turned
+her face away.
+
+The ship was yawing again.  Tongues of flame reached hungrily for them,
+licking above Dan's red-gold hair and his back, but never touching the
+girl.  Then the swing of the vessel and the wind again; then the fire
+and the torturing heat.  Once Dan saw his grandfather's vessel burning
+as he had often pictured it in boyhood, and he trembled horribly for a
+second, but only for a second; then he became rigid and smiled at the
+apparition.  The girl had evidently fainted; she hung a dead weight
+upon his arm.  Again the wind drove the flames far out over the stern.
+
+There came a time when the fight for life was waged mechanically, when
+all sense of thought vanished, and the carrying on of the struggle came
+down to mere animal instinct.  At such times a brave man need not be
+ashamed to die--the time has long elapsed when cravens perish.  But the
+very brave, the physically as well as mentally brave, fight on to the
+end, instinctively.  And so Dan fought.  He knew that Virginia Howland
+hung on his arm--but the fire had gone from his ken; he was fighting
+something, that was all he knew, or cared, since it was for her.  Once
+the red sheet enveloped them for a flashing second, but the merciful
+wind came to save.  It could not last long, though.  Dan's arm weakened
+about the limp form of the girl.  He closed his eyes and ground his
+teeth and brought new force to the encircling arm.  He glared down at
+the mass of soft hair scattering over his breast; he thought of that
+beautiful life and quite impersonally asked himself if all this beauty
+must die.  Where would all the beauty of the world be then?  This
+question ran deliriously through his mind.  Eh! where would it all be?
+If they died together, would they wake together?  And the flames came
+again.
+
+But as they swooped down with redoubled fury he saw almost
+subconsciously a great tangled litter of wreckage passing beneath him.
+He uttered a little cry, and with the girl still in his arm he dropped
+from the ledge.  With a sigh of relief he felt the cooling, revivifying
+water, and the sharp, cold taste of brine in his mouth was like the
+touch of a new life.
+
+Instinctively he had put his free arm around a section of cargo boom,
+with a grating caught in the twisted gear.  Upon this he pushed and
+lifted the half-unconscious girl.  Then he clambered astride the boom.
+Thus they drifted, while Dan, his mind slowly clearing, struggled
+pitifully for full possession of his faculties.  He had a dull sense of
+pain, but the one dominant idea was the girl.  Leaning slightly over,
+he twisted his hand in the folds of her dress lest she slip into the
+waters.  The stars were paling; on the horizon were the first vague
+hints of dawn.  He gazed at the faint gray curtain with interest.  It
+was a dawn he had not expected to see, he told himself.
+
+Then, as he looked, a shape arose before his eye out of the gloom.  Dan
+watched it with dumb fascination.  Suddenly a realizing sense of the
+nature of the apparition shot through his mind.  A vessel--God!  Dan's
+voice raised in a long, hoarse cry for assistance.  But there was no
+answer.  Yet the craft was bearing toward them, not a hundred yards
+away, silently as a ship of the dead.  Dan cried again, rising on his
+rolling perch.  But the hail died on his lips.  He could see now.  It
+_was_ a ship of the dead.  It was the derelict they had viewed from the
+fancied security of the _Tampico's_ deck, a few short hours before.  An
+imprecation trembled upon Dan's lips.  For the last half-hour Virginia,
+who had crawled to a kneeling posture, had been watching Dan with
+unlighted eyes.  Now as he turned to her and pointed at the slowly
+advancing vessel, she nodded slowly, as though comprehending his
+meaning, and stretched out her arms to him.
+
+Softly, quietly the bow of the hulk slid up and nuzzled gently among
+the wreckage.  Quickly Dan secured the litter to the bow by twisting a
+length of wire cable through the rusty green fore-chains of the
+derelict.  Then gaining a footing in the mess of gear, he assisted the
+girl to her feet on the tottering grating, and placed her hand on the
+chains.
+
+"Hold here tight," he said.  She nodded, and Dan looked about for the
+easiest way to the deck.  It was not difficult to find.  The end of the
+jib-boom had dropped into the water, making an easy incline, and the
+foremast had also fallen over the bow and was directly alongside.  Both
+were covered with sections of canvas and a maze of gear and rigging.
+
+Dan clambered up, and then, lying flat across the bowsprit and the
+mast, he put his arms under the girl's shoulders and literally pulled
+her to his side.  Hand in hand they slowly worked their way up among
+the wreckage to the deck.
+
+And there with the dawn beginning to glow rosily far on the eastern rim
+of the slaty waste the girl sighed and sank to her knees; and Dan, his
+head reeling with sleep and exhaustion, sank also.  When the darkness
+had all gone and the sun had cleared the horizon, the first level rays
+flooded the sullen deck of a gray-green hulk, sodden, desolate, and
+fell upon the faces of a man and woman sleeping, her head resting on
+his shoulder, strands of her dark hair lying across his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ALONE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
+
+As the sun rose higher still they slept.  The genial rays flowed over
+them, drying their wet, clinging garments, filling their stiffened
+frames with languorous warmth.
+
+Finally the girl sighed and smiled.  Half waking now, she thought she
+was at home in her own bed.  The sunlight always awakened her there.
+She wondered if it was time for her maid to enter.  She hoped not; it
+was so comfortable, and she was, oh, so sleepy!  She turned on her
+side.  Then suddenly she started.  Certainly she was lying on nothing
+that would remotely suggest a bed.  Sleepily she tried to open her
+eyes, but the long lashes were glued together by the heavy salt water.
+
+Arousing still further, she rubbed them open.  And then as a heaving,
+littered deck, with patches of blue sea showing through the shattered
+rail bore upon her vision, a realizing sense of the situation and the
+tragic events leading to it came to her.
+
+For a moment she lay still, shuddering.  Her head still rested upon
+Dan's arm.  She knew it, but she was afraid to arise.  Somehow that arm
+seemed the only thing which assured her she was in a living world.
+Even in the brilliant morning sunlight the vessel, soughing, creaking,
+groaning, as it moved slouchily over the waters impressed her as the
+shape of terror.  From the deck little mist spirals arose like spirits
+of the men who had deserted the ship.  And hovering all about was the
+gray, sordid reek of desolation, eerie, awe-inspiring.
+
+And yet the Captain must not find her thus.  Slowly she withdrew her
+head.  She hated to awaken him.  Yet she felt she must hear his voice,
+for the all-pervading loneliness was unbearable.  She sat up and shook
+him gently by the shoulder.  It was as though she had applied an
+electric shock.  With a muffled exclamation he lifted himself by his
+elbow, and the next instant he was on his feet.
+
+"Miss Howland!" he exclaimed.  The sound of his voice echoed hollow
+along the deck, but it was the most joyous sound Virginia had ever
+heard.  Leaning down, he assisted her to her feet.  Their eyes met, and
+they gazed at each other, wondering, uncertain.  Alone of all the
+world, these two, in the midst of a vast, lonely domain where hidden
+terrors lurk, where elements unharness their might and work their harm
+unchecked, where wind and wave whisper of murderous deeds, where the
+rime of dead ages is still fresh.  It was all too big for minds to
+encompass, for their senses to grasp.
+
+A great sob shook the girl.
+
+"Will--will you please go away--a moment?  I think I am going to cry,"
+she stammered.  She turned from him hurriedly and walked toward the
+rail.  She tottered as though about to fall.  Dan sprang to her side
+and placed his hand lightly on her arm.  The touch seemed to strengthen
+her.  With a convulsive effort she gained control of herself, and as
+Dan's hand dropped to his side she looked at him with a quivering smile.
+
+"I am going to be brave.  I am not going to cry.  Captain, tell me, is
+my father safe, and my aunt--and the rest?"
+
+"There is not the slightest question about that," replied Dan.  "They
+got overboard smartly.  The lifeboats were steel, well manned and
+supplied with provisions for a week.  If they weren't picked up last
+night by some steamship attracted by the fire, they will be within a
+short time."  The girl regarded him closely, as though trying to
+determine whether he was speaking from conviction or merely to
+dissipate her fears.  Interpreting her expression, Dan shook his head
+impatiently.
+
+"I am sincere, Miss Howland.  I have no more doubt of the safety of
+your father and the others than I have that I am alive.  The sea has
+been comparatively smooth, the weather clear.  Our situation is the one
+to bother about."
+
+"But some steamship will surely see us."
+
+"I hope so, but remember we are on a derelict.  Where we are, or where
+we are going heaven only knows.  Sometimes--there is no sense in trying
+to avoid the truth--derelicts go for weeks and even months without
+being sighted.  Still, I don't think we shall.  At night we'll have our
+distress lights.  We shall come out all right.  In the meantime we may
+not even have to be uncomfortable.  Usually when men desert these
+schooners they go in a hurry, leaving almost everything behind.  I am
+going to investigate affairs.  Will you come?  You may never have
+another opportunity of this sort."
+
+Dan's voice, at first grave, had gradually assumed a lighter tone, and
+at the humorous allusion in the last sentence she smiled.  Virginia was
+a sensible girl, but it must be confessed that her position alone with
+a man on a derelict in the middle of nowhere would have dazed a woman
+who held even broader views of the ordinary conventions than she did.
+
+As for the Captain, he evidently intended to accept the inevitable in a
+matter-of-fact, common-sense way.  There was nothing for her but to do
+likewise.  That he would be tactful and considerate in every way she
+knew.  And he would save her too, in the end.  Something seemed to tell
+her that.  She smiled at him bravely.
+
+"I think it will be fun, Captain!  Lead on."
+
+Their course aft was attended with difficulty.  All along the deck was
+a thick mass of wreckage, broken casks, boxes, sections of spars,
+tattered canvas, and enough wire rope and other gear, it seemed, to
+encircle the world.  Amidships the hull sagged so that the deck was not
+three feet above the water.
+
+Ascending the slight incline, Dan led the way to the entrance to the
+after cabin, containing four rooms--two on either side of a corridor.
+The cabins were just below the level of the deck but were not flooded.
+
+"Now," said Dan with his hand on the knob of the door at his right, "we
+will pay the Captain a visit."
+
+The bunk was mussed as though the skipper had left it hastily, but
+otherwise the apartment was in good order.  There was a little oaken
+desk containing a dictionary, several books on navigation, and writing
+appurtenances.  In the middle, on a piece of blotting-paper, was an
+overturned inkstand with a pen still in it.  Along the top were several
+photographs of home scenes, probably New England, and a picture of a
+rather comely young woman.
+
+"And here's a woman's hat," cried Virginia, picking from a corner a
+rather garishly trimmed creation.
+
+Dan paused and looked at it.
+
+"That's good," he said.  "His wife was evidently aboard."  He opened a
+door leading into the next cabin.  "This was her room undoubtedly," he
+said.
+
+The girl peered in with a delighted expression.
+
+"Why, of course."  Her eyes took a quick inventory.  An ornate if cheap
+dressing-table!  Four waists on coat hangers!  Four skirts, beautifully
+hung!  And what a litter of brushes and things on the floor!  She
+turned to Dan, who had not entered, but was standing in the doorway,
+smiling.  "It must have been perfectly maddening for the good lady of
+the ship to leave all this behind."  She walked to the dressing-table
+and peered into the mirror.  It must be said she saw a girl whom under
+other circumstances she would hardly have recognized.  Her heavy hair
+was dishevelled.  Her long, blue broadcloth ulster was stained with
+salt water and altogether out of shape.  A great black smudge ran along
+her cheek, and on her chin was a deep red scratch.
+
+She looked at Dan from out the mirror, blushing.
+
+"I am afraid I should compare rather unfavorably with the Captain's
+lady.  I think, first of all, I shall sit right down and do my hair.
+But no--of course not now."  She opened her eyes wide.
+
+"Oh, yes, you can," laughed Dan.  "I am going to leave you now and look
+about the ship."
+
+"Oh, no, you're not," exclaimed the girl; "you're not to leave me alone
+on this horrid ship just yet.  The hair can wait.  I'll go with you.
+If everything is as nice as this cabin I shall feel quite at home."
+
+The cabin opposite the Captain's had been the mate's, and behind it was
+the mess cabin.  Here the greater part of crockery and glass was
+shattered on the floor.  An overturned bird-cage with a dead canary in
+it lay under the table.
+
+"Well," said Dan, "we ought to be comfortable.  Now, Miss Howland, I
+think you ought to go to your cabin and get off those damp skirts.  I
+have got to take a look at the cargo, see what plans I can make to
+render us something else than a log on the sea, and nose about in the
+galley."  He started.  "By George!  I had forgotten about food.  That's
+rather important."  He hastily left the cabin and started down the
+corridor, with the girl's warning not to be long following him.
+
+First he stopped in the carpenter's room and secured the very thing he
+was looking for,--an axe.  With this he broke down the door of the
+storeroom, which, as he had expected, was locked.  There were a barrel
+of flour, tins of beef and of soups and vegetables, condensed milk, and
+a number of preserve jars filled with coffee.
+
+Taking one of the jars in which he saw the coffee was ground he poured
+out a cupful and drew some water from a cask.  Then going into the
+galley, he dug up a coffee-pot from the mass of cooking utensils which
+covered the floor, and proceeded to light a fire in the range.  It was
+soon roaring, and Dan had just mixed the coffee and water when Virginia
+appeared at the door.
+
+For an instant Dan hardly recognized the girl in her trim blue skirt,
+white sailor waist, open at the throat, and a red leather belt with a
+great brass buckle.
+
+"You have done well," he said at length.  "I had no idea you would be
+so fortunate."
+
+"Yes, everything fits pretty well," laughed the girl, "except that the
+skirt is a trifle short, but of course that doesn't matter here.
+That's not the point, though."  She gazed at him sternly.  "Who gave
+you permission to come in here and cook?"
+
+As Dan looked at her in amazement she continued:
+
+"Now see here, Captain Merrithew, we might just as well face our
+situation.  This is no time for observance of the minor conventions or
+gallantry.  We are shipwrecked.  We are nothing more nor less than two
+human beings cast away on a derelict.  You are to regard me, not as
+Virginia Howland, helpless, dependent, to be waited upon and watched
+over, but as you would Ralph Oddington or any one else were he in my
+place--as an assistant in the common cause of safety.  I am going to
+help you in every way I can, and I am going to begin by establishing
+myself as cook of this party from now on.  Please don't imagine I can't
+cook.  I attended a French culinary school for two seasons.  And now--"
+she stepped into the galley and seized Dan by the sleeve, drawing him
+gently toward the door--"won't you please go so that I shall have elbow
+room--this is such a tiny box of a place.  Please!"
+
+Dan hesitated no longer.  Seizing his axe he left the galley and went
+forward.  The mainmast had snapped about six feet below the truck; of
+the other two masts nothing was left but the stumps.  He chopped away
+the wreckage hanging over the bow, including the bowsprit and
+foretopmast, and had made good progress in clearing away the forward
+deck when Virginia, standing in the doorway of the after cabin, called
+him.
+
+"Breakfast, Captain," she cried.  "Breakfast is served."
+
+The girl was laughing excitedly as she led the way to the dining-cabin
+and seated herself in front of a great, steaming nickel coffee-pot.
+Blushing radiantly she pointed to the other chair.
+
+"Sit down, Captain Merrithew."  But Dan protested.
+
+"Now, really, Miss Howland," he laughed, "I can just as--"
+
+"Captain," interrupted Virginia, sharply, "don't be a goose.  There--"
+She began to pour the coffee.  "It isn't really much of a breakfast,"
+she added; "I shall do much better for luncheon.  But, as it is--" she
+inclined her head with mock unction as she handed him his cup.
+
+Dan never forgot that breakfast.  It was one of those events which
+linger in memory, every detail indelibly stamped, long after more
+important pictures of the past have lost even a semblance of outline.
+
+Sunlight flowed in through the portholes and rested on the red
+tablecloth and the glittering steel cutlery.  For a centrepiece she had
+a half shattered clay flower-pot containing a geranium plant which she
+had picked up from the deck outside the woman's cabin.  It was droopy
+and generally woebegone, but it served its purpose.  In front of Dan
+was a heaping dish of toast artistically browned, and a generous glass
+jar of marmalade.
+
+And opposite, smiling at him, talking to him as though they had
+breakfasted together for a number of years, was the most radiant girl
+he had ever looked upon.  The simple costume was wonderfully effective.
+The white, full throat and the curves of the neck running to the
+shoulders were revealed by the low rolling collar, and the hair coiled
+low shone with lustrous sheen.
+
+[Illustration: Opposite, smiling at him, as though they had breakfasted
+together for years, was the radiant girl.]
+
+Despite Dan's fears as to the manner in which their tenancy of the
+derelict might terminate, he abandoned himself to the sheer charm of it
+all.  When he finally arose, ending a light, laughing conversation, the
+girl regarded him seriously.
+
+"Now, Captain," she said, "I want to ask you something, and you must
+tell me truthfully.  You have examined this vessel, and you have
+doubtless some idea as to what we are to do.  Tell me the exact
+situation."
+
+Dan looked her straight in the eye a moment, and the girl returned his
+gaze unflinchingly.
+
+"I am perfectly honest," she said; "I want you to be."
+
+"Well," said Dan, "first of all I'll tell you what I am going to try to
+do: I am going to try to sail this derelict into some port.  There is
+enough of the mainmast standing to allow some sort of a sail, and we
+can't be so terribly far from land.  Besides, this hold is filled with
+logwood and mahogany.  Now this is a valuable cargo, worth at least
+fifty thousand dollars.  The vessel herself isn't worth a great deal,
+but still something.  Here is the point: if we take this vessel into
+port alone we can claim fifty per cent salvage, and we'll get it, too.
+That means that we shall net, through our little experience, some
+twenty-five thousand dollars between us."
+
+Virginia stepped toward him with a delighted exclamation.  Dan raised
+his hand admonishingly.
+
+"But," he continued, "we must first get the vessel into port.  Several
+things may prevent this.  The chief preventive will be a storm.  If God
+gives us good weather for three or four days that is all I ask.  If He
+doesn't, then we--"
+
+"Go on," said the girl.
+
+"Then we must simply pray for small favors."
+
+Virginia nodded gravely.
+
+"I understand," she said.  "I trust you, Captain."  She looked at him
+fixedly.  "Can you imagine how much I trust you?  I shall be strong and
+brave and do exactly as you tell me."  She started forward suddenly.
+"What have you under your coat sleeves?  Are your arms bandaged?" she
+cried.  "And your neck, too?"
+
+Dan laughed.
+
+"It's nothing," he said.  "My hands and arms and the back of my neck
+were pretty well scorched.  I dug some picric acid out of the Captain's
+medicine chest and tied myself up a bit.  I am all right now.  The pain
+has all disappeared."
+
+The girl flushed.
+
+"And you didn't ask me to help you?"
+
+"There was absolutely no need.  Honestly, if I had needed to bother you
+I should not have hesitated.  The flames did not touch me, you know,
+just their hot breath; the bandages do not amount to anything."
+
+"Well," replied Virginia, shaking her head, "I don't like it one bit.
+If I can do anything to repay you, however slightly, for all you have
+done for me, please give me the opportunity."
+
+"I shall remember that," said Dan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+NIGHT ON THE DERELICT
+
+When the sun that evening sank like a red ball behind the purple
+horizon, Dan laid aside various implements and went aft with the
+realization of a day well spent.  He had cleared the deck.  Using the
+mainboom and a goodly section of the tattered canvas he had improvised
+a capacious leg-of-mutton sail which flapped idly in the almost
+motionless air.
+
+He found Virginia seated in a camp lounging-chair, with a paper-covered
+novel lying open face downward in her lap, gazing thoughtfully at the
+dusk which seemed rolling toward them over the sea like a fog.
+
+"It was a beautiful sunset," she said; "but now it has gone, the ocean
+seems to have such a cruel, cold look.  And there are whispering voices
+on the water."
+
+She shivered slightly and looked at him half humorously.
+
+"I know," said Dan.  "But the stars will be out to-night, and, later,
+the moon."
+
+"It will be dreary at best," replied Virginia.  "I think it would be
+nice if there weren't going to be any night until we--until we--" she
+paused.  "Oh, Captain, you think we--"  She stopped short and frowned.
+"There," she said reproachfully, "I told you I was going to be brave.
+I'm succeeding admirably!"
+
+"You _are_ succeeding admirably," said Dan.  "Yes, I think we are going
+to get out of this.  Of course we are.  In the meantime, pending
+dinner, or supper, rather, I am going into my cabin to see if I can't
+confiscate some of the Captain's clothes.  I feel as if I had been in
+these for years.  And--" he hesitated.
+
+"And what?" she asked.
+
+"And if the Captain has left a razor, I am going to shave."
+
+"Are you really?" laughed the girl.  "And while you are about it, won't
+you please telephone for my hairdresser?"
+
+With the dark came a light breeze--and the stars, which Dan hailed with
+delight as giving him something to go by.  The breeze came over the
+starboard beam, the sail filling nicely, and Dan, taking a stand by the
+wheel, directed the derelict toward land.  He had lighted the red
+starboard lamp--the port lamp was missing--and hung a lantern at the
+head of the foremast.  Virginia sat beside him.
+
+For an hour Dan had been absorbed in the business of manoeuvring his
+sodden charge.  Waterlogged as she was it was no easy matter to swing
+her out of the current and head her upon a course.  But at last he had
+succeeded.  Having but one sail it could not have been better placed
+than amidships.  Placed in the mainmast it was easier to maintain
+steerage way and at the same time it served to push the derelict
+forward.  Turning to the girl, he laughed triumphantly; and she, who
+had begun to be almost jealous of the derelict, inasmuch as it had
+taken so much of his attention, smiled politely, if faintly.
+
+"And now," said Dan, sitting beside her, with his hands on the lower
+spokes of the battered wheel, "we are homeward bound.  The stars have
+told me a great deal.  See them all.  Over there are Regulus and his
+sickle, and in the northwest you see Queen Vega.  There is Ursa Major
+up there, nearly overhead.  There's the Little Bear north of it; and
+still north is the good old North Star.  We are going straight for
+land, Miss Howland."
+
+"You are awfully clever, Captain Merrithew."
+
+Dan looked at her quickly.  She was smiling mockingly.
+
+"Yes," she continued, as though communing with herself, "I really
+believe he would rather talk about his old stars than bother coming
+down to the level of a girl who is dying to bring him to earth.  I
+cannot imagine a more disagreeable man to be shipwrecked with."
+
+"Nor I a more agreeable--"  He checked himself.  "I am entirely at your
+service, Miss Howland," he added; "which is to say, I have alighted."
+
+She did not answer at once.  Instead she leaned forward with her hands
+supporting her chin, her elbows in her lap, gazing solemnly at the
+western stars.
+
+"It is nearly eight o'clock, isn't it?" she asked, without moving her
+head.
+
+"Yes," replied Dan, "about that.  Why?"
+
+"Just now in New York," said Virginia in her low, full tones, "they
+have finished dining on Broadway.  All the lights are, oh, so bright!
+and women in the most gorgeous spring gowns and men in evening dress
+are pouring out of the Astor, the Waldorf, the Knickerbocker,--every
+place,--and stepping into red and green taxi-cabs, or strolling
+leisurely to see the latest play.  And on Fifth Avenue, in the club
+opposite our house, the same five stout men are just about to occupy
+the same five stout chairs in the big windows.  I have watched them for
+years, and--"  The girl paused.  "Our house!  Do you suppose my father
+is there now?"  She closed her eyes.  "I can almost see him.  Of course
+he is mourning me for lost; and Aunt Helen is trying to comfort him and
+other persons.  But there, I must not think of that, must I?"  She
+turned to Dan and smiled bravely.
+
+"No, you must not," he said gravely.  "He is a man; he will bear his
+grief like a man.  And when you return--"
+
+"When I return?" interpolated the girl, quickly.  "Have you thought
+about that, Daniel Merrithew?"
+
+"Not a great deal, except to resolve that if I ever get ashore I shall
+never again go to sea as a sailor."
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that," said Virginia.  "Ever since the night when you
+were shielding me from the fire--"
+
+Dan raised his hand.
+
+"Anything you said that night, Miss Howland, need cause you no regret,
+no misgiving.  As well judge the words, the actions, of a man who knows
+he has but an hour to live."
+
+Virginia looked at him puzzled.  She started to speak, but closed her
+lips tight upon the words.  She was vividly flushed.
+
+"Did I say anything so terrible then?" she asked at length.  "I am sure
+I can remember nothing I regret.  Of course I don't remember much; I
+suppose I was awfully flighty, then.  But you were fine and brave and
+noble; and, whatever I said, I stand pat, as father says," the girl
+laughed.  "This is such a conventional age that when a knight of modern
+times revives the daring and chivalry of older ages, we women have no
+adequate way in which to requite it, you know."
+
+"You must not think about it at all," replied Dan.
+
+"And why not?  That night I hung at the mercy of your strength and
+endurance to pain, when you could easily have saved yourself by letting
+me go.  Ah, don't deny it," as Dan made a gesture.  "I know!  My life
+was in your keeping, to save it or let it go, as you willed.  Daniel
+Merrithew, do you ever feel that now you have the right to be
+interested in that life that you alone saved?"
+
+"What do you mean?" Dan was looking at her curiously.
+
+The girl laughed excitedly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know exactly what I do mean--except, except that I have
+simply felt, well, as though I have no right to be altogether my own
+selfish self--in the way I used to be, I mean; that I have no longer an
+absolute right----  Oh, how can I explain it clearly?  Let us say that
+I have a conviction that any serious change I might wish to make in my
+life should not be done without--well, not consent, exactly, but good
+wishes--no, I mean consent.  There, that may be putting it clumsily,
+but don't you understand?"
+
+Dan flushed.  "I have saved lives before," he said; "and twice men have
+saved my life, and I never felt,--felt the way you say toward my
+rescuers."
+
+"But that is different; it is impossible to compare man's attitude
+toward man as you would a woman's."
+
+"Yes, that's so."
+
+"Then you, too, have felt as I feel?"
+
+"No, I never thought of it in that way."
+
+She was silent a moment, but she regarded him searchingly.  His face
+was upturned, gazing at the flapping sail on the mainmast.  She caught
+the strong, classic profile in the starlight, and over her flooded the
+deep sense of her utter dependence upon him, upon his skill, his
+strength, his resource, and the deeper sense of her implicit trust in
+him as the embodiment of all these qualities.
+
+She yearned now to express to him her emotions; she almost felt she
+must.  And yet she hardly knew how.  She had tried to do so, but how
+inadequate her words had seemed!  Bearing in upon her mood, Dan's cool,
+even voice sounded miles away.
+
+"Miss Howland, had you thought--"
+
+She interrupted him.
+
+"See here, Daniel Merrithew, I said before that ceremony had no part on
+this boat.  Hereafter, if you won't call me by my first name you must
+address me by my last.  It must be either one or the other."
+
+Dan made no comment.  He hesitated just a moment, then he said:
+
+"I was going to ask you, Virginia, if you had thought of going to your
+cabin yet."
+
+She smiled and blushed.
+
+"I--I wanted to speak to you about that," she said, speaking rapidly.
+"I saw you this evening taking things from the Captain's room into the
+mate's cabin.  Now, if you have any idea that I am going to sleep on
+this horrid, grisly boat, so far away from you, you are mistaken.  You
+must sleep in the Captain's room--and the door leading into mine must
+be ajar, too.  Oh, I am terribly unmaidenly!  I cannot help it; I shall
+be horribly forlorn and frightened, and shall hear all sorts of sounds;
+I can hear them now, and so can you--"
+
+"But," interrupted Dan, "I cannot go to sleep, Miss--Virginia.  This
+boat must be sailed to land.  There is a breeze.  She cannot be left
+alone; she would go a hundred miles out of her course; and, besides, we
+might meet a vessel."
+
+For a moment the girl gazed at him uncomprehendingly.
+
+"Do you mean to say you are going to stay up all night and sail?  But
+you have not had a wink of sleep and I shall certainly not go into
+that--" she suddenly arose.  "How stupid of me!  Of course both of us
+must stand watch in turn.  While you are steering I shall sleep at the
+wheel.  While I am steering you shall sleep there.  How simple!  Then
+we need not be alone at all.  Here, I'll hold the wheel first and you
+go to sleep.  I shall wake you at midnight, perhaps before if I get
+frightened.  Then I shall be asleep through those creepy morning hours."
+
+Dan demurred vigorously, but she was steadfast.  So he went to the
+after cabin and brought out several blankets and a pillow, which she
+arranged deftly.
+
+As he prepared to lie down, he looked at the girl.
+
+"See that star up there?" he said.  "Well, just keep the vessel going
+the way she is, with that star over your shoulder.  Don't let it get
+anywhere else.  If it does, wake me quickly.  If you become afraid, or
+see anything, let me know at once."
+
+"Yes," said the girl, "I understand.  Good-night, Daniel."
+
+"Good-night, Virginia."
+
+In a few minutes Dan was fast asleep.  Through the night sailed the
+girl, alone, sore afraid, but comforted with the assurance that a touch
+of her hand would bring to her the powerful man who slept at her feet.
+
+Straight she stood at the wheel, and tall, like some figure of a
+goddess of antiquity.  The moon rose, and its light glorified her.  It
+fell upon the shattered deck, defining every dreary detail.  The waves
+rose and fell with the lilt of music.  The tinkling breeze was cool and
+fresh and invigorating.  Fear vanished from her.  She felt herself a
+part of the elements, a part of the night, the lone representative of
+life and consciousness, and God amid the waste of primeval desolation.
+
+So she sailed, exalted, ennobled, until long after midnight.  When her
+thoughts turned to the man sleeping at her feet, she leaned down,
+gazing long and earnestly upon his face.  Then, as he stirred, she let
+her hand rest on his forehead a moment.
+
+"It is time to awaken, Daniel," she said.
+
+He was upon his feet in an instant.  There was a strange expression
+upon his face.
+
+"I was far away from here," he said.  "I was dreaming, the bulliest
+sort of a dream."
+
+"Dreaming?  And what about, pray?"
+
+"You."
+
+"You were!  Tell me the dream."
+
+"They say dreams that are told never come true," replied Dan, slowly.
+
+Their eyes met.  Both were smiling.  Then her eyes fell; but she still
+smiled.
+
+"Then," she said, "I guess you had better not tell me--unless--"
+
+"Unless?" asked Dan, as she paused.
+
+Slowly she arranged the blankets, while Dan waited for the completion
+of the sentence.  Then she lay down.
+
+"Good-night," she said.
+
+When she awoke, the sun was rising high.  The breeze had died away.
+The wheel was deserted.  She looked down the stretch of deck, but Dan
+was nowhere to be seen.  With a fluttering heart she arose and shook
+out her skirts, hardly daring to peer into the cabin for fear her
+dreadful intimations might prove true.
+
+He was not in the cabin.  She called his name in a low voice, but only
+the hollow echo resounded from the corridor.  In agonized suspense now
+she ran out on the deck.
+
+"Dan!" she called with all the power of her lungs, not expecting that
+he would hear her now.  "Dan Merrithew, have you left me?"
+
+There came an answering hail, and looking toward the bow she saw Dan
+clambering out of the forward hatch.  His shoes and trousers were
+dripping wet.  As he ran to her she waited, weeping.  He caught her
+hands and held them.
+
+"Oh, Dan, Dan!" she cried, "you frightened me so!  I thought you had
+gone.  I thought you were dead.  You are not going to leave me again,
+are you?"
+
+"Never," said Dan.
+
+Then both started as though the underlying significance of the question
+and answer had suddenly dawned upon them.  Gently she withdrew her
+hands, which Dan did not seek to retain.  In conversational tone, he
+said:
+
+"I am awfully sorry, Virginia.  While you were sleeping, the wind fell,
+an hour or two after dawn, and the blue of the water struck me.  I
+found the Captain's thermometer and lowered it overboard.  My best
+hopes were realized.  We are in the Gulf Stream, Virginia, and moving
+northward at about four miles an hour.  We are all right now if all
+goes well."
+
+"But why were you hiding?" asked the girl.
+
+"I wasn't.  I wanted to see if the water had hurt the logwood, so as to
+impair its value, and to learn the condition of the hull.  You know the
+cargo is all that is keeping us afloat.  Everything is pretty soggy
+down there, but we'll hold together, I guess; and I don't believe the
+logwood will suffer a bit.  Of course the mahogany is all right.  We're
+lucky.  One schooner in a million has mahogany these days."
+
+She had been gazing at him almost vacantly while he was talking.  Now
+she smiled beautifully.
+
+"Oh, I am so glad to see you again," she said.  "It seems almost as if
+you had been away a thousand years."
+
+"That," said Dan, "almost pays me for frightening you.  Are you ready
+for breakfast?  I knocked it together a while ago."
+
+"For which you shall be punished--when we get ashore."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+DAN AND VIRGINIA
+
+After breakfast they drew chairs to the wheel and sat out on deck.  It
+was a wonderful May morning.  Thin clouds hung in the blue, like little
+yachts; and the cool, balmy air and the sparkling sunlight brought the
+clear, steady call of work to be done, of life to be lived beautifully
+and nobly, and strong things to overcome, or to accomplish--the call of
+youth.
+
+And they heard the call, these two, and responded to it with the
+joyousness of youth, wherein a phrase is a lifetime, and a word,
+volumes.  They talked of themselves, regarding each other wonderingly
+as hidden depths of character were revealed, or a word, or a sentence,
+or a sympathetic silence threw light upon a new element of personality.
+
+He spoke of the _Fledgling_.  He used to see her through a golden haze.
+She was his first command.  Yet each day came the old question, What
+next?  And the answer.  Why, everything.  A future--bigger things and
+better, broader work, not on the sea at the last.  No; landward,
+somewhere, anywhere.  But onward, onward!
+
+"Something is linked with every one's destiny, Virginia.  Fate fires no
+salutes; every shot is solid and aimed at something.  And the thing
+that is hit you have to step over and go on; if you stop to look at it
+and think over it and try to look for something else for Fate to knock
+down for you, something easier to step over and get away from, you
+find, perhaps, years later, that just there you missed your chance."
+
+She regarded him with kindling eyes.
+
+"And so that has been your philosophy."
+
+"For want of a better, yes."
+
+"I think it is a splendid one, and it has stood its highest test--it
+has served you well.  Do you know, the first time I had any idea you
+were interested in the higher things was that day we were in your cabin
+on the _Tampico_.  Do you remember my looking at your books and
+exclaiming over the selection?  I don't know, but somehow the Bible
+impressed me most."
+
+"I had a pretty good English foundation at Exeter," replied Dan, "and I
+kept it up after I left there.  That Bible--I think I did grow and
+broaden after leaving school, but I never grew beyond Psalms and St.
+Paul; which proves that a little knowledge is not dangerous."
+
+The girl smiled.
+
+"Most men would be ashamed to say that," she said.  "Most of the men I
+have known," she added.
+
+"I never would have said it to any one but you."  He said this with
+quiet conviction, and the girl inclined her head slightly.
+
+"I thank you. . . .  Do you remember that night at the dinner when I
+told you that if our friendship was to continue it was to be one of
+limitations?  How long ago that seems now--and how absurd!"
+
+"Does it seem absurd?"
+
+"Doesn't it?"  She laughed.  "It seems to me you were inclined to
+regard it so that night."
+
+"Much to your indignation."
+
+"Is it so?  If you had asked me, I might have admitted that the fact I
+ever could be indignant with you was the principal reason why that
+night of the dinner seemed so long ago."  She hastened to qualify.
+"For, you see, I count you now among my very closest friends."
+
+"That is saying a great deal," smiled Dan.  "When we get ashore and you
+are comfortably installed as queen of your father's drawing-room and
+Dan Merrithew is--"
+
+An exclamation from the girl interrupted him.
+
+"Dan Merrithew, don't you dare!"
+
+"And Dan Merrithew is just a--"  She had risen, and before he could
+complete the sentence her hands were pressed tightly over his mouth.
+
+"Will you be good?" she cried.  She released her hands and regarded him
+with mock severity.
+
+"But--" laughed Dan.
+
+Again the hands flew to his face.
+
+"Will you?"
+
+"I will," said Dan.
+
+"And you'll promise not to say or think such nonsense again?"
+
+"I promise," said Dan.
+
+And then for a while both fell silent, thinking of the future which lay
+before them.  The girl smiled as her day-dreams opened and expanded.
+Dan frowned, and the fingers of his well-shaped hands locked and
+unlocked across his knees.
+
+Suddenly Virginia sprang to her feet with an exclamation.
+
+"Oh, I forgot," she said, and ran, laughing, to the galley, whence she
+returned with a large plate of fudge.  At Dan's look of surprise she
+tossed her head in mock disdain of what he might say or think.
+
+"I unearthed two great cakes of chocolate last night," she said, "and
+as I was simply dying for some candy I made fudge while preparing
+breakfast.  I had to use condensed milk, watered; and as there was no
+marble slab I had to stir it in the pan.  I don't know how good it is;
+it's awfully grainy"; and thus, rattling on, she took a square of the
+confection and placed it gingerly between her lips.
+
+"Why, it's not so bad," she said.  "Here!  Open your mouth and shut
+your eyes!"  Which Dan did, declaring that he had never eaten anything
+half so delicious.
+
+"Really!" she exclaimed, with falling inflection.  "Then I must say I
+feel sorry for you. . . .  Now, why have you that little amused twinkle
+in your eyes?  I used to see it sometimes at the table on the _Tampico_
+when Reggie was boasting, and--and sometimes when I was trying to be
+very brilliant.  Do you know, sometimes I felt like boxing your ears,
+you seemed so superior."
+
+"It was not superiority in your case," laughed Dan, "it was
+appreciation."
+
+"Thank you," said Virginia; "and now?"
+
+"Oh," smiled Dan, "the thought of fudge on a derelict was and is
+responsible for this twinkle."
+
+"I don't care," she frowned.  "It is the person that rises superior to
+conditions who triumphs in this world.  Anyway, you seem to be
+disposing of your share, despite your notions of incongruity."
+
+"Have you thought," said Dan, "that it might pay to be very economical
+with your chocolate?  If we stay here two or three months and all our
+food runs out we can live on ever so little chocolate each day."
+
+"Two or three months!" echoed Virginia.  "Now, you are tactful, aren't
+you?  And just as I was sitting here chattering away, with no thought
+that we were not on a yacht ready to turn home the minute I wished to!"
+
+Dan smiled.
+
+"If we were on a yacht, how soon would you--wish to?" he said.
+
+The girl met his eyes undauntedly.
+
+"If I answered you in one way I should not be at all polite," she said;
+"and if in another, I should not be--be--"
+
+"Honest?" suggested Dan.
+
+"That would depend upon what I said," she answered with a non-committal
+shrug.  "Now I am going.  I've a lot to do in my cabin, and a luncheon
+menu to make out.  _Au revoir_!"  She paused at the entrance to the
+cabins, smiled brightly at Dan, and then disappeared.
+
+Long he sat, gazing out over the serene waters, filled with a great
+inward thrill.  The wonder of all the fast-crowding events of the past
+fortnight was asserting itself potently in his mind, and it was
+difficult to realize he was not now living some wild, improbable dream.
+But, after all, he found the sense of responsibility dominant.  To his
+care was committed a beautiful life,--a life that must be saved,
+cherished, and ultimately restored to its proper environment.  Of late,
+it seemed, an evil star had pursued him; everything he had commanded or
+had anything to do with had either sunk or burned--an extraordinary
+train of misfortune not lacking in the lives of many able masters of
+craft.  What next?  He passed over that thought with a frown.  He was
+living in a beautiful present; the future would be met as the past had
+been, bravely and with no cry for quarter.
+
+The present!  He was immediately to learn how dearly he prized it; for
+as he gazed seaward, the smoke of a steamship, below the horizon,
+appeared.  He sprang to his feet and watched it eagerly; and yet when
+that faint column grew more dim and finally faded, he sat back
+constrained to confess that he was almost glad the course of the
+steamship was as it was.  He fought against it, thinking of the girl in
+the cabin and her interests.  And yet--and yet?  He shrugged his
+shoulders and walked toward the door, lured by the song which he
+remembered so clearly.
+
+  "If I had you!  If I had you!  You!"
+
+"Will _I_ do?" he laughed, peering in at her open door.
+
+"For the present, yes," she bowed, "because I want you to admire.  See,
+I have been decorating my room with unbleached muslin.  Aren't those
+curtains dear?  And those silesia bunk tapestries, aren't they
+fascinating?"
+
+"They are, indeed.  How much would you charge to beautify my cabin?"
+
+Virginia blushed.
+
+"You had better ask how much you owe me," she said.  Then, "You haven't
+looked in your cabin!  And after all my labor, too!"
+
+With an exclamation Dan darted across the corridor and beheld, with
+kindling eyes, many evidences of that feminine touch without which
+hardened bachelors may fancy their quarters complete.  She had followed
+him to the door and was gazing over his shoulder.  Something caught in
+Dan's throat.  Always a man's man, as the saying is, the full force of
+the realization of his strange situation seemed rushing from the
+interior of that cabin to overpower him.  A girl, a beautiful girl, one
+whom he had looked upon as he had looked upon the beautiful
+unattainable things of this life, planning and executing for his
+pleasure, and blushing joyously to find that which she had done for him
+pleasing in his sight, left him bereft of words.
+
+He turned to her and strove to speak, and then suddenly he faced about
+and walked hurriedly to the deck.  She came up behind him and placed
+her hand upon his shoulder and smiled, understanding.  His eyes met
+hers, and then, with an involuntary movement, his arm was about her
+waist.  For a full minute they stood thus, neither moving, she
+regarding him with wondering eyes, but still smiling slightly.
+
+Suddenly he started; his arm swiftly dropped, and he glanced with a
+jerk of his head towards the sail.
+
+"Are we getting out of our course?" she asked.
+
+"I was," he said, scowling, "but I won't again.  Can you forgive one
+who is no better than a--than a blamed pirate?"
+
+"I can forgive you everything but calling yourself names," she said
+gently.
+
+Before another hour had passed, clouds began to rise from out the sea.
+There came a fitful breeze, with a little hum to it.  To the
+southeast-ward the horizon assumed a grayish-white tinge.
+
+Dan watched it anxiously, and the girl followed his gaze and then
+glanced at him inquiringly.
+
+"It's going to cloud over," he said.  "There may be some deviltry
+before we make shore."
+
+He moistened his fingers, moving them to and fro in the air.
+
+"It isn't a storm," he said; "it is fog."
+
+"Fog!"  The girl was trembling.  "What does that mean?"
+
+"It means that for a while old ocean is going to destroy all our pretty
+scenery, and that it is going to be cold and nasty and disagreeable."
+
+Already, in fact, the ocean had lost its color.  Heavy blue-white
+clouds with shredded, filmy foundations, which seemed almost to sweep
+the waters, moved swiftly to the westward, while in the background the
+wall of mist advanced silently to encompass them.  They could feel its
+breath, heavy, clammy, chilling.
+
+Presently a mass of vapor, like a detached squadron of cavalry, swept
+about the derelict and then moved on, leaving little shredded patches
+hanging about the foremast.
+
+Quite unknown to the girl, Dan, the preceding day, had constructed a
+raft, which he regarded as being quite as safe for ocean travelling, if
+not quite so comfortable, as the derelict.  He had lashed supplies, a
+small cask of water, and the like thereon, and now, with the fog-pall
+gathering about, he went amidships, examined it carefully, and made
+sure that nothing would prevent a hasty launching in event of disaster.
+
+When he returned the murk had closed in thickly.  It was as though the
+vessel were immured from the world.  Virginia was standing at the
+wheel, and with the pall throwing the derelict into more sombre relief,
+Dan caught more strongly than ever the utter contrast which her
+presence brought to this abandoned hulk.  Whenever she had walked along
+the deck it had seemed a profanation to him that the uneven planking
+should know her tread; that she should be on the derelict at all was,
+he felt, a working of Fate against everything that was beautiful and
+graceful.
+
+Now, as she stood there in the pallid gloom, she suggested some tall,
+beautiful genius, presiding over the wrack of elemental things, facing
+a more glorious future.
+
+"How shut in everything seems!" she said, as Dan took the wheel from
+her hands.  He had a long fog-horn which he blew at intervals.
+
+"We haven't seen a speck of a ship," he explained, "but now the fog is
+about us there's liable to be a fleet of them in our vicinity at any
+time.  At least that has been my experience with fogs.  It would not be
+much fun to be rammed, although in our present condition I fancy it
+would hurt the other vessel more than it would this."
+
+Hour after hour they went on blindly, silently, save at such times as
+Dan's raucous horn blasts went tearing through the fog.  The wind had
+died away.  Sometimes the forward part of the vessel was hidden from
+their view.  Frequently it seemed distorted; strange phantom shapes
+filled the deck, and the soughing of the yielding hull brought strange,
+uncanny sounds to their ears.
+
+Dan was seated on the deck, his eyes peering about on all sides, trying
+to pierce the veil, every nerve taut, every sense alert.  The girl
+crept close beside him, so that she touched him, and there she
+remained, while all the terrors of the ghostly ship arose to confront
+her.  The weed-hung, slimy rails and wave-bitten deck stretched away in
+ever-fading perspective to the foremast where everything ended in an
+amorphous blur.
+
+There came a time when the two felt almost a part of the deep--two
+mortals admitted into all the hidden evils that lurk thereon.  Their
+lot to witness the inception of mighty tempests; to hear great gray
+waves boast of the harm they had done and the winds to plan their
+rending deeds.  Perhaps they themselves would be called to the work, to
+deal to some proud vessel the death blow as so many derelicts have done.
+
+Once far off there sounded a series of whistle blasts, hoarse,
+tremulous notes of warning and inquiry.  But as the two listened with
+straining ears the sounds became more dim.  Finally they ceased
+altogether.
+
+The girl eventually lost all sense of acute feeling.  She sat dumb, her
+undeviating eyes fastened upon Dan's face, as though in him she found
+all that was tangible or normal or real.  Her hand was resting on his
+shoulder now, clutching it tight; but if he knew it was there, he made
+no sign.
+
+At length, toward evening, as though in a dream, Dan's voice bore upon
+her ears.  For a moment she gazed at him dully, and then she
+comprehended his words.
+
+"It is beginning to rain, Virginia.  The fog will go away now."
+
+"Oh, good!" she exclaimed.
+
+"The wind is freshening, too," he added, "and it doesn't feel very
+good.  I think we're going to have a blow for a change."
+
+It seemed so.  Already the mists were beginning to scuttle away before
+the increasing wind-rush which moaned with evil breath.
+
+"Will you hold the wheel for a moment, please," said Dan.
+
+As she placed her hands on the spokes he went forward and lowered the
+sail.  There were two lines of reef points in the section of canvas and
+Dan took in both.  When he hoisted it again there was just a patch of
+three-cornered sail.
+
+Within half an hour it was raining hard.  The wind was increasing
+slowly but surely, and the sea was rising.  Dan asked the girl to go
+into the cabin and to remain there either until the storm was over, or
+he summoned her.  She obeyed him partially.  She went into the cabin,
+but returned quickly with two slickers.
+
+"Do you suppose," she cried, "I am going to let you be alone now?  I am
+going to help you, and, if it must be, to die with you.  I am not a bit
+afraid any more."
+
+Dan placed his hand on her arm.
+
+"Get down here, then, under the lee of this cabin.  We are not going to
+die.  At least not yet a while."
+
+So the storm came.  With his patch of sail Dan had headed the craft up
+into the wind; and thus, with the boat already beginning to rise and
+fall, with the broad bow groaning, and oozing ends of planking, and
+dirty water, and the deck, contracting and expanding like the belly of
+a stricken whale, he settled down to the long fight.
+
+The fog had all departed now.  North, east, south, and west, nothing
+but the gray of onrushing waves and a shrouded sky as implacable as the
+morning of doom.  Darkness was falling swiftly.  Soon the terrible
+night began.
+
+Not that it was the worst storm in which Dan had ever been, but
+certainly he had never faced North Atlantic tumult under such a
+disadvantage, under conditions so desperately precarious.  The bow rose
+but heavily to the seas, and never topped them.  The water rushing
+over, poured down the deck in mill-races, filling it to the rails,
+occasionally springing up over the poop and the top of the after cabin,
+lashing the faces of the two crouching at the wheel behind it.
+
+"It's a sou'easter, I'm almost certain," roared Dan in the girl's ear.
+"It will work up to a climax gradually, and then gradually go down, at
+this season of the year.  Don't be afraid of the water.  We can't sink,
+I believe; the only danger is that we might break up--and we won't do
+that."
+
+But despite the optimism of his words, Dan was not altogether certain
+that the wallowing wreck would hold together.  There was nothing to do
+but wait and see.  The situation he grasped in all its grievous
+details.  He had never been so happy, so utterly at peace as aboard
+this derelict.  No gilded barge of antiquity had ever been so glorious,
+so golden as this mangled wraith of the seas in the sunlit hours of the
+immediate past.  Her voice, her laughter, had filled them with music,
+her presence with all the poetry and romance of the world, and the
+light in her eyes shining for him alone had filled him with a great
+tenderness.
+
+Now, the night, the storm, danger--death, perhaps.  He shut his jaws
+and drove the flooding thoughts from his mind.  Anger,--the anger of
+bereavement,--filled him, and he glared into the tempest and twisted
+the wheel as though combating a sentient adversary.
+
+An hour passed, Cimmerian blackness had fallen.  The waves came
+savagely, ill-defined masses let loose from a viewless limbo to work
+their harm.  Sometimes they caught the dull gray flash of breaking
+waters, but more often everything was hidden.  The roar of the wind and
+wave was incessant.
+
+Dan's efforts to keep the derelict's head to the seas had failed.  The
+hulk had slued around and was driving before the tempest, whither he
+did not know.  Groaning, crashing, crackling, the hulk lumbered on.
+Once a wave leaped over the stern, stunning them with its thunderous
+impact, dragging at them powerfully, as though to draw them back into
+the sea whence it came.
+
+Plunging thus, helpless, unseeing, they seemed to be flying as swiftly
+as the wind.  A wild ride--to where?  Were they driving out into the
+lonely heart of the deep, there to perish in a last long dive?  Or was
+it shoreward, with oblivion coming in the dreadful grinding and
+crashing and shattering of timbers?
+
+Neither had the heart for even a faint hope for safety; and yet Dan,
+with his hands stiffened on the wheel spokes, fought on.  The girl,
+with her head bowed, sat still, her hands clinging to his shoulders.
+They did not speak.  Twice Dan had attempted to utter a cheering word,
+but the wind had swept the sounds from his lips.
+
+Both knew that at any moment the derelict might succumb to the forces
+striving to destroy her.  And, as they sat waiting, the realization
+came to both what a small part of the incidents of this heaving night
+the dismemberment of their washing vessel would be.  In the vortex of
+the riot, when the heavens and the ocean seemed united in the creation
+of chaos, they sensed the littleness of their own lives and the vanity
+of their affairs.
+
+As a thunderous roar of wind smote the vessel Dan felt the pressure of
+Virginia's hand on his shoulder suddenly tighten.  He turned to her,
+and through the darkness caught the vague outlines of her face, which
+was fixed on the faint blur which marked the forward part of the hulk.
+
+His eyes followed just as her fingers loosened their grasp.  He saw
+nothing save the dull flash of swirling waters and the amorphous blotch
+of hull.  Slowly her hand tightened again; and then, as he looked he
+caught above the deck an impression of something moving.  It seemed to
+be something that was revealing itself to the instinct rather than to
+their visual senses.
+
+As the wind passed on, leaving that confused murmur, broken only by the
+dogged rush of waters, Virginia spoke to Dan with trembling voice.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+Dan's eyes were still staring forward.  He spoke through his clenched
+teeth.
+
+"Wait a moment."  More accustomed to the gloom ahead he was able to
+determine that the sail had torn from the boom and was waving out from
+the shattered mast-top like a flag.  The mast itself seemed to be
+reeling.  Was the hull opening and disintegrating?
+
+Almost without volition he half arose to his feet.  The girl followed
+his action, still clinging to his shoulder.  Dan inclined his head to
+speak to her, when with a shriek the wind came again.  There was a dull
+crash forward, a splintering and rearing of wood, a quivering of the
+entire hull; and then, as though hurled by a giant hand, a huge section
+of wood, whether a part of cargo or hull Dan could not tell, shot out
+of the night, crashing a hole in the roof of the cabin behind which
+they were crouching, and then bounded over their heads into the sea.
+
+Both remained still, as though carved in stone.  Forward there was a
+crashing sound, a series of blows, as though some great hammer were
+engaged in disintegrating the hull.  There was a grinding of wood
+against wood which caused the deck under their feet to tremble.  Still
+neither moved.  The terrible thought that the derelict was going to
+pieces was in both their minds.  They had no doubt of this now.  They
+simply waited.
+
+Virginia had no great fear.  Her dominant thought was the dread of the
+first immersion in the cold, cruel, black waters.  But it would not
+last long.  Not long, not long--these two words kept ringing in her
+mind.  Her shoulders were drawn up, as though preparing for the shock.
+
+Dan had not moved.  Half crouching, half kneeling, his eyes were
+fastened upon the vague deck ahead.  Now, as though the elements had
+worked to give him sight, the black sky was suddenly seared by a long,
+lurid line of lightning.  It was but the fraction of a second; it was
+long enough.  In that blue glow the derelict took form, grim, ghostly,
+heaving, as a spirit picture might be thrown upon a black cloth, every
+detail limned in filmy perfection.
+
+With a cry Dan leaped to his feet and seized an axe lying by his side.
+
+"We are not breaking," he shouted.  "The mast has torn out of its step
+and is pounding us.  I am going to cut it away.  We shall be all right."
+
+The girl heard his voice, caught the enthusiasm of it, but
+distinguished not a single word.  As he crawled slowly by the side of
+the cabin to the steps leading to the deck she half arose as though to
+follow him.
+
+"Dan, Dan," she cried, "don't leave me!"
+
+He waved her back, and a second later had gained the deck.  For a few
+minutes she sat there, wondering, fearing, and then in a lull in the
+storm she heard the blows of the axe.  A great wave rose over the
+quarter and ran forward with a roar.  There came a shout.  She
+listened.  The sounds of the axe were heard no more.
+
+"Dan!" she called.  "Dan!"  Her words were whistled away on the wind.
+
+In desperation she worked her way to the steps and peered down upon the
+deck.  She heard nothing but the wind and the waves.  And then with her
+hair streaming wild, with lips bloodless, she stood upright and rushed
+to the deck.  The wind tore at her, flying water buffeted her, and the
+hulk swayed under her feet; but, as though endowed with superhuman
+power, as though scorning the elements to which she had bowed through
+the night she ran forward, heedless of everything but that her
+companion was in danger.
+
+Where she was going she knew not, nor cared.  A hand grasped the end of
+her slicker and brought her to a halt.  She looked down and saw Dan
+stretched upon the deck, the mast lying across his legs.  She knelt at
+his side.
+
+"Dan!"
+
+He drew her head down so that her ear was near his mouth.
+
+"Not hurt," he said coolly.  "The wave knocked the mast across me just
+as I had almost cut it through.  Find the axe.  Two strokes will free
+me.  Hurry.  Another wave may drown me."
+
+The girl swept her hands hastily over the deck.  She found the axe a
+few feet from Dan, and with that frenzied, nervous strength which comes
+to women in times of stress, she hacked at the mast, which Dan had
+almost cut through when the wave struck him.  Three times the edge of
+the implement glanced.  She ground her teeth, raised it a fourth time
+taking careful aim.  Then she let fly with all her strength, and the
+axe bit deep.  She raised it again, smiling now.  Two strokes, three
+strokes, four strokes.  The keen blade severed the last inch of wood,
+the hulk pitched forward, and the mast with its boom and its tangle of
+rigging and canvas rolled from Dan and plunged into the sea.
+
+He was on his feet in a second, and with his arm about her waist they
+ran astern and reached their posts at the wheel in safety.  But there
+was no need to bother with the wheel now.  There was nothing to do, in
+fact, but sit inactive and accept what came to them.
+
+And yet, had they but known it, Fate, which it may be said takes the
+lives of the young grudgingly, had worked for their ultimate good.  The
+Gulf Stream had carried them to a point off Hatteras, and there the
+storm had enveloped them.  As Dan had surmised, it was from the
+south-east, and laboring and flailing as sorely as she might, the winds
+and the waves had steadily lashed the vessel toward safety.
+
+They could not know that.  It was only after an unusual interval in the
+powerful wind-blast that Dan looked upward and suddenly held up his
+hand.  He looked at the vague form of the girl and bared his teeth in a
+quick, mirthless smile.
+
+"The wind is changing," he muttered.  "What now?"
+
+There came another rush of wind.  But it was not so strong as its
+predecessors had been; and looking into the sky he could see the cloud
+movement.  He shook Virginia by the shoulder, and there was a
+triumphant ring in his voice as he shouted into her ear,
+
+"The gale is passing!"
+
+Gradually but surely the shrieking of the elements diminished; the seas
+were palpably falling.  Great, dark shapes could now be seen rushing
+across the lightening firmament, and once the girl, stretching her arm
+upward, exclaimed, as through a rift overhead she caught a glimpse of a
+little star.
+
+Half an hour--there came a great peace.
+
+Now, a man and a woman out of the chaos--with the world and all its
+civilization and its manners and its men and its affairs as though they
+had never been, as though the two had lived for a flashing minute in
+some old dream--the strain of years that makes for ceremony and
+diffidence and convention and custom suddenly stopped, turned backward.
+
+They were the first man and the first woman on the verge of upheaval,
+having felt fear, not as we feel it, but in a dull, instinctive
+way--wondering horribly.  Just two, just a man and a woman, emerging
+from all the destructive might of the world.
+
+She--not Virginia Howland now--just She--turned toward the man who
+crouched with one hand still clutching the wheel, the other lying
+loosely, palm downward upon the deck.  Her face was filled with the
+glow of returning blood, her hair streamed, her eyes shone.
+
+Gone, the tempest.  The waves were lashing, surly, hissing a monotone
+as old as Time is old.  The darkness was the gloom of an age before the
+sun was born.  The air was filled with low sounds that had been dead
+for aeons.  And she turned to him, and he turned to her.
+
+Her bosom was rising and falling; he could hear her quick, hard
+breathing.  As though without volition, she moved a step forward, and
+with a low cry held out her arms to him, trembling no more, her heart
+filled with a wild, joyous song.  Suddenly she felt his breath upon her
+face, felt herself crushed in his arms, as she would be crushed.
+Gently he kissed her upon the lips, and then again and again and again.
+For a moment she lay dumb in his arms, and then as he drew back his
+head she put her arms around his neck and held his lips to hers.  So
+they stood.
+
+A force far greater than the unharnessed might of the ocean now
+thrilled and filled and exalted them.  Slowly she raised her hands and
+passed them over his face, lingeringly; once more she felt herself
+drawn to him, and laughed joyously.
+
+As Dan turned, out of the darkness ahead he saw a light.  He looked
+again.  He saw it plainly now, that steady white disc with its red
+sector.
+
+"Cape Henry!" he cried.  "Good God!"
+
+The girl started.
+
+"What?" she said, wonderingly.
+
+"Cape Henry to port, Virginia.  We'll have a tug in an hour.  The dawn
+is coming now.  The sun will see us in Newport News."
+
+Virginia regarded him dreamily, and tightened her clasp about his neck.
+
+"Newport News," she said; "and what do I care!  You have not kissed me
+in an age."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+The next afternoon Horace Howland sat in his office at No. 11 Broadway,
+staring moodily at his desk with its accumulation of papers.  For long,
+it seemed, he had lived in an agony of suspense.  Friends had come and
+gone and said their words, and passed on unrecognized and unheeded.
+
+How many times had he wished that the Ward liner which had crossed the
+path of the boats and picked them up the morning after the fire had
+left him at least to perish.  A full half-dozen tugs and steamships had
+been sent to the scene of the conflagration there to cruise about until
+some trace of the missing should be found.  A Clyde vessel had sighted
+the burned steamship, a mere mass of charred and twisted frames and
+plates, sinking low in the sea.  A Government cruiser and a revenue
+cutter had joined in the search.
+
+But no word had come.  An hour before, a messenger boy had arrived with
+a telegram.  It was one of many received by Mr. Howland every day, and
+he tossed it, unopened, upon a pile of similar envelopes upon his desk.
+
+Now, as he turned his eyes yearningly out of a window which gave upon
+the harbor, the name of a reporter was announced.  Mr. Howland had
+talked and talked and talked to reporters until he was sick of them as
+of every one and everything else.  He turned to his secretary.
+
+"See that fellow, will you?" he said.
+
+In less than a minute the secretary hurried into the office with an
+excited manner, the reporter at his heels, bearing a long sheet of
+tissue paper filled with typewriting.
+
+"I have come to see you about the rescue of your daughter, Mr. Howland."
+
+The merchant wheeled quickly in his chair.
+
+"What!" he cried.  Then he sprang to his feet and seized the manuscript
+which the reporter held out to him.  Quickly he read it.  Then he read
+it again, more slowly.  He read it a third time.  His hand flew to his
+forehead, and he staggered back to his chair.  The secretary stepped to
+his side, but Mr. Howland waved him away.
+
+"When did this come?" he asked.
+
+"A few moments ago," replied the reporter.
+
+"Well," and Mr. Howland gazed at his informant with suffused eyes, "I
+thank you for your kindness.  You must know how grateful I am.  Of
+course there is nothing I can tell you--nothing you want to know."
+
+The reporter hesitated a moment.
+
+"No," he said, "I don't suppose you can tell me much.  Except--"
+
+"Eh?" said Mr. Howland.
+
+"Except--you read the despatch.  It speaks of Captain Merrithew as Miss
+Howland's _fiancé_."
+
+"Yes."  Mr. Howland's years of business resource and acumen were
+beginning to assert themselves.  "Oh, _fiancé_!  I see.  Romance will
+help your article.  Well, there isn't any.  Captain Merrithew and my
+daughter were engaged before we started on this _Tampico_ jaunt."  He
+looked at the reporter steadily.  "Merrithew, you know, is really the
+Assistant Marine Superintendent of the Coastwise Company; also a
+stock-holder.  He was sailing the _Tampico_ merely for experience."
+
+The reporter smiled at Mr. Howland.
+
+"Merrithew is to be congratulated," he said.
+
+"I fancy so," replied Mr. Howland.  "In fact," he added, "do you know,
+I have reason to be quite sure of it."
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dan Merrithew, by Lawrence Perry
+
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+<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
+<HTML>
+<HEAD>
+
+<META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
+
+<TITLE>
+The Project Gutenberg ebook of Dan Merrithew, by Lawrence Perry
+</TITLE>
+
+<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
+BODY { color: Black; background: White; margin-right: 10%; margin-left: 10%; font-size: medium; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: justify }
+
+P {text-indent: 4% }
+
+P.noindent {text-indent: 0% }
+
+P.poem {text-indent: 0%; margin-left: 10%; font-size: small }
+
+P.letter {font-size: small }
+
+
+</STYLE>
+
+</HEAD>
+
+<BODY>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dan Merrithew, by Lawrence Perry
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Dan Merrithew
+
+Author: Lawrence Perry
+
+Illustrator: J. V. McFall
+
+Release Date: September 24, 2005 [EBook #16742]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAN MERRITHEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<A NAME="img-front"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-front.jpg" ALT="Frontispiece" BORDER="2" WIDTH="409" HEIGHT="657">
+<H5>
+[Frontispiece: Tongues of flame reached hungrily for them, <BR>licking
+above Dan's red-gold hair, but never touching the girl.]
+</H5>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+Dan Merrithew
+</H1>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+By Lawrence Perry
+</H2>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+Author of "From the Depths of Things," "Two Tramps," "The Bounder,"
+"The Sacrifice," etc.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLORS
+<BR><BR>
+BY J. V. McFALL
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A. L. BURT COMPANY
+<BR><BR>
+PUBLISHERS&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;NEW YORK
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+COPYRIGHT
+<BR><BR>
+By A. C. McClurg &amp; Co.
+<BR><BR>
+A.D. 1910
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+Published, March 12, 1910
+<BR><BR>
+Second edition, March 19, 1910
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P>
+<I>Thanks are due Mr. Arthur W. Little, president of the Pearson
+Publishing Company, for permission to use in this novel several
+incidents in the life of Dan Merrithew which originally appeared in
+"Pearson's Magazine."</I>
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+TO
+<BR><BR>
+LARRY
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS
+</H2>
+
+<TABLE WIDTH="80%">
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">CHAPTER</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">&nbsp;</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap01">THE GIRL ON THE "VEILED LADYE"</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap02">DAN'S SEARCH FOR THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap03">A FIGHT IN THE DARK</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap04">DAN STAKES HIS LIFE, AND WINS</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap05">THE LOSS OF THE "FLEDGLING"</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap06">THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap07">DAN IS COMMANDED TO A PARTY</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap08">WITS VERSUS MACHINE GUNS</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap09">AN ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">X.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap10">THE WRAITH IN THE MOONLIGHT</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap11">THE BURNING OF THE "TAMPICO"</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap12">ALONE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap13">NIGHT ON THE DERELICT</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap14">DAN AND VIRGINIA</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap15">CONCLUSION</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+</TABLE>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+</H2>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-front">
+Tongues of flame reached hungrily for them, licking above Dan's
+red-gold hair, but never touching the girl&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;<I>Frontispiece</I>
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-090">
+"Oh, father," broke in the girl, "tell him it was noble!"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-184">
+In the flash of an eye, Dan was making for the assassin
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-236">
+Opposite, smiling at him as though they had breakfasted together for
+years, was the radiant girl
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+DAN MERRITHEW
+</H1>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER I
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE GIRL ON THE "VEILED LADYE"
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+The big coastwise tug <I>Hydrographer</I> slid stern-ward into a slip
+cluttered with driftwood and bituminous dust, stopping within heaving
+distance of three coal-laden barges which in their day had reared
+"royal s'ls" to the wayward winds of the seven seas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Near-by lay Horace Howland's ocean-going steam yacht, <I>Veiled Ladye</I>,
+which had put into Norfolk from Caribbean ports, to replenish her
+bunkers.  There were a number of guests aboard, and most of them arose
+from their wicker chairs on the after-deck and went to the rail, as the
+great tug pounded alongside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Grateful for any kind of a break in the monotony of the long morning,
+they observed with interest the movements of a tall young man, in a
+blue shirt open at the throat and green corduroy trousers, who caught
+the heaving line hurtling from the bow of the nearest barge, and hauled
+the attached towing-cable dripping and wriggling from the heavy waters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did it gracefully.  There was a fine play of broad shoulders, a
+resilient disposition of the long, straight limbs, an impression of
+tiger-like strength and suppleness, not lost upon his observers, upon
+Virginia Howland least of all.  She was not a girl to suppress a
+thought or emotion uppermost in her mind; and now she turned to her
+father with an exclamation of pleasure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father," she cried, "look!  Isn't he simply stunning!  The Greek
+ideal&mdash;and on a tugboat!"  Her dark eyes lightened with mischief.  "Do
+you suppose he'd mind if I spoke to him?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He'd probably swear at you," said young Ralph Oddington, with a grin.
+Then, seized by a sudden impulse for which he afterwards kicked
+himself, being a decent sort of chap, he drew his cigarette case from
+his pocket and, as the tug came to a standstill, tossed a cigarette
+across the intervening space.  It struck the man in the back, and as he
+turned, Oddington called,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have a cigarette, Bill?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tugman's lips parted, giving a flashing glimpse of big, straight,
+white teeth.  Then they closed, and for an instant he regarded the
+speaker with a hard, curious expression in his quiet gray eyes, and the
+proffered cigarette, as though by accident, was shapeless under his
+heel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was distinctly embarrassing for the yachting party; and partly to
+relieve Oddington, partly out of curiosity, Virginia Howland leaned
+over the rail with a smile.  "Please pardon us, Mr. Tugboatman.  We
+didn't mean to offend you; we&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young man again swept the party with his eyes, and then meeting the
+girl's gaze full, he waited for her to complete the sentence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We," she continued, "of course meant no harm."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He did not reply for a moment, did not reply till her eyes fell.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right&mdash;thanks," he said simply and then hurried forward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At sunset the <I>Veiled Ladye</I> was well on her way to New York, and the
+<I>Hydrographer</I> was plugging past Hog Island light with her cumbersome
+tows plunging astern.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It came to be a wild night.  The tumbling blue-black clouds of late
+afternoon fulfilled their promise of evil things for the dark.  There
+were fierce pounding hours when the wrath of the sea seemed centred
+upon the <I>Hydrographer</I> and her lumbering barges, when the towing-lines
+hummed like the harp strings of Aeolus.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was man's work the crew of the <I>Hydrographer</I> performed that night;
+when the dawn came and the wind departed with a farewell shriek, and
+the seas began to fall, Dan Merrithew sat quiet for a while, gazing
+vacantly out over the gray waters, wrestling with the realization that
+through all the viewless turmoil the face of a girl he did not
+know&mdash;never would know, probably&mdash;had not been absent from his mind;
+that the sound of her voice had lingered in his ears rising out of the
+elemental confusion, as the notes of a violin, freeing themselves from
+orchestral harmony, suddenly rise clear, dominating the <I>motif</I> in
+piercing obligato.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he arose it was with the conviction that this meant something
+which eventually would prove of interest to him.  One evening some
+three months before, he had visited the little sailors' church which
+floats in the East River at the foot of Pike Street in New York, and
+listened to a preacher who was speaking in terms as simple as he could
+make them, with Fate as his text.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fate, he said, works, in mysterious ways and does queer things with its
+instruments.  It may sear a soul, or alter the course of a life in
+seeming jest; but the end proves no jest at all, and if we live long
+enough and grow wise with our years, we learn that at the bottom, ever
+and always, in everything, was a guiding hand, a sure intent, and a
+serious purpose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a good, plain, simple talk such as longshoremen, dock-rats,
+tugmen, and seamen often hear in this place, but it impressed young
+Merrithew; for, although he had never accepted his misfortunes, nor
+reasoned away the things that tried his soul in this philosophical
+manner, yet he had always had a vague conviction that everything that
+happened was for his good and would work out in the end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The words of the preacher seemed to give him clearer understanding in
+this regard, taught him to weigh carefully things which, as they
+appeared to him, were on the face insignificant.  This had led him into
+strange trends of thought, had encouraged, in a way, superstitious
+fancies not altogether good for him.  He knew that, and he had cursed
+his folly, and yet on this morning after the storm, on the after-deck
+of a throbbing tugboat he nodded his head sharply, outward acquiescence
+to an inward conviction that somehow, somewhere, he was going to see
+that face again and hear that voice.  That was as certain as that he
+lived.  And when this took place he would not be a tugboat mate.  That
+was all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whatever he did thereafter he had this additional incentive, the future
+meeting with a tall, lithe girl with dark-brown hair and gray
+eyes&mdash;brave, deep eyes, and slightly swarthy cheeks, which were crimson
+as she spoke to him.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER II
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+DAN'S SEARCH FOR THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Daniel Merrithew was one of the Merrithews of a town near Boston, a
+prime old seafaring family.  His father had a waning interest in three
+whaling-vessels; and when two of them opened like crocuses at their
+piers in New Bedford, being full of years, and the third foundered in
+the Antarctic, the old man died, chiefly because he could see no clear
+way of longer making a living.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Young Merrithew at the time was in a New England preparatory school,
+playing excellent football and passing examinations by the skin of his
+teeth.  Thrown upon his own resources, his mother having died in early
+years, he had to decide whether he would work his way through the
+school and later through college, or trust to such education as he
+already had to carry him along in the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was altogether adequate for practical purposes, he argued, and so he
+lost little time in proceeding to New York, where he began a business
+career as a clerk in the office of the marine superintendent of a great
+coal-carrying railroad.  It was a beginning with a quick ending.  The
+clerkly pen was not for him; he discovered this before he was told.
+The blood of the Merrithews was not to be denied; and turning to the
+salt water, his request for a berth on one of the company's big
+sea-going tugs was received with every manifestation of approval.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he first presented himself to the Captain of the <I>Hydrographer</I>,
+the bluff skipper set the young man down as a college boy in search of
+sociological experience and therefore to be viewed with good-humored
+tolerance&mdash;good-humored, because Dan was six feet tall and had
+combative red-gold hair.  His steel eyes were shaded by long
+straw-colored lashes; he had a fighting look about him.  He had a
+magnificent temper, red, but not uncalculating, with a punch like a
+mule's kick back of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As week after week passed, and the new hand revealed no temperamental
+proclivities, no "kid-glove" inclinations, seemingly content with
+washing down decks, lassooing pier bitts with the bight of a hawser at
+a distance of ten feet, and hauling ash-buckets from the fireroom when
+the blower was out of order&mdash;both of which last were made possible by
+his mighty shoulders&mdash;the Captain began to take a different sort of
+interest in him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He allowed Dan to spend all his spare moments with him in the
+pilot-house; and as the Captain could shoot the sun and figure latitude
+and longitude and talk with fair understanding upon many other elements
+of navigation, the young man's time was by no means wasted.  Later, Dan
+arranged with the director of a South Street night school of navigation
+for the evenings when he was in port, and by the time they made him
+mate of the <I>Hydrographer</I>, he was almost qualified to undergo
+examination for his master's certificate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mental changes are not always attended by outward manifestations, but
+all the crew of the <I>Hydrographer</I>, after that mad night off the
+Virginia Capes, could see that something had hit the stalwart mate.
+The edge seemed to be missing from his occasional moods of abandon;
+sometimes he looked thoughtfully at a man without hearing what the man
+was saying to him.  But it did not impair his usefulness, and his
+Captain could see indications of a better defined point in his
+ambitions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So that was the way things were with him when, on a gray December
+afternoon, the day before Christmas, the <I>Hydrographer</I>, just arrived
+from Providence, slid against her pier in Jersey City, and the crew
+with jocular shouts made the hawsers fast to the bitts.  Some months
+before, the <I>Hydrographer</I> had stumbled across a lumber-laden schooner,
+abandoned in good condition off Fire Island, and had towed her into
+port.  The courts had awarded goodly salvage; and the tug's owners,
+filled with the spirit of the season, had sent a man to the pier to
+announce that at the office each of the crew would find his share of
+the bounty, and a little extra, in recognition of work in the company's
+interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dan," said the Captain, as the young man entered the pilot-house in
+his well-fitting shore clothes, "you ought to get a pot of money out of
+this; now don't go ashore and spend it all tonight.  You bank most of
+it.  Take it from me&mdash;if I'd started to bank my money at your age, I
+would be paying men to run tugboats for me now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I've money in the bank," laughed Dan.  "I'll bank most of this;
+but first I'm going to lay out just fifty dollars, which ought to buy
+about all the Christmas joy I need.  I was going to Boston to shock
+some sober relations of mine, but I've changed my mind.  About seven
+o'clock this evening you'll find me in a restaurant not far from
+Broadway and Forty-second Street; an hour later you'll locate me in the
+front row of a Broadway theatre; and&mdash;better come with me, Captain
+Bunker."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, thanks, Dan," said the Captain.  "If you come with <I>me</I> over to
+the house in Staten Island about two hours from now, you'll see just
+three little noses pressed against the window pane&mdash;waiting for daddy
+and Santa Claus."  The Captain's big red face grew tender and his eyes
+softened.  "When you get older, Dan," he added, "you'll know that
+Christmas ain't so much what you get out of it as what you put into it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan thought of the Captain's words as he crossed the ferry to New York.
+All through the day he had been filled with the pleasurable conviction
+that the morrow was a pretty decent sort of day to be ashore, and he
+had intended to work up to the joys thereof to the utmost of his
+capacity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, with his knowledge as to the sort of enjoyment which Captain
+Bunker was going to get out of the day, his well-laid plans seemed to
+turn to ashes.  The trouble was, he could not exactly say why this
+should be.  He finally decided that his prospective sojourn amid the
+gay life of the metropolis had not been at all responsible for the
+mental uplift which had colored his view of the day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It had come, he now believed, solely from the attitude of the Captain
+and Jeff Morrill the engineer, and Sam Tonkin the deck-hand&mdash;soon to
+become a mate&mdash;and Bill Lawson, another deck-hand; all of whom had
+little children at home.  Well, he had no little children at home.
+That settled the matter so far as he was concerned.  Blithely he began
+to plan his dinner and select the theatre he should attend.  But, no;
+the old problem returned insistently, and at length he was obliged to
+confess that he could devise no solution, and that he did not feel half
+as good as he had a few hours before.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At all events he would be as happy as he could.  After leaving the
+company's office, where he received a hearty "Merry Christmas" and a
+fat yellow envelope, he went to the neat little brick house on Cherry
+Street where he had rooms, and learned that Mrs. O'Hare, his landlady,
+had gone to her daughter's house on Varick Street to set up a Christmas
+tree and help to start things for the children.  Dan was sorry.  He had
+rather looked forward to meeting this cheerful person with her
+spectacles and kindly old face, who mothered him so assiduously when he
+was ashore.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Why the devil had he not thought of finding out about those
+grandchildren and of buying them something for Christmas?  But he had
+not, and now he did not know whether they were girls or boys or both,
+nor how many of them there were.  So he had no way of knowing what to
+buy, or how much.  Somehow he had here a feeling that he had been on
+the verge of an interesting discovery.  But only on the verge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He walked slowly out of the house and turned into South Street.  In the
+life of this quaint thoroughfare he had cast his lot, and here he spent
+his leisure hours; not that he had ever found the place or the men he
+met there especially congenial.  But they were the men he knew, the men
+he worked with or worked against; and any young fellow who is lonely in
+a big city and placed as Dan was is just as liable, until he has found
+himself and located his rut in life, to mingle with persons as strange,
+with natures as alien, and to frequent places which in later years fill
+him with repulsive memories.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At all events Dan did, and he was not worrying about it a bit, either,
+as he sauntered under the Brooklyn Bridge span at Dover Street and
+turned into South, where Christmas Eve is so joyous, in its way.  The
+way on this particular evening was in no place more clearly interpreted
+than Red Murphy's resort, where the guild of Battery rowboatmen, who
+meet steamships in their Whitehall boats and carry their hawsers to
+longshoremen waiting to make them fast to the pier bitts, congregate
+and have their social being.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here, on this day, the wealthy towboat-owners and captains are wont to
+distribute their largess to the boatmen as a mark of appreciation for
+favors rendered,&mdash;a suggestion that future favors are expected,&mdash;and
+here, also, punch of exalted brew is concocted and drunk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An occasional flurry of snow swept down the street as Dan reached the
+entrance.  Murphy was out on the sidewalk directing the adornment of
+his doorway with several faded evergreen wreaths, while inside, the
+boatmen gathered closer around the genial potstove and were not sorry
+that ice-bound rivers and harbor had brought their business to a
+temporary standstill.  They were discussing the morrow, which logically
+led to a consideration of the ice-pack, among other things, and thence
+to Cap'n Barney Hodge's ill luck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take a hard and early winter," old Bill Darragh, the dean of the
+boatmen, was saying, "then a thaw in the middle o' December, and then a
+friz-up, and ye git conditions that ain't propitious, as ye may say,
+fur towboatmen&mdash;nur fur us, neither."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"True fur ye," said "Honest Bill" Duffy.  "Nigh half the tugs in the
+harbor is in the Erie Basin with screw blades twisted off by the
+ice-pack, or sheathin' ripped.  And it's gittin' worse.  They'll be
+little enough money for us this year&mdash;an' I was countin' on a hunder to
+pay a doctor's bill."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, maybe you'll get more than you think," said Dan, whose words
+always carried weight because he was mate of a deep-sea tug.  "Captain
+Barney Hodge's <I>Three Sisters</I> was laid up yesterday; a three-foot
+piece of piling bedded in an ice-cake got caught in her screw,
+and&mdash;zip!  The other fellows are feeling so good about it that I think
+they'll be apt to be generous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll drink to Barney's bad health," said Darragh, raising his glass.
+"I saw him half an hour gone.  He looked like a dead man.  Cap'n Jim
+Skelly o' the <I>John Quinn</I> piloted <I>Gypsum Prince</I> inter her dock last
+night.  No one ever handled her afore but Cap'n Barney.  An' the
+<I>Kentigern</I> from Liverpool is due to-night.  Skelly's layin' fur her
+too; an' he'll git her.  That'll take two vessels from Barney's private
+monopoly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Darragh was right.  The towboatmen had Captain Barney where they wanted
+him, and they meant to gaff him hard.  He had always been too sharp for
+the rest, too good at a bargain, too mean; and what was more, he was in
+every way the best towboatman that ever lived.  No one liked him; but
+the steamship-captains engaged his services for towing and piloting,
+nevertheless, for the reason that they considered him a disagreeable
+necessity, believing that no other tugboatman could serve them so well.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As a matter of fact, there were several tugboat-captains hardly less
+skilful than Captain Barney, and in the time of his idleness they bade
+fair to secure not a few of his customers.  It was an old saying that
+Captain Barney, touched in his pocket, was touched in his heart and
+brain also&mdash;they meant to touch him in just those places.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see him this morning," said Duffy, "when he heard that Cap'n Jim
+Skelly 'd come in on the bridge of the <I>Gypsum Prince</I>.  He was
+a-weepin' and cursin' like a drunk.  Hereafter he'll have to divide the
+<I>Gypsum</I>, and she arrives reg'lar, too."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And he'll lose the <I>Kentigern</I> to-night," laughed Dan.  "Well, I don't
+care.  It'll do him good.  I hope they put him out of business."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thankee, gents, for your Christmas wishes.  I'm glad my friends are
+with me."  The words, in low, mournful cadence, came from the doorway;
+and all eyes turning there saw the stout, melancholy figure of Captain
+Barney, his great hooked nose falling dejectedly toward his chin, his
+hawk eyes dull and sombre.  He had been drinking; and as Duffy made as
+though to throw a bottle at him, the fallen great man turned and
+stumbled away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A few minutes later Dan left the resort, faced the biting north wind,
+and walked slowly up South Street.  Somehow he could not get Captain
+Barney out of his mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The year before, in violation of an explicit agreement, Captain Barney
+had worked in with an outside rowboatman from West Street, towing him
+to piers where vessels were about to dock.  This, of course, got that
+boatman on the scene in advance of the Battery men, who had only their
+strong arms and their oars to depend upon.  Thus the rival had the
+first chance at the job of carrying the lines from the docking
+steamships to men waiting on the pier to make them fast.  Captain
+Barney received part of the money which this boatman made.  It was
+little enough, to be sure, but no amount of money was too small for
+him.  And so Dan, the Battery boatmen being his friends, was glad to
+see Hodge on his knees&mdash;yet he was the slickest tugboat-captain on
+earth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan could not help admiring him for that; and now he could not dismiss
+from his mind the pitiable picture which Murphy's doorway had framed
+but a few minutes before.  He tried to, for Dan was an impressionable
+young fellow and was worrying too much about this Christmas idea,
+endeavoring to solve his emotions, without bothering about the troubles
+of a towboat-skipper who deserved all he got and more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All along the street were Christmas greens.  The ship chandlers had
+them festooned about huge lengths of rusty chains and barnacled anchors
+and huge coils of hawser, and the tawdry windows of the dram shops were
+hidden by them.  A frowsy woman, with a happy smile upon her face,
+hurried past with a new doll in her arms.  Dan stopped a minute to
+watch her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something turned him into a little toyshop near Coenties Slip and he
+saw a tugboat deck-hand purchase a pitiful little train of cars, laying
+his quarter on the counter with the softest smile he had seen on a
+man's face in a twelvemonth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Something for the kid, eh?" said Dan rather gruffly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sure," replied the deck-hand, and he took his bundle with a sort of
+defiant expression.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw a little mother, a girl not more than twelve years old, with a
+pinched face and a rag shawl about her shoulders, spend ten cents for a
+bit of a doll and a bag of Christmas candy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Going to have a good time, all by yourself?" growled Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naw, this is fur me little sister," said the girl bravely, if a little
+contemptuously.  A great lump came into Dan's throat, and feeling
+somewhat weak and ashamed, he left the shop.  Elemental sensations
+which he could not define thrilled him, and the spirit of Christmas,
+now entirely unsatisfied, rested on his soul like an incubus.  He began
+to feel outside of everything&mdash;as though the season had come for every
+one but him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Near Pike Street a little group of the Salvation Army stood on the
+curb.  One of them was a fat, uncomely woman, and she was singing,
+accompanying herself upon a guitar.  The music was that of a popular
+ballad, and the verses were of rude manufacture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There were perhaps half a dozen listeners scattered about the sidewalk
+at a distance sufficient to prevent possible scoffers from including
+them in the service.  Two of them were rough workmen, and they stood in
+the middle of the sidewalk staring vacantly ahead, trying to look
+oblivious.  Two longshoremen sat on the curb ten feet away, and a man
+and a woman leaned against the door of a near-by warehouse.  When the
+song was finished the two workmen hurriedly approached and threw
+nickels on the face of the big bass drum lying flat on the street,
+retreating hastily, as though ashamed; the woman did likewise, and one
+of the longshoremen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Buying salvation," grinned Dan, as he walked on up the street.  But
+the pleasantry made inadequate appeal.  Every one was getting more out
+of the season than he was.  Once he drew a dollar from his pocket and
+started back.  But no.  What was a dollar to him?  He knew where there
+were more.  That wasn't it.  He put the money in his pocket and walked
+on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan's mental processes leading to a determination to help Captain
+Barney were too clouded for clear interpretation, but he knew there was
+no more uncertainty in his mind after he had sought the Captain out and
+offered to put him on board the <I>Kentigern</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hodges fairly wept his gratitude.  "Dan, Dan, you say you can put me
+aboard the <I>Kentigern</I>!  You'll save my business if you do.  I don't
+care about the towing part, because if I can get aboard and pilot her
+in, I can hand the towing over to those who'll take care of me.  Dan,
+you're a good boy.  How'll you do it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No time to tell now," said Dan.  "Meet me at Pier 3 in an hour."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say," cried Captain Barney, as Dan hurried away; "how much'll it be?
+Not too much&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan stopped short.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing!" he roared.  "It's&mdash;it's a Christmas present."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER III
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A FIGHT IN THE DARK
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+The short gray December twilight was creeping over the bay as Dan
+pulled out from the Battery basin in a boat which he kept there for
+recreative jaunts about the harbor.  Hard pulling and cold it was, but
+the boatman bent his back and shot up the East River with the strength
+of the young giant he was.  He could see Captain Barney, muffled to the
+ears, stamping impatiently about on the end of the designated pier.
+Without a word he swung his boat in such a position that the Captain
+could drop into it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barney was delighted, so far forgetting himself, indeed, as to attempt
+to establish cordial understanding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hello, my boy," he said genially, "we're a-goin' to fix 'em!"  Then
+noting a blank expression on Dan's face, his jaws closed with a click
+and he lowered himself from the pier and into the boat without further
+words, while Dan shoved out into the river and started for the pier
+above, where Captain Jim Skelly's tug, the <I>John Quinn</I>, was lying.
+She had steam up and was all ready for her journey to meet the
+<I>Kentigern</I>.  That vessel had been reported east of Fire Island and
+would be well across the bar by eight o'clock.  She would anchor on the
+bar for the night, and it was there that Captain Jim Skelly meant to
+board her in order to forestall any possible scheme that wily Captain
+Barney might devise to gain the bridge of the freighter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Dan paddled noiselessly around the other side of the pier, they
+could see the pipe lights of the Quinn's crew.  Finally the rowboat
+turned straight under the pier, threading its way among the greasy
+green piles.  Reaching under the seat, Dan drew out a stout inch line.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I back in on the <I>Quinn</I>," he whispered, "make that line fast to
+the rudder post.  We'll let her tow us to the <I>Kentigern</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!" hissed Captain Barney, and his face turned pale.  But it was
+only for a second, after which he chuckled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Slowly, gently, quietly, the rowboat slid among the green piles until
+the stern of the big tug loomed overhead.  When it was within reach
+Captain Barney leaned out, made one end of the line fast to the tug's
+rudder post and then, paying out about twenty feet, he fastened the
+other end to the bitts in the bow of the rowboat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed an hour's waiting before the <I>Quinn's</I> crew cast off the
+lines, but in reality it was not more than ten minutes.  As the screw
+began to thresh the water and the tug to move swiftly out into the
+river, it required rare skill on the part of the young boatman to
+manoeuvre the boat so she should not be upset at the start.  But Dan
+had the skill required and more besides, as he knelt in the stern with
+one oar deep in the water to the port side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the course of a few minutes they were fairly on their way, and
+Captain Jim Skelly was losing no time.  He had full speed before the
+tug was a hundred yards from the pier, and the spray and the splintered
+chips of ice flew back from the sharp bow, smiting the faces of the two
+men in the little boat dragging astern with three-quarters of her
+length out of water.  Dan, kneeling aft, watched with eagle eye each
+quirk and turn of the tow-line.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is the hardest thing a man has to do&mdash;to tow behind a tug or
+ferryboat, even under fair conditions.  In this case, the conditions
+were far from fair, for there was the ice, lazily rolling and cracking
+in the heavy wake of the tug, grinding against the sides of the
+rowboat, until it seemed that they must be crushed.  There was great
+danger that they would be.  There was danger also that the tow-line
+might slue both men into the icy waters and upset the boat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Captain Barney was tingling with fear.  Dan knew it, and smiled.  It
+was not often that any one had the privilege of seeing Captain Barney
+frightened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the tug veered to starboard to round Governor's Island the tow-line
+slued to port and thence quickly to starboard.  The rowboat was snapped
+over on her gunwales and the water poured in like a mill-race.  A roar
+of an oath escaped Captain Barney's lips, but before he had closed them
+the boat had righted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shut up, will you?" hissed Dan.  "Do you want them to discover and
+drown us?  Ugh&mdash;she skated clean over that ice-cake!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've got me out here to kill me, Dan," whimpered Captain Barney.
+"'A Christmas present!'  I see&mdash;now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you keep still?" whispered Dan.  "If they hear us, you'll find
+out who wants to kill you.  The root she took that time was nothing.
+There'll be worse ones&mdash;this boat is not through rooting yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Neither was she.  Ahead the tug loomed, a great dark shape; and the
+pulse of her engines was lost in the roiling water rising from the
+screw blades and the hiss of it as it raced by the row-boat.  There was
+a dim blur of light from one of the after-cabin portholes and the
+shadow of figures passing to and fro inside could be seen.  The decks
+were deserted.  It was too cold to brave the night wind except under
+necessity&mdash;a night wind that cut through the pea-jackets and ear-caps
+and thick woollen gloves of the two men in the rowboat.  Captain Barney
+felt a fierce resentment that the <I>Quinn's</I> men should be so warm and
+comfortable while he was shivering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Christmas Eve!" he exclaimed.  "Fine, ain't it?" and he flailed his
+arms about to keep the blood in circulation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Christmas Eve," said Dan solemnly, as though to himself, "the finest I
+ever spent"; and he added apologetically, "even if I am making an
+eternal fool of myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On they sped.  Frequently the tug would hit a large stretch of clear
+water, and at such times the jingle-bell would sound in the engine-room
+and the <I>Quinn</I> would shoot forward at a rate that fairly lifted the
+rowboat out of the water, while Dan, kneeling astern, oar in hand,
+muscles tense, and mind alert, was ready to do anything that lay in his
+skill to prevent an untoward accident.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Swish!  Zip! and the rowboat would suddenly shoot to one side or the
+other, compelling Dan to dig his oar way down into the water, bending
+all his strength in efforts to keep the bow straight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's rooting every second," he grumbled, opening and shutting his
+hand to drive away the stiffness and then casting a vindictive glance
+at Captain Barney, the source of all the trouble.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And as for the tugboat-skipper, he sat and watched his companion, and
+resolved that, after all, there were a few things he did not know about
+watermanship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Between the shadowy banks of the Narrows shot the <I>Quinn</I>.  Out of the
+harbor in a rowboat!  Even professional Battery boatmen do this about
+once in a generation.  The immense, shadowless darkness smote their
+eyes so that they turned to the cabin light for relief.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was likely to be little ice out there, and the northwest wind had
+knocked the sea flat, as Dan knew would be the case when he figured his
+chances at the start.  It was bad enough though, for there was certain
+to be something of a swell&mdash;and other things; and now that he was in
+the midst of it, he had grave doubts as to what would happen.  But his
+strange exaltation rose supreme to all fears; no danger seemed too
+great, no possibility too ominous, to dampen the ardor of this, his
+first big act of self-sacrifice.  The song the Salvation woman sang
+passed through his mind.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Gawd is mighty and grateful;<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No act of my brother's or mine<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Escapes His understandin',<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the good old Christmas time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As soon as we get near the <I>Kentigern</I>," he said, "we'll cut loose
+from the <I>Quinn</I>, and while she is warping alongside we'll make a dash,
+and you can hail 'em and get 'em to lower a ladder.  You can beat
+Skelly that way.  That's what I'm banking on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You just put me alongside and I'll see to the rest," replied the
+Captain impatiently.  He would have attempted to scale the steel sides
+of the vessel themselves, if only to escape from that little boat,
+tailing astern of the <I>Quinn</I> in the heart of the darkness, rooting,
+twisting, threatening to dive under the water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are you goin' to do after I get aboard?" asked Captain Barney,
+rubbing his hands as though the victory were already won.  "I declare,
+I never thought of you!  You can't row back."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan raised his head angrily and started to utter a sneering reply, when
+the first good swell caught the boat&mdash;a great lazy, greasy fellow.  The
+<I>Quinn</I> went up and then down, and after her shot the rowboat, like a
+young colt frisking at the end of her tether, then careening down the
+incline on her side as though to ram the stern of the tug ahead, which,
+fortunately, was climbing another hill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What the rowboat had been through before was child's play to this, and
+Dan's face grew very stern.  Reaching down with one hand, he seized the
+other oar and shoved it along to Captain Barney.  "Put that down on the
+port side.  Hang on for your life and keep her steady!" he cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he gave his attention to his side of the boat while Captain Barney
+struggled in the bow.  It was a fight that would have thrilled the soul
+of whoever could have seen it.  But that is always the way in the
+bravest, most hopeless fights&mdash;no one ever sees them.  They are fought
+alone, in the dark, on the sea; and sometimes the lion-hearted live to
+make a modest tale of it around a winter's fire; but more often the
+sequel is, "Found drowned"&mdash;if even that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Captain Barney, frightened into desperate courage, and Dan, in grim
+realization that the measure of his good deed this night was the
+measure of the soul he was getting to know, fought sternly.  They were
+on the open sea with all its mystery and lurking fate, and the dark was
+all about.  There was not even the impression of distance; the swells
+arose as though at their elbows, tossed them with great, slimy ease,
+let them down again, plucked them this way and that, while the humming
+tow-line ran out to the vague, phantom, reeling tug ahead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a suspicion of snow in the veiled sky, and the wind stabbed
+like a knife.  Twice the tug cut through a field of ice making out on
+an offshore current, and the thumping the little row-boat received
+seemed likely to rend her into drift-wood.  But that was only one of
+the chances; and the two men went on into the icy blast with jaws so
+tightly clenched that their cheek muscles stood out in great knots.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The silence, the danger, the vagueness hung heavily.  As Dan cast his
+eyes gloomily into the wake of the tug, he saw a dark object shoot out
+of the foam and dart down upon them like a torpedo; in fact a torpedo
+could not have worked more serious effect upon the boat than did that
+heavy, water-soaked log.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Starboard your oar!" shouted Dan, at the same time digging his own oar
+deep down on the port side and pulling upon it with all the magnificent
+strength of his arms until it bent like a reed.  There was just time to
+avert the direct impact, not to escape altogether.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a glancing blow just above the water line; it punched a great,
+jagged hole and gouged out the paint clear to the stern.  Dan drew a
+long breath and murmured in a half-sick voice, "They might as well kill
+a man as scare him to death," while Captain Barney's face made a gray
+streak in the darkness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The <I>Quinn</I> was now past the point of Sandy Hook and was skirting the
+shore.  The muffled beat of the breakers could be heard through the
+gloom, which was riven every second by the great, swinging search-light
+in the Navesink.  Not a mile ahead was the bar; and the masthead light
+of the <I>Kentigern</I> could be seen, twinkling like a planet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In twenty minutes the dark hull of the <I>Kentigern</I> came looming out of
+the night.  A hail shot from the <I>Quinn</I>, and a faint reply came back.
+Dark figures could now be seen, outlined by the cabin lights in the
+forward section of the tramp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hello, what tug is that?" sounded from the bridge.  "Is that you,
+Captain Barney?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, it's the <I>Quinn</I>, Cap'n Jim Skelly.  Hodge is laid up to-night;
+I'll take you into dock."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right; come aboard," and after a minute's scurrying of figures on
+the deck a flimsy companion-ladder rattled down over the side of the
+freighter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan heard it and ground his teeth in disappointment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gripes!" he exclaimed.  "They've that ladder down an hour before I
+thought they would.  Now we're up against it, sure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a growl Captain Barney whipped out his knife and made a pass at
+the tow-line.  He missed it and dropped back in the stern as Dan struck
+at him with his oar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait!" hissed the young boatman.  "We'd have no chance at all.  We've
+got to get nearer.  The tug 'd beat us a mile.  Sit tight, you old
+fool!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Captain Barney recognized the wisdom of the words with a groan.  He was
+far past the arguing point.  The tide was boiling past the side of the
+vessel, swashing like a mill-race.  All they could do under present
+conditions was to cast off when the tug was very near the freighter,
+cut in across, and get under the ladder before the tug could properly
+warp alongside.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nearer lumbered the <I>Quinn</I>.  When within twenty feet of the
+<I>Kentigern</I> she swung broadside on, ceasing all headway and drifting
+into position on the tide.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, then," cried Dan, suddenly leaping into the thwarts and manning
+the oars.  "Haul on the line.  Bring her right under the Quinn's stern
+and then cut, quick!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hand over hand hauled Captain Barney and the rowboat came under the
+stern with a jump.  Then he cut the line.  Dan dug his oars into the
+water and the slim boat shot for the ladder, while the great tug came
+down, more slowly, on the side.  Ten, twenty strokes; and then, as Dan
+with a great sigh unshipped his oars, Captain Barney chuckled, seized
+the sides of the ladder, and hauling himself on the bottom rung,
+skipped up with the agility of a monkey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a swish and a splash up pounded the <I>Quinn</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look out!" roared Dan, "there's a boat here!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It saved him; for a bell clanged in the engine-room, and the tug began
+to make sternway.  It saved him for but a minute, though.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Thoughtless, selfish, and for once an utter fool, the exultant skipper
+of the <I>Three Sisters</I> sought to gloat over his rival.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On board the <I>Quinn</I>," yelled Barney.  "Say, Jim Skelly, this is
+Barney Hodge talkin'.  You didn't know he had friends in the rowboat
+business, did you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A curse rang from the Quinn's pilot-house, and Dan did not wait for
+anything else.  Well he knew what would happen next, and he bent all
+his strength to his oars.  He heard the jingle of a bell, and the tug
+started right for him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look out!" yelled Dan, working the oars like a madman.  But not a word
+came from the tug, moving silently, inexorably upon him like, some
+black, implacable monster.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly Dan cast aside his oars and dived over the side.  The next
+instant the sharp, copper-bound nose of the tug struck the rowboat
+fairly amidships, grinding it against the steel side of the freighter,
+crushing it into matchwood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A great numbness passed over the man.  He was dazed; and as wave after
+wave splashed over his head, he struggled dumbly to reach the ladder.
+Then under the reaction from the icy shock, an electric thrill of
+energy and vitality passed through his body.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He saw that he had been carried to about amidships, and the ladder was
+well toward the bow.  With lusty strokes he struck out along the steel
+sides, rising over the waves like a duck.  Five minutes elapsed, and
+then with a sudden fear, Dan realized, in glancing at the bow, that he
+had not made ten feet in all that time and effort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the current, which was ripping along the hull at the rate that
+would have affected the speed of a powerful steam launch.  Dan had not
+noticed it before.  He struggled desperately, but to no avail, and then
+he uttered his first cry for help.  He could not see the deck, being so
+close to the hull; and for the same reason he could not have been seen
+had his cry been heard.  Again he called for assistance, but there was
+no answer, no sound, save that of the water buffeting past the vessel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He ceased to waste his strength in fruitless cries, devoting all that
+remained to his struggle to reach the ladder.  But his strokes were
+weaker than before and he found he was being carried back upon the
+current instead of making headway against it.  Fight as he would, he
+could feel that sliding, hopeless drag against which he was powerless
+to combat.  His strength vanished ounce by ounce.  His arms grew so
+numb with fatigue and cold that he could do nothing but move them up
+and down, dog fashion.  On he went, down toward the stern of the vessel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was moving as swiftly as the current was, whirling, twisting like a
+piece of wood.  His mind dulled.  He longed for death now.
+Instinctively he wished to get out of all the worry and struggle
+against dissolution.  His one dominant idea was to throw up his hands
+and go down, down the deep descent.  With a great cry of relief he
+yielded to the alluring thought.  Up flew his arms above his head&mdash;and
+he felt so warm and cheerful!  Something struck his outstretched hand
+and the fingers closed upon it.  For a minute they gripped the swinging
+piece of rope.  Then he opened his eyes to find he was hanging to a
+flimsy Jacob's ladder, suspended from the stern.  With a new strength
+born of hope he flung up his feet, shooting them through the hempen
+rungs; and there he stayed for a while&mdash;it seemed almost an eternity.
+Then laboriously climbing the ladder, he made the deck and there
+dropped as insensate as a log.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+It was the happiest Christmas Day that Dan had ever known, and he told
+himself so as he walked slowly down South Street.  Unschooled in the
+ethics of self-sacrifice as he was, he yet knew he had done something
+for a fellow man, for a man he despised; and something indefinable yet
+unmistakable told him it was very good.  He felt bigger, broader, felt
+as though he had attained new stature in something that was not
+physical.  And always, vaguely, he had been as anxious to feel this as
+he had been to get on in a material way.  He had lost his rowboat in
+the act.  And yet withal there was a certain fierce satisfaction in his
+loss&mdash;he had caught the spirit of Christmas.  How much wiser, how much
+stronger he was to-day than on the previous afternoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So deep were his thoughts that he almost ran into Captain Barney.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hey, there!" snarled the tugboatman, most ungraciously, "I just left a
+new rowboat down in the Battery basin for you."  And that was all he
+said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Dan, as he trembled with rage, knew that Captain Barney might have
+said the right word and made Christmas Day all the more glorious.  But
+he had said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing, and he had by his
+words and in his act taken much from Dan's Christmas happiness.  Dan
+knew it well; something told him so.  He gazed at the tugboatman
+silently for a minute,&mdash;and then he knocked Captain Barney to the
+sidewalk.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IV
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+DAN STAKES HIS LIFE, AND WINS
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Before the Winter passed, Dan had taken his master's examination with
+flying colors and was made Captain of the <I>Fledgling</I>, owned by the
+Phoenix Towboat Company.  She was a new boat, rugged, powerful, one
+hundred and twenty-five feet water line, designed and built to go
+anywhere and do anything.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Phoenix Company was known as a venturesome organization, as willing
+to send its fleet ramping out through the fog to the assistance of a
+distressed liner as to transport arms to West Indian or Central
+American revolutionists.  Before Dan had commanded the <I>Fledgling</I> many
+months he had done both, and was beginning to be known up and down the
+coast as a captain to be called upon in emergencies verging upon the
+extraordinary, not to say extra-hazardous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All of which he accepted joyously, as the portion of youth in search of
+experience that life has to offer.  He was sufficiently introspective
+to rate the temper of his spirit at something approaching its real
+value, and he knew it was to be cherished, guarded, lest the fine edge
+be lost.  As the world reckons things it was a humble calling upon
+which he had entered, a calling hardly qualified to enlist the pride of
+the family whose name he bore.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As a matter of fact, the pride of his few relations was not enlisted.
+He had been made to feel that.  He did not complain.  He appreciated
+their attitude.  But that did not curb a high-hearted ambition to lift
+his vocation to the ideals he had formulated concerning it&mdash;and the
+future lay before him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But he was not thinking of these things now.  The face of the sea was
+gray in sullen fury.  From a blue horizon, dulled and almost
+obliterated by long, jagged layers of steely clouds, came the ceaseless
+rush of deep-chested waves, as even, as fascinating as the
+vermiculations of a serpent.  And the wind, tearing along the floor of
+the sea, whipped off the wave crests and sent them shivering,
+shimmering ahead, like the plumes of hard-riding cavalry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The storm had passed.  The effects remained, and Dan Merrithew shifted
+his wheel several spokes east of north and took the brunt bow on.  She
+bore it well, did the stout <I>Fledgling</I>; she did that&mdash;she split the
+waves or crashed through them, or laughed over them, as a stout tug
+should when coaxed by hands of skill, guided by an iron will.  The Long
+Island coast lay to port, a narrow band of ochre, and all about lay the
+heaving gray of mighty waters, in which the <I>Fledgling</I> was a black
+speck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan's hat was off and his red-gold hair was flying wild; his teeth were
+bared.  He was always thus in a fight.  This was one; a dandy&mdash;a
+clinker!  He gave the wheel another spoke and the <I>Fledgling</I> slued
+across a sea and smashed down hard.  From below came a sliding rattle,
+a great crash of crockery, and then a series of imprecations.  The next
+instant Arthur M'Gill, the steward, dashed up the companionway and
+burst into the pilot-house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doggone it all, Cap'n!" yelled the angry man, "why in hell don't ye
+let me know when ye're goin' to sling 'er across seas?  Here I had the
+table all set fur breakfast, an' ye put 'er inter a grayback afore I
+could hold on to anything; and smash goes the hull mess on the
+floor&mdash;plates, forks, vittles.  Holee mackerel!" he exclaimed under
+increasing impulse of anger, "what am I?&mdash;a steward, or a&mdash;or a monkey?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan, clutching grimly at the wheel, turned a genial smile upon his cook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sorry, old man.  Fact is, I forgot.  But never mind.  Pick up the best
+you can."  He smiled again.  "Just a little bit dusty out here, eh,
+Arthur?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's what it is, Cap'n," replied Arthur, mollified by Dan's words of
+regret.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The steward looked at Dan admiringly.  In a way he was the skipper's
+father confessor, not alone because he had a glib, advising tongue, but
+because he was possessed of a certain amount of raw, psychological
+instinct and knew his Shakespeare and could quote from Young's "Night
+Thoughts."  Arthur had something of a fishy look and a slick way with
+him; but he was a good cook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems funny to call such a kid 'Cap'n,'" he said.  And then he
+added apologetically, "It's 'cause I've sailed under so many grayheads,
+ye know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I'll be gray enough before long," laughed Dan, and his momentary
+inattention to his duties at the wheel was promptly seized upon by the
+wily sea, which smacked the rudder hard and nearly spun the wheel out
+of his grip.  "Stop talking, will you!" roared Dan, wrestling at the
+spokes.  "Do you want me to put you all into the trough?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mulhatton, the mate, stumbled into the pilot-house and glared at the
+cook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Artie," he cried, "you go below, or I'll just gently heft you down!  I
+went in to git grub just now and 't was all on the floor.  Go on
+now&mdash;git!"  And Arthur went, grumbling and sighing that a man's stomach
+should govern his temper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take the wheel a while, Cap'n?" said the mate; and as Dan nodded he
+stepped in close, braced his feet, and took the strain as Dan's hands
+left the spokes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We'll both be on the wheel together before long," remarked Dan,
+sitting heavily on the chart locker and opening and shutting his
+stiffened fingers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where is she and what's ashore?" asked Mulhatton.  "You jumped us out
+in such a hurry this morning, I ain't had time to ask you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's an old lumber hooker, and she's ashore on Jones Inlet bar;
+stranded just before midnight last night.  Lord knows how much there is
+left of her by this time.  But I took it a good salvage job to go
+after.  Cripes!"  The <I>Fledgling</I> on her altered course had topped a
+wave forward, which wave, travelling swiftly aft, had withdrawn from
+the bow the support of its mighty shoulder.  Down went the bow with a
+great slap and up went the stern, screw racing and racking the engines,
+sending Mulhatton crashing to the floor.  But bruised as he was and
+dazed, he was on his feet with the quickness of a cat, and seizing the
+spokes, assisted Dan in bringing up the tug's head to where it ought to
+be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a-goin' to be lively work salvin' any hooker to-day," said the
+mate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is," replied Dan, "but I'll tell you this, Mul; we'll land her if
+anybody can.  For I've a tug under me built under my very eyes.  I know
+every beam and bolt in her.  And I've a crew of rustlers," he added,
+gazing proudly at Mulhatton's broad back&mdash;Mulhatton, with round, red,
+bristly, laughing face and eyes like raw onions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next minute Dan, in all the delight of the struggle, was making his
+way along the lower deck to the engine-room door.  The water was racing
+past the rail like a wet blur and the deck sloshed ankle deep.  High up
+a wave climbed the <I>Fledgling</I>, and as she paused on the top for a
+downward glide, Dan hastily opened the door and clambered down the iron
+ladder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Sam, how are they working?" he shouted to Crampton, the chief,
+bending over a fizzing valve bonnet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sam rose, pushed back his oily peaked cap until the straight raven hair
+flowed out from under like a cataract, and gave his thin, waterfall
+moustache a twist, while his swarthy, parchment face cracked into a
+hundred smiles.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Workin'," he said, "as sweet as a babe breathin'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Up reared the stern, lifting the propeller clear of the water.  The
+engines expending their force in air, raced free.  The clatter was
+infernal; the pistons seemed trying to jump out of the cylinders, while
+the throws and eccentrics lost all semblance of good order.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, damn!" cried Sam, who, being hurled to the iron floor, swore as
+though he enjoyed it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whitey Welch, the fireman, burst into a huge guffaw, in which Sam
+finally joined.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're all right down here," laughed Dan, "as happy as a sewing
+circle!  There may be some pulling to do later."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You get something to pull; we'll tend to the rest," and Sam Crampton
+grinned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Emerging on deck, Dan collided with Pete Noonan, the deck-hand, with
+shoulders as big as Dan's and a bigger chest.  Pete smiled genially.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This'll put hair on yer teeth, eh, Cap'n, this will," he said, while
+from the galley below floated Arthur's voice in a deep sea chanty:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"I'll go no more a-roaming,<BR>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;No more a-ro-o-o-a-ming with you, fair maid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on back to harbor, you little lobster pot; we'll take care of the
+wreck."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The corpulent captain of the great wrecking tug <I>Sovereign</I>, lying
+outside the breakers off Jones Inlet, megaphoned this insult to the
+deck of the <I>Fledgling</I>, as she drew near the scene of the wreck,
+rising and falling on the waves like a piece of driftwood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a deadly day.  The promise of the sunlight had waned with the
+earlier hours, and heavy blue-black clouds palled the heavens.  Not one
+hundred yards apart lay the two tugs, rolling and pitching in the
+seaway; the <I>Fledgling</I> trim and stanch, the <I>Sovereign</I> big and
+cumbersome, the funnel belching thunderclouds of sepia, her derrick
+booms creaking and rattling and slatting infernally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Straight on ahead, where the line of swelling waves burst into
+breakers, where the spume sang like whip-lashes, and where the whine of
+the wind tore itself into a nasty snarl, lay the wreck of the schooner
+<I>Zeitgeist</I>.  She lay half on her side and the waves licked up and over
+the faded gray hull, completing the work that time already had begun.
+One mast was very far forward, the other very far aft&mdash;Great Lake rig;
+and between the two was a deck-load of thousands of feet of Maine
+lumber.  The topmasts had snapped off, leaving the stumps.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Lashed in the foremast were two men; and in the mainmast were Captain
+Ephraim Sayles and three more of his crew.  At first glance they seemed
+lifeless; at first glance, indeed, they seemed nothing more than faded
+lengths of canvas.  But an occasional lifting of a hand, a flash of a
+gray face, showed that they were men and that they still lived and
+hoped.  Under them, over the deck raced the breakers, waist deep, each
+one a swift, excited trip-hammer.  It was only the lumber that was
+holding the aged hull together.  As it was, sections of the sides had
+ripped out and planks and pieces of deal issuing from the gashes
+littered the waters.  Three times had the life-savers launched their
+boats, and three times they had been cast on the beach like logs, while
+thrice had the lines from their mortars fallen short.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on back; we'll take care of her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Dan, his teeth bared and coated with blood from anger-bitten lips,
+gave the wheel to Mulhatton, ran from the pilot-house, and shook his
+fist at the big wrecking tug.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why don't you take care of her then, curse you!  Why don't you take
+care of her?  Don't you see there are lives to save?  Oh, you cowardly
+beasts!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothin' doin' till the sea goes down," came the reply, and Dan sobbed
+aloud in his rage as he entered the pilot-house, where most of the crew
+were gathered, peering out of the windows at the tragedy across the
+waters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The men in the rigging could be seen plainly now.  There was no
+excitement.  They kept very still, watching the futile efforts of the
+life-savers, waving their hands occasionally as though in token of
+their thanks and their knowledge of the utter futility of human
+efforts.  No, there was no excitement; the uncertainty that breeds that
+was lacking.  Fate was simply clamping its damp hand down over those
+men.  Such things are always quiet&mdash;there is nothing to thrill the
+heart or stir the soul in them.  It is just a mighty thing dealing
+death to weaklings, that is all.  And we wonder whether the All-seeing
+Eye does not sometimes close in sheer pity, to shut out the inequality
+of it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While they looked, a venomous wave got under the bow and lifted it
+high.  Then down it went as a man would crash his palms together,
+bursting out the forepeak like a rotten apple.  Thus weakened forward,
+the loss of the foremast was an imminent certainty.  And there were two
+men in the fore rigging!  Captain Ephraim leaned far out from the
+mainmast; the tug men could see him plainly as he pointed at the
+tottering mast and then at the deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He wants them to leave the mast and go into the mainmast," cried
+Mulhatton.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But they won't&mdash;see, they are shaking their heads 'no,'" shouted Dan.
+"They couldn't; the breakers would sweep them away in a minute."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For man is brave and man does fight, even in the face of injustice, in
+the face of odds.  Thus did Martin Loughran, in the fore rigging of the
+<I>Zeitgeist</I>, as with set jaws he struggled upward toward the stump of
+the topmast.  Between the trucks of the fore and maintopmasts ran a
+horizontal line of wire.  It is called the "triatic stay," and Loughran
+was climbing to it.  Dan&mdash;all the <I>Fledgling's</I> crew and the crew of
+the <I>Sovereign</I>&mdash;foresaw his intention, and stentorian shouts, "You
+can't do it!" bounded over the water.  But the sailor did not pause,
+if, indeed, he heard their warnings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Slowly, laboriously he climbed.  He stretched up one hand and grasped
+the stay.  Up went the other hand.  Then out against the glooming sky
+was limned the swaying form, working its way along the triatic stay
+hand over hand, in an effort to reach the mainmast.  A faint cheer came
+from the men in the main rigging, while two of the <I>Fledgling's</I> crew
+cheered, and two bowed their heads in agony, and Dan sobbed aloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look at him," cried Dan.  "Oh, God!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A sandy man cashin' in," muttered Mulhatton solemnly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Out, out worked the swaying form.  But he had more than one hundred
+feet to go.  Twenty-five feet&mdash;progress ceased.  It hung there silent,
+that figure&mdash;it seemed almost an eternity.  It hung as silent as a
+piece of sail and as fitfully swaying.  Suddenly one hand relaxed and
+fell limp.  It was as though something had sucked the breath from every
+onlooker.  The hand was feebly raised in a futile clutch to regain the
+lost hold.  It fell again.  Still there was silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A dark form cleaved the gloom and lay in a black huddle upon the lumber
+amidships, until a boarding wave kindly removed it and spurned it upon
+the beach as it would a drowned dog.  Ten minutes later the foremast
+went and the life-savers, dashing into the surf, took out of the
+rigging a dead sea-cook.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And still the tugs lay like vultures awaiting carrion.  Both had come
+down to the wreck in the hope of getting a line over her and pulling
+her from the sands, for which there would have been ample reward.  But
+it was too rough to approach her and she was too far gone to warrant
+salving, even were it possible.  But there were men dying before their
+eyes and no one was lifting a hand.  Dan was in a red-headed glare of
+emotion.  He was too young to look upon such things calmly.  He turned
+his eyes from the wreck to the <I>Sovereign</I>, just as her bow went up on
+a wave, showing the red underbody.  And it reminded him of the yawning
+mouth of some sea monster hungry for prey.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We're lying here like bloodsuckers!" he yelled.  "Waiting for salvage
+while good men are dying!  Dying&mdash;and we're doing nothing!  Fellows,"
+he roared, "I'm going to take the tug in to her.  I'm not afraid of a
+risk to save the lives of brave men."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, Cap'n," said Mulhatton, "you know we'll go with you.  But
+there's no use in bein' fools.  Take the tug in&mdash;yes.  But how'll you
+take her out again?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan glared across the heaving waters with bloodshot eyes.  "No use; you
+couldn't, couldn't get her out again.  No, you couldn't."  He repeated
+this several times.  "Is there anything that could?" he added finally.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He looked at his men for the answer, but their eyes were still fastened
+on the wreck with almost hypnotic fascination.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her deck-load's beginning to shift.  It'll be clear off soon and
+that'll take the other mast," announced Noonan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of the men in the rigging, a giant, tow-headed fellow, suddenly
+went crazy,&mdash;at least so it seemed.  For his lips writhed in a haunting
+scream as he whipped out his knife and cut his lashings.  Then he
+turned a bloodless face toward the <I>Fledgling</I>, uttered a short,
+rasping shout, and jumped into the sea.  A great wave seized him
+greedily and swirled him high.  Dan caught a fleeting glimpse of that
+face, turned reproachfully, it seemed, toward him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It set him crazy too.  His mind was working like lightning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mul," he screamed, "launch the lifeboat, with you fellows holding on
+to a line from her bow!  We're to windward, and she'll drift right down
+to the wreck.  Then you can haul us back again.  It's been done before.
+God, why didn't I think of it sooner!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mulhatton looked at his Captain closely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One chance in a thousand that our boat would live to make the trip,
+Cap'n," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan snarled his impatience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One chance in ten thousand, one chance in a million, I'll take it!" he
+cried in a sharp, metallic voice.  "I never saw a man die until
+to-day&mdash;I'll see no more, God willing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without a word Mulhatton turned and rushed for the lifeboat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Remember, I go in that boat," yelled Dan as he followed his mate.  But
+Mulhatton only turned back a defiant look.  Together they wrenched the
+boat from its blocks and lowered it to Noonan, standing below on the
+main deck astern.  Crampton, the engineer, was at the wheel, while
+Whitey Welch stood by the engines.  As the lifeboat was straining on
+the top of a swell, Mulhatton attempted to leap in, but was viciously
+punched back by Dan, who then sprang out five feet and sprawled in the
+stern sheets.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Damn!" cried the disappointed mate as he sprang to Noonan's side and
+seized the line, which was already paying out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Into the riot went Dan.  There was neither mercy nor tolerance in the
+waters,&mdash;the waves ripped all about in wanton fury; the spume cloaked
+the face of them in wet clouds and the sea hollows lay like black pits.
+But merciless and intolerant as were the waters, Dan asked no odds of
+them.  Crouching in the stern with one oar dug deep, he was hurled on
+his errand of mercy.  The <I>Sovereign</I> whistled its commendation, while
+ashore the spectators and life-savers stood breathless.  A stealthy
+wave slashed the oar, almost pulling his shoulder from its socket, but
+he kept the oar.  Aye, he kept it and cursed the wave that sought to
+take it away.  On, on, as determined, as indomitable as the elements.
+A wave cut the boat full.  It skidded on its side and righted.  A
+comber rose green behind, hiding the <I>Fledgling</I>.  It caught the
+lifeboat before it broke.  It hoisted it high and then, passing on,
+expended its crushing force against the wreck ahead.  And Dan laughed,
+and the spindrift flying like buckshot beat against his teeth.  On, on,
+until the wreck, boiling in water, loomed ahead.  On past the stern of
+the wreck shot the small boat, until it was just under the lee of it.
+There he signalled to his men to pay out the line no more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jump!" he called to the three men in the rigging.  First jumped Daniel
+James, and Dan caught him out of the waters and hauled him in.  And he
+caught the next, the boat careening, shipping a rush of water.  As
+Captain Ephraim crouched for the leap, the sough of the rotten hull,
+working and heaving like the carcass of a shark, was bursting out in a
+score of places and the lumber deck-load rose and fell and quivered and
+flailed huge planks into the waves.  The end was near.  Dan shouted the
+skipper to hurry.  Ephraim obeyed, and had fought his way through the
+caldron to the boat and was dragged aboard, when suddenly, with a great
+straining sigh, the hull of the wreck parted amidships, both ends
+sinking in the waters.  A comber rushed in between, swelling and
+hissing.  The lumber deck-load rose in the air like a living thing.
+The remaining fastenings holding it to the deck parted, and there was a
+rending and grinding as it slued off into the sea, carrying with it the
+main-mast, which crashed down and impaled the bar on which the wreck
+rested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The currents had carried the rowboat almost&mdash;quite, in fact&mdash;in front
+of this terrible heaving mass of wood, one hundred feet long and
+chained together to a height of ten feet&mdash;and only the mainmast, which
+seemed to be serving as a sort of anchor, held it.  Dan saw the danger,
+and the shouts of those on the <I>Fledgling</I> told him that they had seen
+it too.  The line leading from the boat to the tug was taut and
+singing, evidence that the men were hauling upon it.  But the pull of
+the shoreward rushing waters was as great as their strength.  The boat
+made no movement out of her dangerous position.  Dan was sculling like
+mad, but his efforts, compared to the might of the sea, were puny.  In
+deep silence the mass of lumber worried at its unforeseen anchor.  It
+ripped free and, rolling and twisting in spineless abandon, bore down
+upon the lifeboat with crushing momentum.  On it came.  They began to
+pay out the line in order that the boat might keep ahead of it for a
+few extra minutes.  But Dan knew there could be no salvation in that.
+He could see every foot of the advancing mass.  He could see the
+hundreds of planks flailing out in the air like arms; he could see the
+thick water spurting through thousands of cracks and crevices; could
+hear the gnashing of plank on plank.  Nearer it came, as powerful, as
+inexorable as the glacial drift.  It rose before him in all its
+crushing might.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he felt the boat, as though suddenly endowed with life, start
+forward, and, glancing at the <I>Fledgling</I>, saw that she had made a
+tangent course to the wreck in order that the boat could be pulled
+outward from it and away.  Dan knew in an instant that they had lashed
+the line to the stern bitts and had taken the desperate chance, the
+only chance, of making the tug pull her lifeboat from danger.  Could
+the little line stand the strain?  That was the question.  It was so
+tight that it vibrated like thin wire, and it was humming musically,
+monotonously.  It held&mdash;the boat was moving!  But the lumber was moving
+too.  On it came.  Ten feet&mdash;a plank wrenched clear of the mass and
+shot on ahead, ramming out the lifeboat's stern-board, above the water
+line.  Another plank, as though hurled by some sinister force, sailed
+clear over Dan's head.  Ten feet&mdash;the line was fraying out at the ring
+bolts.  Just a second now&mdash;five feet.  With one bound the lumber swept
+down, and past the stern of the boat, and Captain Ephraim fell to his
+knees and thanked his God.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The fight off Jones Island Inlet came at a time when it meant much to
+Dan.  It was the deep sea, and he had measured his might with it.  And
+as a man is dignified by the prowess of his opponent, so was Dan
+dignified by the prowess of the sea.  Perhaps that was why the sea had
+always called Dan&mdash;faintly, dimly; far away sometimes, but always
+unmistakably.  It came in every wind that blew; a voice that involved
+not the sea alone, but the things it stood for&mdash;a broader, deeper life
+and bigger things; more to do, a final and definite place to make.  He
+had never met or been influenced by the big men&mdash;the men who think and
+teach and sing and do the world's work.  His environment in these, his
+early years of manhood, had been far from them.  He could touch them
+only in books, which were not entirely satisfactory.  And so he learned
+from the sea and it spoke to him of breadth, and power, and
+determination, and majesty of character.  Dan was instinctively seeking
+all these things, and in the work he was now doing he felt that he was
+nearer to them than he had ever been before.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER V
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE LOSS OF THE "FLEDGLING"
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+One Fall afternoon, six months after the rescue of the men of the
+<I>Zeitgeist</I>, the <I>Fledgling</I>, as though sentient with the instinct of
+self-preservation, was struggling through the riot of wind and waves,
+seeking the security of the Delaware Breakwater, while ten miles back,
+somewhere in the wild half gloom off Hog Island, three loaded coal
+barges which she had been towing from Norfolk were rolling, twisting,
+careening helplessly to destruction&mdash;if, indeed, the seas had not
+already taken deadly toll of them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan and two of his men were at the wheel spokes, which had torn the
+palms of their hands until they were raw and bleeding, and the dull
+light flooding in through the windows revealed the indomitable will of
+these men, the death-fight spirit which actuated them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan's face was bloodless and strained, and his hair fell across his
+eyes, while crouching beneath him, with hands on the under spokes, were
+the gigantic shoulders of his mate, the sweaty gray hair and the red,
+thick nape of the neck suggesting the very epitome of muscular effort;
+and on the other side, writhing and quivering, was the deck-hand, a
+study in steel and wire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The afternoon was still young, but the heavens were darker than
+twilight, and the rocking sea was as black as slate, save where a
+comber, as though gnashing its teeth in fury, flashed a sudden white
+crest, which crumbled immediately into the heaving pall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, boys, together!  Catch back that last spoke we lost!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And while Dan's words were being shattered into shreds of sound by the
+shriek of the gale, the three men bent their backs in a fresh effort to
+put the <I>Fledgling's</I> nose a point better into the on-rushing waves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They did it too.  With a hiss and a crunch the bow swung in square to
+the watery thunderbolts and the stanch craft, survivor of a hundred
+perils, a ten-foot section of her port rail gone, a great dent in the
+steel deck-house forward, began to climb over the water hills with much
+of her usual precision&mdash;down on her side, clear to the bottom of a
+hollow, then settling on an even keel with a jerk, climbing the slaty
+incline, stiff as a church, then down, down, half on her side again,
+then up once more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's making good weather of it," and Dan took his hands from the
+wheel, stood erect, and gazed through the after windows, searching a
+horizon which he could see only when the tug climbed to a wave top.  He
+turned to his mate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's no use hunting for those barges," he said tentatively.  "When
+that tow-line broke back there, it seemed as though one of my heart
+strings went too.  But there was nothing to do about it; nothing we
+could do.  It was all we could do to work the <I>Fledgling</I> through."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Most captains would 'a' cut them barges adrift long before the line
+broke," replied the mate; "no use thinkin' about them now; they've
+gone, long ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan worked his way along the pitching floor to the side windows.  His
+face was tense and drawn.  He had never lost a tow before&mdash;this was a
+part of his reputation.  And now.&#8320;  He turned slowly to resume his
+place at the wheel, when suddenly, as the tug was sidling down a wave,
+the tail of his eye caught a glimpse of a buff funnel protruding above
+the wave tops a good quarter of a mile away.  His first impression was
+that the water had claimed all but the funnel.  He was not sure.  He
+waited.  It seemed an age while the tug climbed to the top of the next
+comber.  Slowly, slowly the buff funnel again came into view, and then
+as the tug still climbed he saw it all&mdash;a white, broad-waisted yacht
+cluttering in the grip of the waters, throwing her stern toward heaven,
+reeling over, taking water on one rail, letting it through the opposite
+scuppers, sticking her bow into the waves and rising, shaking off the
+water like a fat spaniel.  Puffs of steam were escaping jerkily from
+the whistle valve, and, although Dan could not hear, he knew she was
+whistling for assistance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was all a quick, pulsating scene, as one views something in a
+kinetoscope, and then it was lost as the waters rose between them.  Dan
+stumbled over to the wheel.  He was not a man of many words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Boys, there's work for us to do.  There's a yacht in distress about a
+quarter of a mile off on the port hand.  We'll go over and see."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It'll mean throwing her head off from seas that we've been bucking
+since morning," said the mate.  And the inflection cast into the words
+suggested no protest, only a reminder that it would be no child's play.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Dan simply, leaning forward to take advantage of the uproll
+of the tug to locate the yacht more exactly.   "There&mdash;there&mdash;throw her
+off three points&mdash;&mdash;  That's it," he added, as the tug floundered on
+her new course,&mdash;a course no longer into, but across, the waves, which
+now began to come from everywhere, buffeting the tug, keel and bow,
+rail and pilot-house&mdash;crazy cross-seas, fighting among themselves,
+slashing, crashing, falling over one another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But on the <I>Fledgling</I> went, climbing the waves insanely now, sometimes
+bow on, sometimes crab-wise&mdash;but ever on.  Each wave that was topped
+gave a better view of the yacht, also enabling those on that wallowing
+craft to see the tug, as evidence of which the continuous blasts of the
+whistle were borne to the towmen's ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nearer, until the yacht was never lost to view.  Evidently she was not
+under control; but, even so, it was plain that no high degree of
+intelligence was being exerted in handling her.  She was not steaming
+at all, merely drifting in the trough, and none of the means to bring
+her head into the seas which sailors utilize at a pinch had even been
+attempted.  Whatever was the matter with the yacht, Dan and his men
+were sure that the officers and crew were nothing less than blockheads.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Making a wide detour, they brought the tug around under the lee of the
+craft and about fifty yards away, where Dan, leaving the wheel to his
+men, seized a megaphone and ran on deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the matter with you?" he shouted angrily through his megaphone,
+aimed toward a group of men on the shattered bridge.  "Are you trying
+to see how quickly you can sink?  Why don't you put her head up?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A young officer in a wet and bedraggled uniform crawled along the
+swaying platform to the megaphone rack and, seizing a cone, shouted
+from a kneeling posture:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Help us, for God's sake!  Our thrust shaft has cracked!"  The words
+came faintly.  "Our Captain was washed from the bridge.&#8320;  Tried to
+put out sea anchor, but couldn't make it hold without steerage
+way.&#8320;  It broke adrift.&#8320;  This&nbsp;&#8230; the <I>Veiled Ladye</I>, with
+Mr. Horace Howland and a party aboard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The <I>Veiled Ladye</I>!  Absorbed as Dan was, he felt a momentary flash of
+surprise that the announcement of that name came to him almost as a
+matter of course.  Through the long course of nearly two years the
+conviction that a time would come when he should once more meet the
+girl who had spoken to him from the <I>Veiled Ladye's</I> deck at Norfolk
+had strengthened inexplicably, until he had come to accept it as an
+assured fact.  Was she aboard that yacht now?  Aboard that laboring
+section of gingerbread, in the hands of incompetents and poltroons?
+Was she?  It could not be otherwise.  And this was the nature of the
+meeting which had colored his dreams and intensified the ambitions of
+his waking moments!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A strange thrill quivered through him, and he glanced dazedly at
+Mulhatton, as a stout man in yachting garb stumbled to the officer's
+side and snatched the megaphone from his hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On board the tug!" he cried.  "I'm Horace Howland of the Coastwise and
+West Indian Shipping Company.  We're helpless; we can't last an hour
+unless you hold our head up.  Engineer making a collar for cracked
+shaft&nbsp;&#8230; have it made and fitted in twelve hours.  Twelve hours.
+Hold us up that long and we are safe!  Do you hear me&nbsp;&#8230; twelve
+hours!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan looked at the yacht, rolling to her beam ends almost every minute.
+It would be a bad business fooling with that craft; and with iron will
+he fought back his surging emotions.  He had his tug and his men to
+consider, if not himself.  His tug was weakened by her long struggle,
+and to the best of his judgment he knew it would be wiser for his own
+interests to go his way, leaving the yacht to her life fight, while the
+<I>Fledgling</I> fought hers.  And yet he could not go away.  Aside from the
+wild theory that the girl might be aboard, there were lives to save
+over there.  That was it.  There were lives to save over there.  Duty
+called&mdash;a stern, clear call; at least, Dan so heard it, and he was
+willing to answer it with his life, if necessary.  But he did not think
+of that part of it.  It was the lives of those imperilled persons that
+concerned him.  He and his tug were there that they might live.  There
+were women aboard; he had seen their white faces gazing imploringly at
+him through the cabin portholes&mdash;bright, beautiful lives&mdash;and men in
+the glorious prime of their youth.  His heart went out to them, and as
+Mr. Howland laid aside his megaphone the problem was clear.  He waved
+his megaphone in assent and then, levelling it at the yacht, he cried:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right.  Float a hawser down to us; you are pitching too wild-eyed
+to come within heaving-line distance."  Passing the pilot-house on his
+way below, he nodded and smiled at the men inside.  There had been no
+need to question them.  They had been too long with Dan, and too
+faithful, not to catch his drift of mind in all emergencies long before
+he expressed it in words; too brave and hardened to danger, in fact, to
+care what Dan wanted, just so that he was willing to lead them&mdash;to
+share with them the work to be done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the course of a few minutes a small raft, bearing a heaving-line
+which the yachtsmen had streamed, drifted down upon the tug, clearing
+the bow by a few feet.  Dan leaned out and caught it with his
+boat-hook, bringing the line aboard.  Then he and his fireman tailed on
+to the end of it, bringing in the attached hawser hand over hand.  This
+they hurried to the stern bitts, taking a pass also around the steam
+winch.  Leaving the fireman to watch it, Dan dashed into the
+pilot-house and sounded the jingle-bell in the engine-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a few minutes the churnings of the screw were discounted by the
+bulk of the yacht plus the elemental forces which sought to keep her
+head just where it was&mdash;in the trough of the sea.  The tow-line
+vibrated itself into a blur, the tug strained and quivered and groaned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why don't you help us in some way, you fools!" roared Dan, struggling
+at the wheel.  "You can at least steer, or&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before he could proceed there was a report like the bark of a cannon
+and a torn and shredded end of hawser came writhing and twisting up out
+of the sea, sluing across the face of the pilot-house as though
+possessed of all the venom of the living thing it resembled&mdash;a python.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was silence on both the tug and the yacht for a full minute.  Dan
+watched the distressed craft as she tossed up her bow and glided
+sternward from his view behind a jet of black wave, while the
+<I>Fledgling</I> seemed to slide from under his feet in the opposite
+direction.  As the yacht came up again he could see that this mishap
+had scattered all semblance of fortitude to the winds.  Except for the
+young second officer, Mr. Howland, and a sailor, all holding their
+places pluckily on the bridge, terror reigned.  Sailors, men in
+yachting costumes, and women with hair flying flashed along the decks
+or in and out of doorways, while forward a group of three young men
+lashed to a big anchor held out their hands toward the tug.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan turned to his deck-hand, his face hard and determined.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pete," he said, "go down and get out the double cables.  Welch is
+astern and will help you.  I'm going to swerve the tug in close and you
+heave the lines aboard when we re near enough.  We won't trust any more
+to their rotten hemp."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As a knight, with reckless abandon, might have urged his steed into the
+very midst of his foes, so Dan urged the <I>Fledgling</I> up to the wildly
+pitching yacht.  Nearer the tug advanced, so near that the tugmen could
+see the streaks through the red underbody.  Nearer yet, head on, and
+then the wheel was swung broad, while Dan leaned out of the
+pilot-house, looking down at the two men forward, who were whirling
+weighted heaving-lines about their heads like lariats.  "Now, now
+then!" yelled Dan, as the mate in response to a wave of his hand began
+to sheer off from the yacht.  "Aye, aye," came the replies from below,
+and a second later two lines whistled clean over the forward decks of
+the white craft.  Eager hands seized them and hauled in the great
+cables and made them fast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Just for an instant Dan and the mate peered at the yacht to see if the
+lines had carried, an instant of which the wily sea took full
+advantage.  An oily wave reared the bow of the yacht while the swell of
+its predecessor slued the <I>Fledgling</I> in and around and upward, so that
+the two craft reared, side by side, bows up and not more than five feet
+apart.  A scream fluttered from the bridge; men's voices raised in
+curses at the clumsy yacht were borne from the pilot-house.  Dan,
+however, had not time for words; he stood with hands on the wheel
+watching the red, reeking bow rearing almost in his face; watched it,
+cool, ready to take the first chance of escape, if the present danger
+offered such a chance.  Slowly, easily, the wave passed, and down came
+the two bows with a crash.  The bow of the <I>Veiled Ladye</I> just grazed
+the <I>Fledgling's</I> weather rail, tearing off a fender, while Dan
+signalled full speed astern.  It was fortunate that he had his wits
+about him, for the erratic yacht, instead of falling back as she
+naturally should have done, suddenly moved forward under the impulse of
+a swell, butting the tug, almost gently, about ten feet from the bow.
+Then the tug backed clear, and, breasting the waves, began to take up
+the slack cables.  A hundred yards she went and then stopped headway
+with a jerk as the men slipped the cables over the bitts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The collision had not hurt the tug apparently, although there was no
+telling whether or not the jolt had weakened her structurally.  But Dan
+was not the man to worry about eventualities.  An hour's straining and
+hauling resulted in bringing the yacht's head full into the seas, and
+then at four o'clock Dan snuggled his craft to, for the long eleven
+hours' fight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The afternoon waned into twilight, softly, impalpably, and the twilight
+wavered into night.  A few lights quivered from the reeling yacht and
+her mast-head lamps described glimmering arcs against the heavens.
+Silent and grim, the tug took the brunt of all the seas had to
+give&mdash;nose piercing the very heart of the waves, splitting them with
+beautiful precision, rising, falling, reeling, pitching, but, through
+all, hanging to the yacht with undying tenacity.  So she fought, as she
+had ever fought.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Contrary to the promise of the afternoon, the gale had not abated; the
+seas, if anything, raced more fiercely, and the wind, which tore the
+dark with a wailing moan, departed with a venomous shriek.  Dan and his
+mate stood hard at the wheel, Noonan, the deck-hand, was stationed
+astern, and Crampton, the stanch old chief, and his fireman were down
+in the heart of things, nursing the engines.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were well nursed, too.  The steady throb, the clank of the throws,
+and the hum of the eccentrics rose to the pilot-house in cadence as
+regular as the heart-throbs of a healthy ox.  And the while Dan and his
+mate gingerly manipulated the wheel so that the strain on the tow-line
+was constant and even, with no slack or sudden jerks, which were truly
+to be avoided in the face of the mad sea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sea grew indefinite in the dark,&mdash;as indefinite as the undulations
+of a black shroud.  It was as though the tug were tossing through some
+mysterious agency.  There were times when the tall mast-head lights
+astern showed not a foot above the rim of that more intense darkness
+which marked where the water ended and the horizon began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again there were times when the glowing specks seemed to scale the
+heights of a sable vacuum.  Once a section of the rail went ripping
+away in the gloom and once a shredded small boat was torn and hurled
+into the waters.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One hour, two hours, three hours, four hours&mdash;and still the wild night
+went on, and still the <I>Fledgling</I> held to her work.  Crampton, the
+chief engineer, struggled up from the engine-room at nine o'clock, his
+swart face lined and creased.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She's like an old man dyin'," he said, and his voice quivered.  "The
+old injines are drivin' as hard and brave as a man with a club; but a
+lot of the kick has gone out of them.  Nothin' the matter of 'em that I
+can see&mdash;but just feel.  My old injines are feelin' about fur an excuse
+to cave in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, hang on," replied Dan, "and don't tell me what you feel may
+happen; I can think up enough things myself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," and Crampton hesitated.  "I didn't come up here fur anythin'
+I've said&mdash;Cap'n," he added in a low voice; "we're takin' in water."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An imprecation trembled on Dan's lips, and one of his hands left the
+wheel in an involuntary gesture of resignation.  Then he shut his teeth
+tight and talked slowly through them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where the yacht hit us?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, forward; it's opened up a little under the floor plates&mdash;about
+twenty strokes a minute I should say; the force-pump's kept it level so
+far."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good," said Dan; "there's nothing else to do but keep it going."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing," said the chief, and he reeled out of the pitching
+pilot-house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Two, three, four hours more&mdash;the water had gained nine inches, so the
+chief reported through the speaking-tube.  But still the <I>Fledgling</I>
+held her tow, and Dan and Mulhatton stood silent at the wheel, the rush
+of the wind, which had long torn out the double windows, swirling their
+hair into their eyes and numbing their torn and bleeding hands.  The
+elements, as though divining the weakening of the tug,&mdash;a tug which
+often had laughed them to scorn,&mdash;were making mad work of it; there
+were strange sounds, unforeseen blows&mdash;but still the tug hung on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came an hour in which she did not rise to the waves as she had
+been doing,&mdash;an hour when the leak gained terribly, and when the
+<I>Fledgling</I>, struggling bravely, if wearily, upward to meet a wave,
+would stop half-way with a jerk and a sigh, the wave gouging along the
+deck&mdash;breaking over the stern-board.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They could feel her going in the pilot-house.  But she hung on to her
+lines with the grip of death.  Dan stood at his mate's side, his eyes
+fixed straight ahead into the darkness.  He had cast his die; he had
+chosen his lot&mdash;now the toll was to be paid.  He thought, too, of the
+men who, without question, had taken their stand with him.  He reached
+out his left hand and placed it gently on his mate's shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good boy, old Mul," he said, in words which, however inadequate,
+revealed all the heart of his meaning.  And Mulhatton simply shifted
+his feet and gazed ahead, his hard, light eyes as expressionless as
+marble disks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dawn came filtering across the raven waters as the bloodless hand
+of an old man quivers across a chess-board,&mdash;gray dawn, cold dawn, even
+more merciless than the night, in that it heralded the rise of the sun
+to smile over the evil wrought in the darker hours.  Astern, the white
+yacht alternately pierced the sky with her bow and sought the depths.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly a long, triumphant scream of a whistle rang across the dawn&mdash;a
+roll of water parted a retiring wave.  The big white yacht moved of her
+own power.  Again the whistle sounded, as though in joy that the vessel
+had at last found herself.  Once more.&#8320;  She mounted the waves in
+proud defiance.&#8320;  The tow-lines slackened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cast off, cast off!" megaphoned an officer, while two of his sailors
+threw the ends of the cables into the sea.  The deck-hand and fireman
+started to bring them in, while Dan gave the signal for Crampton to go
+ahead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tug started timidly forward and then hesitated and trembled.  A
+wave hit her, and she rocked like a cork.  The jump had all gone out of
+her.  Another wave struck her and almost hove her down, and then
+another wave snapped her back again, jerking out the funnel, which
+hissed overside into the sea.  Half on her side, she clanked into the
+trough.  She struggled to right herself and had partly succeeded, when
+a mighty wave smote her viciously on her listed side.  She went over to
+her beam ends and lay there a second, while Dan and his men shot
+through the windows, off from the deck, into the sea.  Another instant
+and the <I>Fledgling</I> rolled her keel to the morning light and swiftly
+disappeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Dan rose on a wave he saw her go, saw too, the white face of his
+engineer framed in the engine-room doorway, which a wave filled just as
+she turned, obliterating the face forever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The next few minutes were nothing but a buffeting, swirling confusion.
+Suddenly a line struck Dan's face&nbsp;&#8230; his hands closed upon a
+circular life preserver.&#8320;  The next instant he lay gasping on the
+deck of the <I>Veiled Ladye</I>, beside his deck-hand and mate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Half an hour later, Dan, in warm clothes, sat upon the pitching deck of
+the yacht, at the doorway of the saloon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The <I>Fledgling</I> gone and Welch and Crampton&mdash;that was all he could
+think of as he sat gazing into the gray of the waters, which in closing
+over the black tragedy immediately presented a surface as free from all
+evidence of guilt as the placid surface of a mill-pond.  He had made
+himself in the <I>Fledgling</I>,&mdash;had rounded to the measure of a man aboard
+of her,&mdash;had grown in the plenitude of man's strength and will and
+courage and success.  He felt the loss of his tug; it hit him hard; he
+suffered in every mental corner and cranny.  And when the two men who
+had given their lives for him and for the yacht came to mind in all the
+clearness of their personality and devotion to him, his head sank on
+his hand and he groaned aloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A hand was laid gently on his shoulder, and looking up, he saw Mr.
+Howland and a tall, beautiful girl by his side, both gazing at him from
+the doorway with eyes filled with compassion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were the captain of the tug?" asked Mr. Rowland.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Captain Merrithew," and Dan ceased speaking and gazed at the deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You owned the tug?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," replied Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Captain Merrithew, I cannot say anything adequate.  I appreciate what
+you have done&mdash;I cannot say how much."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, father," broke in the girl, "tell him it was noble!"
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-090"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-090.jpg" ALT="&quot;Oh, father,&quot; broke in the girl, &quot;tell him it was noble!&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="402" HEIGHT="664">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: "Oh, father," broke in the girl, "tell him it was noble!"]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"It was noble," resumed Mr. Howland.  "It was big and fine&mdash;you saved a
+score of lives, and for them you gave your tug and part of your crew.
+I cannot reward such men as you&mdash;I can pay just debts, though.  Your
+men shall not suffer; neither shall the families of those who were
+lost."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then he paused a minute and reached behind the door jamb, bringing out
+a water-soaked bit of plank.  "One of our best men picked this from the
+water.  You had been clinging to it.  I thought you might like to have
+it in your cabin."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the name board of the <I>Fledgling</I>.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VI
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+As Dan seized the strip with its gilt letters and was about to reply,
+the yacht slung sideways, and a wave arising amidships smote the
+deck-house a lusty, full-bodied blow.  It suddenly occurred to the
+tugboat captain that the craft, all the time he had been aboard trying
+to collect his bewildered senses, had acted strangely.  He turned to
+Mr. Howland.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the matter with your yacht?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Howland was a good deal of a thoroughbred, and yet he could not conceal
+his eagerness as he spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The yacht was just what I wanted to speak to you about, Captain," he
+said.  "I know I have no right to ask anything more of you, but if you
+have pulled together, I think we seem to need your assistance.  Our
+Captain was washed off the bridge, and the first mate is below with a
+broken leg.  The situation, I am afraid, is beyond young Terry, the
+second mate; I&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the import of what Mr. Howland was trying to say flashed across
+Dan's mind, he turned abruptly, without waiting for the completion of
+the sentence, and ran for the bridge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without a glance at the second officer, who seemed on the verge of a
+complete funk, he shouldered the two sailors from the wheel and hauled
+on the spokes with all the strength of his long arms.  As the yacht
+began to respond he seized the indicator crank and called for full
+speed ahead.  The whistle of the bridge speaking-tube sounded
+viciously, and Dan, placing his ear to the receiver, caught the words
+of the old chief engineer as they flowed up in profane vehemence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say, do you know what you want up there?  If I had a man down here who
+knew an engine from a plate of fruit, I'd 'a' been up there and snaked
+you off the bridge long ago.  I've been on my back under that triply
+damned shaft for twelve hours and now&mdash;" the rest of the sentence was
+an assortment of well-chosen oaths.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The outburst greeted Dan's ears sweetly.  Evidently Howland had a man
+down below the water line, anyway.  He grinned as he clapped his lips
+to the tube.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I've just come aboard to take charge of this craft," he yelled; "now
+you do as I say and do it quick.  See!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A great relieved, blasphemous roar came up the tube, and the next
+instant the engines were laying down to their work.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bow began to cut nicely into the waves, and Dan turned to the two
+sailors.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here, you boys, tail on here and steer as I tell you."  Whereupon,
+fingering a pocket compass, he called the course, after which he
+fastened the little instrument to the wreck of the binnacle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We will pull through," he said, turning to Mr. Howland, who, with his
+daughter, had followed him to the bridge.  "We are somewhere off the
+Winter Quarter Shoals; if I can get the sun at noon I'll know exactly;
+anyway, we will make Norfolk if that shaft holds.  If it doesn't&mdash;well,
+banking on that engineer you've got down below, I think it will hold."
+Then inclining his head in the direction of Miss Howland, he added,
+"I'd advise you to go below, Miss Howland."  He thrilled as he uttered
+her name, "You're wet; and then&mdash;I may have to swear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should love awfully to hear some one swear to some purpose," she
+replied.  "Oh, I want to stay," she cried, speaking to her father, as
+Dan suddenly turned his back and spoke to the second mate.  "Father, I
+am going to stay.  The rest are seasick or frightened to pieces.  I
+feel braver up here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was perfectly candid.  She did feel braver there on the bridge.
+For Dan was the one dominant personality aboard the yacht.  In her eyes
+he typified bravery, skill, strength&mdash;safety, in a word, for all.  It
+was as though out of the wrack of despair and the overriding elements
+had arisen the spirit of a man and all that at best he stands for, to
+reclaim the lost honors of the darker hours.  And so she clung to him
+with her eyes and felt she could smile at danger; her soul went out to
+him and enveloped him with gratitude and tenderness.  And she neither
+knew nor cared whether in these emotions was the uprearing of woman's
+submerged, primal nature, giving all to the sheer power of the stronger
+sex, or whether it was the result of a burden of dread suddenly lifted
+from her heart&mdash;it made no difference which.  She was living the
+moment&mdash;here and now&mdash;clear, serene, justified, and ennobled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And standing thus she watched him as he snapped the yacht slantwise
+from the grip of succeeding sea hollows and guided her over the gray
+hills, panting and straining, with much of pudgy deliberation, but
+surely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We will make it easily," said Dan, "if nothing happens."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good," cried Mr. Rowland, and, taking his daughter by the arm, he
+added, "come below, Virginia, and give them the good news.  Your friend
+Oddington has forgotten his cigarettes for a full twenty-four hours,
+and the Dale girls are candidates for a sanitarium."  There was a
+chuckle of relief in his voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan turned to watch the girl as she followed her father from the
+bridge.  He was certain he had never seen anything so inspiring as
+Virginia Howland standing braced square to the wind, her trim blue
+skirt winding and unwinding; her cap in her hand; the wind tossing her
+heavy hair in myriads of glowing pennons, which beat on the
+blush-surged cheeks, alternately hiding and disclosing the sparkle of
+the deep gray eyes or the flash of perfect teeth from between parted
+lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a picture upon which he permitted himself to ponder but an
+instant, however, for the wind was shifting again from the northeast,
+growling ominously, and the yacht, humping along at a ridiculous speed
+of six knots, made the situation less satisfactory than it had been.
+He spoke to Terry over his shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As you see," he said, "we're running into some new sort of hell," and
+he glanced impatiently at the potential riot ahead.  "Have these men
+keep the course and look out for things, will you?  I'm going down to
+the engine-room for a few minutes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very well, sir," said the young officer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan found old Jim Arthur, the chief, swearing softly as he moved about
+his engines with a long-spouted oil can.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is beginning to breeze again," said Dan.  "I'm the new Captain and
+I came down to tell you I don't think much of your machinery, and to
+ask if the shaft will hold out."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The shaft'll hold," said the engineer.  Then he paused and looked at
+Dan in supreme disgust.  "Engines!" he snorted.  "I've been holdin' 'em
+together with my fingers since we left San Domingo.  Cap'n, they'd been
+fine for a Swiss cuckoo clock.  Why, they're only held together by gilt
+paint and polish.  See how old Howland's had 'em painted&mdash;like a
+bedizened old maid!  I do believe he's got 'em perfumed.  Well, they
+may hold&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan, who had been glancing about the engine-room, interrupted the
+engineer's pessimistic outburst.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are your force pumps going for?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, it ain't fur to water no flowers," said Arthur, beckoning Dan to
+the shaft tunnel, where a foot and a half of frothy water was rolling
+to and fro, slushing against the stuffing box, laving the engine-room
+bulkhead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Leaking!  Dan's first impulse was to drop his hands then and there and
+let the yacht sink or do what she would for all he cared.  He had
+fought out his fight with a better craft than this and had lost her.
+He did not yield to this; in truth, before he could think of yielding
+there came a second impulse&mdash;to relieve his mind of several hundred
+accumulated metaphors, to which inclination he surrendered
+unconditionally, while Arthur, in the face of the verbal torrent, gazed
+at the source in humble admiration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How&mdash;how much is she taking in?" the young man finally gasped.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"About thirty strokes a minute.  I'd 'a' whistled up the tube about it
+before, only I thought you had enough to fill your mind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How does it strike you?" asked Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's gained only six inches in the past hour.  I will say that much.
+But if you ask me my honest opinion, I'd say this rotten old pleasure
+hull is a-gettin' ready to open up and spread out like a&mdash;like
+a&mdash;balloon with the epizoötic."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, when she begins, come on up with your men without asking
+leave.  Report every half-hour.  I'll be on the bridge, of course.  If
+I can pick up a steamship I'll call her and desert ship; if not&mdash;well,
+we're somewhere outside the Winter Quarter light-ship.  I'll need about
+five hours of the speed we're making to pick up the light vessel and
+beach the yacht in the lee of Assateague; maybe not quite five hours, I
+can't say exactly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think we can keep ahead of the water we're makin' that long,"
+replied Arthur, cheerfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Dan regained the bridge, the bad news he had received below was
+slightly compensated for by the fact that the storm seemed to be taking
+a new kink, swirling away to sea.  The gray combers, however, were
+still disagreeably to be reckoned with.  The second officer had by this
+time pulled himself together, and as he reported to Dan, the young
+Captain was happy to feel that he had at least a lieutenant who could
+be counted on.  Now if Mulhatton were only with him&mdash;but "Mul" was
+below, flat on his back, suffering technically from submersion, and so
+were the other men of the <I>Fledgling</I> who had been pulled aboard the
+yacht.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At ten o'clock Arthur reported that the water had gained another six
+inches.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Dan snapped back the tube a burst of laughter from the saloon
+reached his ears.  Seasickness, fear, everything evil had been
+forgotten in the spirit of confidence and assurance of ultimate safety
+which Dan's skill and personality had infused throughout the wallowing
+craft.  He shrugged his shoulders, staring vacantly into the angry sea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At length his eyes turned to the distress signals he had ordered
+hoisted; and suddenly the gulf between his lot in life and theirs,
+which the merriment suggested, disappeared, and his emotions thereby
+aroused,&mdash;emotions not untinged with self-pity, changed to deepest
+sympathy for those light-hearted ones who might soon be plunged into
+that gloom which heralds death.  Grim, silent, he turned to his work,
+determined that so far as in him lay no shadow of death should invest a
+single one of those persons who must find so much in life to make it
+worth while.  Another hour passed while the yacht stumbled her clumsy
+course to safety.  Arthur reported another half-foot; in all three feet
+six inches of water swishing against the engine-room bulkhead.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will keep seepin' through," he said, "and wop!  Suddenly the whole
+bulkhead'll go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't get caught," replied Dan.  "Give us three more hours, chief.
+Oh, I say, there's not a drop getting into the fire room yet?  Thank
+God for that!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He faced about quickly and looked into the eyes of Virginia Howland.
+She was pale, but her face was brave.  "I had just come out on deck,"
+she said, "because somehow I was getting nervous&mdash;I wanted to be&mdash;to be
+near the Captain."  She smiled.   "I heard you talking through the
+speaking-tube; I didn't mean to listen&mdash;pardon me; I couldn't help it.
+We're in danger, then, are we?  Don't hesitate to answer truthfully,
+Captain Merrithew."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why," replied Dan, "we&mdash;steady there, Mr. Terry; you men at the wheel
+attend to your business.  Excuse me," turning to the girl,
+"danger&mdash;why, we've been in danger all the time; else I wouldn't be up
+here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are evading," said the girl, slowly.  "But perhaps you are right.
+I can say I trust you, Captain&mdash;we all do.  I want to tell you again
+how we all appreciate your&mdash;what you have done&mdash;putting the yacht
+straight and&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am doing it for myself as much as for you.  More, perhaps; who
+knows?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl gazed intently at his square-cut, bronzed face.  Then she
+looked straight into his steel-gray eyes, peering hard ahead from under
+the flat peak of a cap he had picked up on the bridge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she said, as though speaking to herself, "I think I know."  Then
+she started with an involuntary gesture.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Haven't I seen you somewhere before, Captain Merrithew?  Yes, yes, I
+have.  Where could it have been?  Do you recall?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," was the simple reply.  "I recall.  It was about two years ago,
+at Norfolk, when you were at the coal docks on this yacht."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia flushed eagerly and was about to say something, when some
+flashing thought, perhaps a realizing sense of their relative
+positions, closed her lips.  "I remember very clearly now."  She spoke
+quietly, then she closed her eyes for a second; when she opened them
+they were stern and hard.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Captain Merrithew," she said, as though to hasten from the subject, "I
+know we are in danger.  Your silence has said as much.  Yet the yacht
+seems to be going finely&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan made no reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think I am a coward?  Is that the reason you are silent?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan made no attempt to conceal his annoyance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Miss Howland, if you are not a coward, if you can keep what you
+know to yourself, listen: We're taking in a little water.  It's a race
+between the yacht and the leak; the yacht ought to win out.  Now you
+know as much as I do."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not frightened; my curiosity is natural.  Is there a chance that
+the yacht may not get where you are taking her?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To the Assateague beach&mdash;no, I don't think there is&mdash;if all goes well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If all goes well!  Then there is a chance&mdash;a chance we may&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, we'll be all right."  Dan was temperamentally straightforward and
+honest, and his assertions were uttered with a tentative inflection
+which fell far from carrying conviction to the aroused senses of the
+girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She stepped closer to Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I say something?  We are in danger.  I have been thinking of
+things since you came aboard&mdash;since I have been sitting in the saloon
+with the men who are different&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan could see that the girl, always evidently one of dominant emotions,
+was overwrought, and something told him she had no business to express
+the thoughts which filled her mind, that she would be sorry later that
+she had spoken.  He had interrupted her by a gesture.  Now his voice
+came cool and even.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Howland, don't.  I've got to take care of this yacht."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A quick sense of just what he meant shot through the girl's mind.  She
+raised her eyes and looked at him straight.  They were blazing, not
+altogether with anger.  She trembled; she flushed and moved
+uncertainly.  Then, without a word, she turned and left him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A half-foot more water in the last half-hour," reported Arthur.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Dan turned to Terry, that officer silently pointed to the northward,
+where a tall column of black smoke seemed to rise from the waters.  A
+steamship!  Yes, but was it coming toward them?  Was it going away?  Or
+would it pass them far out to sea?  For fifteen minutes he watched it
+through his binoculars, and then he glanced down to the deck and called
+to a sailor to send Mr. Howland to the bridge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Howland," said Dan, as the owner approached him, "I suppose Miss
+Howland has told you our fix."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, but she has told no one else."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bully for her!" exclaimed Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She said you were hopeful."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More so now than ever before, I was making for the beach, but
+now&mdash;there's a steamship coming down on us.  I wasn't sure at first, I
+am now.  That smoke out there is heading dead for us.  I am going to
+slow the boat down to steerage way and wait for her to come up.  It's
+better than trying to make for Assateague; it's better to wait."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will the bulkhead hold?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Howland asked his question in the even monotone which had
+characterized all his questions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think so; if it doesn't, we'll get everybody off in the rafts and
+the launch; the sea is going down by the minute."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Howland glanced down at the deck where the crew of Scandinavians,
+inspired by the cool, cheerful commands of their new Captain, were
+working nonchalantly in preparing for eventualities.  From amidships
+came the clatter of men trying to repair the launch, the one boat which
+had not been carried away in the night's storm.  Others were clearing
+the life rafts so they could be launched without delay.  He glanced at
+Dan with admiring eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I want to compliment you, Captain Merrithew," he said.  "You have your
+crew well in hand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you," replied Dan, "if you will keep your party in hand there'll
+be no danger at all.  I don't care what happens, with the sea falling."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another half-hour.  The steamship, a stout coaster, had now climbed
+over the horizon.  Mr. Howland, through the glasses, had picked out her
+red-and-black funnel and recognized her as one of his own boats.  But
+it had plainly come to a race between the steamship and the straining
+bulkhead.  No need now to tell any one of the situation.  The <I>Veiled
+Ladye</I> was plainly settling astern.  The engine-room bulkhead was
+quivering, ready to break.  Arthur and his men had piled up from the
+engine-room, the engines still pulsing with no one to watch them.  The
+sailors were splendid, going about their work quietly, calmly.  They
+had carried the injured mate, groaning with his broken leg, to the
+deck.  Mrs. Van Vleck, Mr. Rowland's sister, the chaperone, sat with
+her niece's arms about her, passing in and out of successive attacks of
+hysteria.  A sailor had knocked one of the young men of the party down
+to quiet an incipient exhibition of panic.  Ralph Oddington and
+Reginald Wotherspoon stood at the rail, trying with nerveless fingers
+to roll cigarettes.  Two of the girls were weeping in each other's
+arms.  The water bubbled under the turn of the yacht's counters.  Two
+of the sailors were discharging blank shells from the rifle astern in
+hopes of calling attention to the plight of the craft.  The deck was a
+conglomerate, nervous confusion of smart yachting costumes, uniforms,
+and greasy overalls.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan, noting the flutter, leaned back from the wheel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't get excited down there," he roared.  "If the bulkhead holds,
+we're all right.  If it doesn't, there'll be plenty of time for all.
+Do you understand?  We can float for a week on the ocean the way it is
+now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It won't hold long, Mr. Howland," he added to the man at his side,
+"but it will hold until that steamship reaches us.  She's seen us and
+is coming like hell."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A few minutes later a joyous shout sounded from the men on the bridge,
+a cry vibrant with electricity, which thrilled through the yacht and
+finally trembled on all tongues.  For the steamship had sized the
+situation and was fairly leaping toward them.  Great clouds of smoke
+were belching from her funnel.  They could see sparks mingling with the
+thunderclouds of sepia, and the <I>Veiled Ladye</I> hobbled woundily to meet
+her.  On came the freighter; her hull was plainly discerned now,
+picking the waves from under her bluff bows and throwing them
+impatiently to either side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Cries of joy and appeals for the succoring vessel to hurry sounded from
+the yacht's decks.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the vessel drew nearer.  Miss Howland ran to the bridge and took her
+father by the arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father!" she cried.  "You must come now.  Isn't there anything in your
+cabin you want to save?"  With a muttered "By George!"  Mr. Howland
+dived below and the girl faced Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Captain Merrithew&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oddington's voice thrilling in joyous, cadence sounded from beneath the
+bridge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Virginia, Virginia, where are you?  Oh, up there!  Come down quickly!
+Don't you see we are coming alongside?  And Merrithew, old
+chap&mdash;Virginia, will you come!  You are to be put aboard after your
+aunt.  Hurry!"  There was a half-note of proprietorship in his voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the girl turned to leave, Dan gave the wheel to Terry and ran to the
+deck with a speaking-trumpet in his hand.  As he passed Oddington, who
+had assisted Miss Howland from the bridge, he spoke to him quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The man with the broken leg leaves this ship first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Below there was a dull crash and clouds of steam burst through the
+ventilators and the engine-room gratings.  The bulkhead had succumbed,
+but no one cared now.  The steamship was turning in about a hundred
+yards away.  Dan directed his trumpet to the bridge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Scrape close alongside," he yelled.  "Open one of your cargo ports and
+we'll board you through it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The freighter's Captain had already anticipated this suggestion, and as
+the vessel slid alongside, Dan ranged the sailors along the deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In perfect order the mate with the broken leg was slid into the port as
+though he were merely being passed into another room.  Then went the
+women, then the men of the party, and after them the sailors.  Dan and
+Mr. Howland alone were left now.  As the elder man prepared to enter
+the port he looked at Dan a moment and smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some day I hope to cancel this debt."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were simple words, but potentially they meant much to Dan.  He was
+to find they involved the realization of dreams, ambitions he had long
+held; another rung on the ladder which eventually&mdash;&mdash;  But there was no
+time to think of the future now.  Turning from the porthole he ran
+along the deck, calling to make sure that every one was off.  When he
+returned, Miss Howland and several others were leaning over the rail
+above.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For heaven's sake, Captain Merrithew, will you please come off that
+yacht!"  The girl's voice rang imperiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a last look at the bridge upon which he had passed the recent
+thrilling hours, he leaped aboard the freighter, and when ten minutes
+later the white <I>Veiled Ladye</I> threw up her bow with a great clanking
+sigh and slid swiftly from view, Dan Merrithew was fast asleep in the
+Captain's cabin.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VII
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+DAN IS COMMANDED TO A PARTY
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+A week later, Dan, in accordance with an engagement made with Mr.
+Howland when parting with him at the railroad station at Norfolk,
+whither the rescuing vessel had taken the shipwrecked party, called at
+the office of the Coastwise and West Indian Shipping Company in the
+Bowling Green Building and asked to see the president.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a large office, filled with clerks and all of them busy.  The
+young man who received the caller's request looked at him sharply and
+shook his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Rowland's engaged now," he said, "at a company meeting.  If you'll
+call in an hour or two I'll find out if he will see you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan drew from his pocket a card with a pencilled memorandum and glanced
+at it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He made an appointment with me for eleven o'clock to-day.  So I guess
+I'll have to ask you to take in my card."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The clerk shrugged his shoulders and walked away.  When he returned a
+few minutes later all signs of mistrust had vanished.  Opening the gate
+with a sort of flourish he said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Howland says for you to come right in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Dan entered the president's office, Mr. Howland arose from a long,
+polished oaken table littered with papers, at which several men were
+seated, and advanced to meet him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Captain Merrithew," he said, "I am glad to see you again.  And now,"
+he added, the formalities of introducing Dan to the various officers of
+the company being completed, "I have gone into the matter of the men
+lost when the <I>Fledgling</I> sank and have sent a check for five thousand
+dollars to the wife of your engineer, Crampton, who I understand
+carried some life insurance, and a check for three thousand dollars to
+Welch's mother."  His voice was crisp and business-like, but his manner
+intimated clearly the sympathy and gratitude which had dictated his
+gifts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sir, they are adequate," replied Dan, feelingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have sent checks to your mate, Mulhatton, who, I am informed, is
+still in the employ of the Phoenix Company, as well as that fellow
+Noonan and the steward; which brings us to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Howland," said Dan, flushing, "I'm simply not&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just a moment, if you please," interrupted Mr. Howland; "I assume you
+are qualified to navigate the ocean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," replied Dan, trembling slightly; "I've the best of broad ocean
+papers and seven harbor endorsements."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That ought to be enough," smiled the vice-president, Mr. Horton, who
+seemed perfectly in touch with the trend of the situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," resumed Mr. Howland, "what I am getting at is this, Captain
+Merrithew.  The Coastwise Transportation Company is looking for men
+like you.  We want you with us, in short.  As you probably know, we
+have a fleet consisting of steamers of various sizes, but all pretty
+much the same type; that is to say, seaworthy, comfortable, and well
+engined.  We cannot place you in command of one of our newest vessels,
+of course.  But there is the <I>Tampico</I>, the commander of which, Captain
+Harrison, we are to retire for age.  She is a good boat, running to San
+Blanco, and she is fitted for passengers; so you will find opportunity
+to develop your social proclivities, if you have any to develop."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Mr. Howland was talking the color had slowly departed from Dan's
+face, and now, as the president ceased speaking and regarded the young
+man, he spoke haltingly, with dry lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do I understand you to mean that you are going to make me Captain of
+the <I>Tampico</I>?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are to understand that we have," corrected Mr. Howland.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Howland, gentlemen," said Dan, "I&mdash;I can't say anything
+except&mdash;thank you&mdash;I&mdash;"  He hesitated, confusedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's nothing for you to say," interpolated the president, "except
+that you'll go down to the ship, which is loading at Pier 36, East
+River, and assume command.  Captain Harrison will remain aboard for two
+or three trips to break you in to the trade."  There was that in his
+voice which intimated the end of the interview, and Dan with a bow was
+turning to leave, when Mr. Howland uttered an exclamation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, by the way," he said, "here is a note my daughter asked me to give
+you.  It will explain itself, I think; and since you are now serving
+under the house flag of this company, I can say only that obedience to
+orders contained therein is imperative.  We all obey orders from that
+source," and with a chuckle Mr. Rowland turned to his confreres and was
+speedily immersed in other important affairs of the company.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan did not open the envelope in the office.  First of all he wanted
+fresh air.  The quick, calm, business-like manner in which his
+promotion had taken place; the noiseless, well-ordered, automatic
+opening of another door leading to the future of his ambitions, so
+utterly at variance with preconceived ideas in this regard, had all but
+unnerved him.  He had always held it as assured that some day he should
+walk his own bridge.  But until a half-hour ago, this day seemed still
+to lie far ahead, a day to be attained, well, he could not say exactly
+how&mdash;but at least with a sort of metaphorical roaring of guns and
+waving of flags, and great spiritual exaltation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But now&mdash;a few short sentences, a handshake, and presto!  Captain
+Merrithew, of the Coastwise line steamship <I>Tampico</I>, by your leave.
+The wonder of it all dazed him; yet withal he knew he had never before
+been so stirred to the very depths of his being.  He was not yet in a
+position to estimate his good fortune in comprehensive terms.  As a
+matter of fact, he did not try.  One thought alone kept flaming through
+his brain&mdash;his age.  Twenty-six, twenty-six; the numerals flew through
+his mind as though the years of his life were the most important
+elements in the situation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+By the time he reached the Battery sea-wall, he had somewhat adjusted
+his mental attitude, and, gazing with a degree of calmness over the
+waters of the bay toward the hills of Staten Island, he recalled the
+note from Miss Howland.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+All along it had lain a pleasant substratum in his mind, and now as he
+tore open the envelope and read the contents, a peculiar, grim smile
+lighted his eyes for a second.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"DEAR CAPTAIN MERRITHEW:&mdash;Next Thursday we are going to have a reunion
+of the castaways at our house.  It will be for dinner, and we have all
+agreed it will not be complete without the man who made this gathering
+possible.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am not going to let you make any excuse, for my dinner-party will
+have an empty space without you.  It will be very informal.  Father for
+several years has refused to wear evening dress at dinner, so none of
+the other men will.  Now remember, I shall expect you on Thursday
+evening, at seven; you need not bother sending an acceptance.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"Very sincerely yours,
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+"VIRGINIA WALTON ROWLAND."
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Virginia met her aunt at the foot of the stairs, and, slipping an arm
+about her waist, laughed nervously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, my dear, to-night we entertain the tug-boat hero.  It's horrid
+to feel so, but do you know I wish I had suggested to father that we
+have the dinner on one of his vessels.  Do you remember last Fall, what
+fun it was?  I have the impression, don't you know, that things would
+be less strained than here.  He would find the atmosphere more
+adaptable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He?  Oh, the tugman," laughed her aunt.  "I shouldn't worry if I were
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not worrying about that," protested the girl; "but oh, I don't
+know&mdash;I hate to have the success of a dinner in the air, especially
+when you have a sort of reputation in that way, don't you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense," replied the older woman, glancing admiringly at the tall,
+lithe girl in her white evening gown as she moved through the
+drawing-room to the dining-room, where the butler was adding the final
+deft fillips to a centrepiece of roses, in which a candy yacht was
+sinking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see," said the girl, pointing to a dinner card bearing Merrithew's
+name, "I am going to place him between you and me.  Will you&mdash;won't you
+arrange things so he'll take you in.  No; never mind!  I'll arrange
+that&mdash;you're always such a dear about such things, and you won't mind,
+will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly not," smiled her aunt, "I shall ask him to tow me in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They both laughed.  Their understanding was perfect.  Ever since the
+older woman had entered her brother's house, years before, to care for
+a motherless child, the bond of sympathy between the two had been of
+the strongest, and throughout she had remained the best friend and
+counsellor, if only because she was the wisest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Dan entered the Howlands' drawing-room all the guests had arrived.
+He accomplished this difficult feat, which is considered an art in
+fashionable schools, with easy grace and unconsciousness and received
+Virginia's welcome courteously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He wore a well-fitting blue suit of conventional cut and neither his
+hands nor his feet seemed to bother him a bit.  And yet among the men
+of the company he stood out in sharp contrast.  Miss Howland marked
+this particularly when Oddington presented himself with an air of
+good-humored camaraderie,&mdash;he, the successful young lawyer, with a
+growing reputation as a man about town and the glamour which surrounds
+the most popular all-around man at his university still about him; a
+man who did well everything he tried to do, and able to give the
+impression that the things he could not do were not worth the attempt;
+whose every action, every word, every expression was marked with the
+undefinable stamp of the metropolis, and the various lessons it
+teaches.  Merrithew, on the other hand, standing tall and
+broad-shouldered, looking about him as he talked, with quick, observant
+glances; a face weather-beaten, but not rough, a typical Anglo-Saxon
+fighting face, but kindly withal; certainly not truculent.  Miss
+Howland had met young army and navy officers who had aroused in her
+similar impressions; she had, in fact, no difficulty in defining
+Merrithew's type.  He was of the class which does strong things out of
+the beaten track; men who in the process of civilization have retained
+some of the wandering or combative or predatory instincts of earlier
+ages and have been set apart in the scheme of natural selection to
+fight battles, explore countries, kill wild beasts, navigate waters, to
+the end that a greater proportion of their fellow men may peaceably
+advance the interests of commerce, science, the arts, and, other
+affairs of a humdrum world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oddington took Miss Howland in.  At the last moment her father had
+telephoned from the office he would be late and not to wait for him.
+This necessitated a hasty rearrangement of the dinner cards; and Mrs.
+Van Vleck was further disturbed by the butler, who was batting his eyes
+fiercely at the cringing second man, token that something had occurred,
+or more probably had been about to occur, to mar that service which was
+his pride.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan, therefore, who sat at her right, finding relief from the
+rapid-fire conversation which she had directed at him, obviously with
+intention to put him at his ease, found time to glance up and down the
+table.  There were perhaps a dozen persons, and he recognized most of
+them as members of the <I>Veiled Ladye's</I> party.  Reginald Wotherspoon,
+upon dry land once more, out of danger, sure of himself, was bantering
+one of the girls across the table, in the dry, masterful tone of one
+who fancies he understands women; and the rest were laughing at the
+confused indignation which marked her replies.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan recalled this girl.  She had been especially cool aboard the yacht;
+and certain pictures of Wotherspoon flashing through his mind, an
+amused smile lighted his eyes for an instant.  Miss Howland, who at the
+moment had turned from Oddington, caught the smile, and following his
+gaze, instinctively divined the cause.  She was not annoyed.  On the
+contrary, she was pleased, for it indicated to her that Dan was
+perfectly at ease, and she noted, moreover, that he was dealing with
+the various courses with a greater degree of <I>savoir faire</I>, so to
+speak, than she had thought probable.  She dismissed forthwith all
+fears she had entertained regarding Wotherspoon's prediction that
+"among the features of the dinner would be a lifelike imitation of a
+towboat skipper swallowing his knife."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He followed Mrs. Van Vleck's leads in conversation, and once responded
+with crisp cleverness to a gay remark addressed to him by a girl across
+the table.  But he seemed to take it for granted that Miss Howland
+would be occupied with Oddington; and in fact he had spoken to her but
+once, and then to thank her when she pushed a dish of almonds toward
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl had noted a similar tendency of late on the part of other men,
+but had thought of it only in as far as it had impressed upon her the
+fact that she and Ralph had grown to understand each other rather well
+and were very good friends.  She had arrived at that age where she had
+begun to feel that perhaps, after all, this might be what the world
+called love and that women who attributed to the word emotions deeper,
+more absorbing, more thrilling, were mere sentimentalists, who derived
+their plans and ideas from a world of dreams or from fiction both
+classical and popular; or else they were women of deeper feeling than
+she knew herself to be.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was all a problem.  She had reason to feel that a time was
+approaching when Oddington might reasonably expect a clearer,
+better-defined relation.  Whether she would be willing to grant this
+was another matter.  It was possible she might; it was possible she
+might not.  She did not know.  It was a situation which perplexed if it
+did not inspire her, which interested if it did not thrill.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet now Dan's tacit aloofness piqued her.  She admitted she did not
+understand him at all.  Here was a man, a tugboat captain, of course a
+product of the water front; primarily, no doubt, a dock-rat, and yet a
+man who had not tangled himself in the use of his forks, who spoke in
+even, well-modulated tones, and looked like a gentleman.  Miss Howland
+was not snobbish in these thoughts.  She had never been a snob; she was
+simply considering facts.  And she did not want him to be aloof.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Captain Merrithew," she said in a tone designed to draw him and the
+others into general conversation, "Ralph&mdash;Mr. Oddington, has been
+saying things again about my favorite cousin Percy Walton."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ignoring the polite chorus of mild expostulation, Miss Howland turned
+to Dan, speaking with great vivacity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Percy, you know, was educated to win football games for Yale, and at
+the last moment went to Princeton.  But he did not play there, because
+Uncle Horace, his father, in a fit of disgust, made him go to work."
+She glanced smilingly at Oddington.  "Mr. Oddington and Mr. Wotherspoon
+say he was proselyted by Princeton.  We've had more fights about it&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, he was proselyted," laughed Oddington, "stolen from us bodily."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wasn't it some time ago?" asked Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, that's just the point," said Mrs. Van Vleck.  "It was at least
+five or six years ago.  I am afraid Ralph and Reggie will never be able
+to realize they are not undergraduates."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oddington smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't know," he said.  "At all events, it keeps us young.  As
+for Walton, I'd be ashamed to own him for a cousin," winking at Dan.
+"Why, Merrithew, all his family had been Yale from great-grandfather
+down."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There; you hear him, Captain Merrithew," cried Miss Howland; "don't
+you think that's a horrid way to talk?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan smiled, tapping lightly on the table with his fingers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't believe he was stolen," he said slowly, as though not quite
+certain whether he ought to venture an opinion.  "Whether he was or
+not, I don't believe he'd ever have made the Yale team or the Princeton
+eleven either."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia started in her chair and glanced at him swiftly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed!" she said, flushing.  "You don't mean to say&mdash;what do you know
+about Percy Walton?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now you're in for it, Merrithew," grinned Oddington.  "What do you
+know about Walton?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan picked up his dinner card and spun it between his thumb and
+forefinger for a few seconds, and then with a slight smile replied:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, not a great deal.  Next to nothing, personally."  He paused a
+moment, and then glancing down at the table added, "I was captain of
+the eleven on which Walton played at Exeter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After the guests had gone, Virginia, her father, and Mrs. Van Vleck sat
+for a few minutes in a small apartment between the drawing and dining
+rooms.  The girl's eyes were bright.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, father, I actually believe you could have knocked me down with a
+feather to-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Howland drew his cigar-cutter from his pocket and slowly inserted
+the end of a perfecto.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose you refer to Merrithew."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly," said Mrs. Van Vleck; "why in the world didn't you tell us,
+Horace?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, why didn't you?" The girl had arisen and approached her father's
+chair.  "You might have known, father dear, that both Aunt Helen and I
+lay awake nights wondering whether he would bring a boat-hook or a
+sou'wester to the dinner, and do&mdash;oh, all sorts of outlandish things,
+making us the joke of the season.  And to think&mdash;a football captain in
+Percy's class at prep school, quiet, easy-mannered&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Howland snapped the end from his cigar and placed the cutter in his
+pocket.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you quite through, Virginia?" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite," replied the girl, who thereupon disproved her assertion by
+beginning where she had left off.  "And I do believe you knew all the
+time and were simply teasing us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is not exactly true," smiled her father.  "Of course I looked him
+up a bit before offering him the command of the <I>Tampico</I>.  He comes
+from near New Bedford.  You know my mother's family lived there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl nodded.  "Yes?  Go on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Howland lighted a match and held it burning for a while before
+applying it to his cigar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know," he said, "there are no better people in the world than some
+of those New England seafaring families.  The Merrithews, I believe,
+were very substantial.&#8320;  So you see where your supposed wharf-rat
+acquired the manner which you marked in him, and his good English,
+and&mdash;and well, whatever else you marked."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is he going to do now?" asked Mrs. Van Vleck.  "Oh, of course,
+the <I>Tampico</I>.  Is he qualified to be a captain?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, naturally; I haven't the slightest doubt of it.  But Harrison
+will stay with the ship for two or three more trips to break him in
+thoroughly.  Both companies by whom he was employed while in tugboat
+work speak of him in the highest terms.  It's all rather a departure.
+But I feel I owe it to Merrithew; and besides, I have an idea he is the
+sort of man we want.  This West Indian trade is not all beer and
+skittles."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is very interesting," said Virginia, stifling a yawn.  "I hope to
+see something more of him; he's a new sort and worth studying.
+And&mdash;oh, father, is there any chance that we'll have that house-party
+at our San Blanco estate next Spring?  I mean&mdash;of course you've
+promised that.  What I meant was, will we go on the <I>Tampico</I>?  Now
+don't smile, father; you have said a dozen times you were through with
+steam yachts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm not smiling," said Mr. Howland.  "It is quite possible we'll go
+down on the <I>Tampico</I>&mdash;unless Merrithew manages to sink her in the
+meantime."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bully," cried the girl.  "Good-night.&#8320;  I think," she said,
+speaking slowly over her shoulder&mdash;"I think we had a very successful
+partee."  She paused and looked doubtfully at her father.  "The only
+difficulty is that, now we know he is not hopelessly impossible in one
+way, we have to face the fact that he is all the more impossible in
+others."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said her aunt, laughing, "as an interesting social freak we
+might have used him; but as an ordinary, well-behaved steamship
+captain&mdash;"  Mrs. Van Vleck shrugged her shoulders expressively and
+raised her eyebrows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said the girl, "he'll be eminently eligible for the Captain's
+table of the <I>Tampico</I>.  Somehow I wish he had done something unusual
+to-night.  I had developed all sorts of strange fancies concerning him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, as a matter of fact, she did not wish that at all.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VIII
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+WITS VERSUS MACHINE GUNS
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Dan brought to his new duties a well-grounded knowledge of the
+fundamentals of his calling, and his deficiencies, such as they were,
+were skilfully eliminated by his white-haired mentor, Captain Harrison.
+Among other things, this prince of ancient mariners, who had taken a
+great fancy to Dan, was at infinite pains to impress upon him the fact
+that in the duties of captain of a vessel calling regularly at the
+ports of small Latin republics many requirements aside from mere
+ability to navigate a ship are involved.  Seductive arts, such as
+verbal or financial propitiation; knowledge when to give a dinner and
+when to threaten to invoke the "big stick"; when to hold to a position
+and when to recede from it;&mdash;all these attributes of diplomacy were
+acquired by Dan under Harrison's tutelage, so that when the old Captain
+finally retired to his well-earned rest on a Long Island farm, he
+"allowed" that young Merrithew had the stuff in him of which smart
+officers are made.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+On his own account, Dan, by keeping his mouth shut and his eyes open,
+learned not a little of the methods which characterized the relations
+of his company with various Governments; and while not all that he
+learned could in the widest implication of the phrase he designated as
+morally&mdash;or, say, rather, ethically&mdash;elevating, it afforded an
+interesting side-light upon the business character of Horace Howland.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In this connection it is well to state that the ultra clamorous days in
+San Blanco had long ceased, and that the new <I>Presidente</I>, Rodriguez,
+who had arisen to his honors out of the midst of the travail of fire,
+powder, and a modicum of bloodshed, was conducting affairs of state
+much to the liking of the San Blanco Trading and Investment Company, of
+which company Mr. Howland was the brains and guiding spirit.  Need it
+be suggested that this amounts to saying that Mr. Howland was the
+brains and guiding spirit of the San Blanco Republic as then
+constituted?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At all events, with peace smiling over troublous San Blanco, Mr.
+Howland sent word to Dan that early in April he, his daughter, Mrs. Van
+Vleck, and a party of ten, would sail on the <I>Tampico</I> for Belle View,
+the Howland estate, just outside of San Blanco City.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan was not altogether surprised at this message.  The passenger
+accommodations of the <I>Tampico</I> were elaborate, and hints of Mr.
+Howland's intention had reached him in one way or another.  But now
+with definite assurances in hand life took on added zest.  He had not
+seen Miss Howland since the dinner; but it would have been futile for
+him to attempt to convince himself that she had not formed a more or
+less vague background for many of his thoughts and moods since that
+epochal event.  Occasionally he saw her name in the newspapers, and one
+of them once printed a picture purporting to be her photograph.  But it
+was not.  Otherwise he might have been tempted to cut it out.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, with her presence aboard the <I>Tampico</I> assured, the steamship
+became involved with a new significance.  He pictured her on the bridge
+with him.  He selected her place at the table in the saloon, and
+dreamed of all the life and laughter and grace and beauty she would
+bring to it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As for himself, he had the proud realization that in measuring his
+opportunities on the broadest possible gauge, he had lived up to them
+sincerely, and he knew the results to be good.  On his own bridge he
+had faced the blind fog with the lives of passengers hanging upon his
+judgment; he had met the elements at their work, and out of the ordeal
+he had come with greater self-reliance, broader, kindlier, better.  For
+the first time in his life he was looking beyond his dreams, although
+the work in hand was all-absorbing; there would be more for him to do.
+He felt it, he knew it, for such is youth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One beautiful April morning, a company, wonderfully well selected
+according to the view-point of Virginia and her aunt, boarded the
+<I>Tampico</I> and merrily set sail.  Not the least of that company was
+Howland himself, who, standing upon the bridge beside Dan, smiled as he
+thought of the dozen Hotchkiss guns and the two very grim eight-inch
+rifles resting in the darkness of the forward hold, and then spoke
+almost in parables.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is always well, Captain, to divine the trend of the wind before
+weather vanes give information to all who care to look for it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes?" replied Dan, not comprehending.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes.  Those playthings, strategically placed at the capital, will
+insure an era of Government integrity for some time to come; and that
+will be very good; for the kind of integrity existing there is much to
+my liking.  Vasquez is restless; Sanches is uneasy; but there will be
+no radical action for some time to come.  When it does&mdash;well, Captain,
+I have taken the liberty to store some pieces of ordnance below&mdash;they
+appear as household furniture in the manifest of cargo.  I consider
+them qualified to maintain all sorts of Government integrity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No doubt," smiled Dan; "if you have any one down there to handle them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have a very large office staff in Domingo City, unusually large.  I
+did not hire the men for their penmanship, nor for their ability as
+clerks, either."  Here Mr. Howland raised his eyebrows slightly, and
+Dan, taking his cue, raised his eyebrows too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so the <I>Tampico</I> sailed peacefully south-ward.  The April sun
+softened the air, the sea was like glass, and by the time the steamship
+had picked up the Southern Cross, the little company had been tried in
+the balance of propinquity and found not wanting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was brilliant moonlight, and eight bells chimed sweetly over the
+silvery waters from the forecastle head, as Dan, with a cheery good
+evening, followed the first mate to the bridge.  The second mate smiled
+genially, gave the course as south half east, and, with his dog-watch
+ended, went to bed.  A gruff voice rolled along the deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The watch is aft, sir!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan's voice hurled astern before the echoes died.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right.  Relieve the wheel&mdash;and the lookout!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia, addressing a merry group on the hurricane deck, just below
+and aft the bridge, paused in the middle of a sentence and listened to
+the sharp, crisp words.  Then she smiled slightly and resumed her
+discourse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan paced up and down with the mate, taking up the thread of the talk
+where it had been left the previous watch; but neither was in a talking
+mood, and they soon fell silent.  Presently a girl's rich voice rose to
+the accompaniment of Oddington's banjo, an instrument but poorly
+adapted to the motif of the music, which was plaintive, yearning.  The
+deep contralto notes brought full meed of meaning, although the words
+were German; low, deep, uncertain at first&mdash;the ponderings of love, of
+devotion, of doubt&mdash;then swelling loud and full and free at the end;
+love justified, undying, triumphant, overpowering.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;"Könnt' fühlen je das Glück das ich würd nennen mein
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Hätt' ich nur Dich allein!  Hätt' ich nur Dich, nur Dich allein!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then suddenly in wild rapture she broke from the German, repeating the
+refrain in English&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;". . .  The rapture that would be my own
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;If I had you . . . if I had you . . . you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Piercing sweet it ended, filled with tenderness.  Just you, you, you,
+going on far across the moon-lit waters into infinity.  Dan walked to
+the lee of the bridge and with hands on the dodger's ridge, leaned
+forward, peering bard and straight to the rim of the sea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For every heart there is a song, and for every song a heart; for this
+earth is not so big that the dreams, the passion of some song-maker,
+humble or not, may not strike a responsive chord, at the other end of
+the world, it may be.  And this for Dan; this simple love song with its
+swelling iterations.  It awakened sleeping poetry in the heart of the
+young commander, awakened a tenderness long hidden under the rough
+exterior of a tumultuous life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was no mistaking the identity of the singer, no mistaking those
+deep, full notes, vibrant, rounded, and so melodious.  To whom was she
+singing?  Could a woman sing like that, sing as Miss Howland sang, to
+no one?  Impersonally?  Dan turned his face down at the group.  The
+women were muffled in greatcoats, for the soft evening, which had
+tempted them to the deck, was growing chill, and he could see the dark
+forms of the men and the red lights of their cigars.  Wotherspoon had
+just finished a comic song, and they were all laughing and applauding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Somehow it all emphasized in Dan his aloofness.  He heard Oddington
+address some jocular remark presumably to Miss Howland, for he caught
+her laughing reply.  And the thought came, how eminently eligible
+Oddington was to sit at her side; how fitting that he should be
+there&mdash;wealthy, distinctly of her set, a good fellow at the university,
+and now a law partner in the practice which his hard-working father had
+prepared for him.  For the first time, perhaps, in his life Dan felt
+himself humbled, and a great wave of bitterness flooded his mind.&#8320;
+And yet Miss Howland had been very kind to him.  Ah, but that was not
+the point.  He did not want persons to be kind; that suggested charity,
+or pity.  No; he wanted exactly what he earned&mdash;what he could take with
+his bare hands and his bare soul.  He wanted equality&mdash;or nothing; and
+if at the end of his struggle it had to be nothing, all right&mdash;but the
+end was not yet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Toward nine o'clock the deck party began to break up.  Some one had
+suggested bridge, and some opposed the suggestion.  At the end of a
+laughing discussion Oddington and three others went to the
+smoking-room, while the rest dispersed in various directions.  Dan,
+filled with his thoughts, was in the act of lighting his pipe, when the
+clicking of footfalls and the rustling of skirts sounded on the bridge
+steps.  The next instant Virginia stood before him.  The moonlight fell
+upon her, outlining the girl distinctly in her long, blue,
+double-breasted coat and the wealth of rippling dark hair flowing from
+under an English yachting cap.  She was smiling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do I intrude upon your sacred precincts?" she asked, "or am I welcome?
+I want to talk to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are welcome, Miss Howland," said Dan, knocking the fire from his
+pipe and stuffing the briar-wood into his pocket, at the same time
+glancing quickly toward the wheel where the mate and the quartermaster
+were busy over a slight alteration in course.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I feared that incident at the table&mdash;Reggie Wotherspoon's behavior, I
+mean, might have upset you.  Of course you know he meant nothing by it.
+We all understand how he hates to be beaten in an argument.  Really he
+admires you&mdash;which is well for him, I can assure you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan, deeply embarrassed, muttered something about understanding
+perfectly about Wotherspoon, and that he knew him to be a decent enough
+sort of chap.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know," went on the girl, "I myself was rather startled at first
+when you said that no man&mdash;that you could not tell whether you would
+flunk in time of danger.  I was so glad when you made your reservation
+that in the past, at least, you had not shown the white feather.  'What
+the past has shown,'" she quoted, "'who can gainsay the future?'  Oh,
+it was glorious," she exclaimed impulsively, "the night you stuck to
+our yacht until your own tug was battered to pieces!  I suppose I have
+said that a hundred times; but it grows more thrilling every time I
+think of it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at him with open interest.  His uniform became him well; the
+trim sack coat fitted his great, deep chest and almost abnormal
+shoulders snugly; and above were the square, smooth face, the steady
+gray eyes, and the red-gold hair; and the long, straight limbs
+supported a lithe, almost aggressive poise.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She started slightly forward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you ever thought how much we owe you?  Oh, I have so often wished
+I could show you how much we appreciate all you did, in some way!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must not think of it in that way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why not, please?"  Miss Howland was a straightforward girl who faced a
+situation squarely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, because the debt is all on my side.  Your father has given me my
+first command; and you&mdash;you have been fine to me.  I have had more than
+an ordinary sailor deserves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you are not an <I>ordinary</I> sailor," said the girl quickly.  "Father
+knows of your people&mdash;"  She paused.  "Oh, I beg your pardon," she
+cried.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen," said Dan, quietly.  "When I was younger, about to enter
+college, a careless, happy life ended.  I began all over again then.  I
+date everything from that beginning&mdash;from the time I went aboard a
+tug-boat&mdash;the Lord knows why&mdash;and tried to do something.  What I have
+done, what I shall do, dating from that time, I stand on.  Before that
+my battles were fought for me.  After that the fight was my own.  And I
+have never regretted one bit of it; nor am I ashamed of one single
+minute from the time I slung hawsers on the <I>Hydrographer</I> until I
+commanded the <I>Fledgling</I>.  And I shall always rejoice, and my friends
+must rejoice, in that part of the fight, and never seek to hide a
+single incident.  It's all behind now, but it was worth while.  And a
+man must go on&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I know," replied the girl, softly.  She turned her face from the
+silvery path on the water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you are not going to stop fighting.  Oh, you will not stop!  You
+will go on and on.  Men like you never stand still.  I know it is the
+truth.  What difference can your past life make to your friends?  It is
+never what a man was or might have been that counts, or what he may be;
+it is what he is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then she turned and left him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One evening as the dark came creeping over the purple waters, the
+<I>Tampico</I> cluttered up to the mouth of the harbor of San Blanco City.
+Captain Merrithew and Mr. Howland stood on the bridge, while Virginia
+and most of her guests were assembled at the rail, all eyes straining
+shoreward.  A rattle of musketry tore through the evening air&mdash;a
+muzzle-loading cannon spoke grouchily; then all was still.  A sailboat
+was drifting out to sea and the fishermen, being hailed, informed those
+on the steamship that revolutionists were pounding at the city walls
+and pounding hard, but thus far without avail.  The uprising, as usual,
+they said, had its inception in the fastnesses of Monte-Cristi and,
+spreading through the country, had brought up with a bang against the
+walls of the city itself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Howland was seriously perturbed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must get in quickly and land our guns, Captain," he said.  "It's
+too bad we have this party with us.  However, you must not consider
+their comfort.  If you land this cargo of ordnance, we can break the
+revolution easily and pleasantly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He glanced at the Blancan navy&mdash;two gunboats, formerly pleasure yachts,
+and a "battleship," once a steam-lighter&mdash;which lay at strategic
+intervals across the harbor mouth and moved impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The scoundrels!" he ejaculated.  "Why don't they shell those
+insurgents?  They could end this promptly if they wished to.  I shall
+have something pleasant to say to them and to Señor Gaspard of the
+Marine when I see him.  Still, perhaps they are waiting for me.
+President Rodriguez expects us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mollified at this thought, Mr. Howland straightened to a dignified and
+commanding posture.  The honors accorded an arriving Howland vessel
+were the honors accorded a United States warship, and he scanned the
+fleet eagerly for the first sign of the invariable welcome.  He turned
+to Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Better dive into your cabin, Captain, and get on your double-breasted
+regalia," he said.  "There will be a round of diplomatic calls and
+felicitations generally&mdash;and of course they will ask for wine; for of
+all half-starved, thirsty natives, give me those of this bob-tailed
+republic."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fighting had evidently stopped for the night, and Mr. Howland waved
+his hand at the flag-ship.  He dearly loved all the punctilio of
+international etiquette and the deference that had ever been his
+portion in San Blanco.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so this captain of industry smiled and hearkened for the first gun
+of the expected salute.  But it did not come.  There was silence
+somewhat grim and certainly sullen.  He ground his teeth impatiently,
+angry disappointment growing as they drew near the fleet.  "What is the
+matter with those rascals?" he growled, turning to Dan, who,
+resplendent in blue and gold, had just joined him on the bridge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They don't seem to be happy to see us," replied the Captain, shortly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not happy!" exclaimed Mr. Howland, who began to feel that the
+situation approximated <I>lèse-majesté</I>.  "Not happy?  Confound them!
+When we're bringing guns to support their mangy and tottering
+Government!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," replied the young commander, who scented trouble and thought of
+the party on board, "they don't seem to be, anyway."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A sharp hail rang out from the nearest gun-boat, the flag-ship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What vessel is that, and whither bound?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Howland tore at his collar and stuttered in purple fury.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Impudence!  Impertinence!  Lunacy!  Here, Captain, tell them they know
+very well what ship this is&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;wait!" as Dan raised the
+megaphone to his lips.  "Don't waste time talking to the villains.
+Tell them&mdash;tell them to go&mdash;well, you know what to tell them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And Dan demonstrated that he did&mdash;so vigorously, so eloquently that the
+answer came in the shape of a blank shot across the <I>Tampico's</I> bows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan looked gravely at the owner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The thing is pretty plain, Mr. Howland," he said; "the navy has
+evidently joined the insurrection.  Why they have not bombarded the
+city I don't know; but you can be sure they are going to.  We will have
+to stop," and without waiting for a reply he jerked the signal
+indicator, to cease headway.  Mr. Howland was at no pains to conceal
+his chagrin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A mighty bad stumbling-block; a mighty bad stumbling-block if the navy
+has revolted, Captain Merrithew.  If this Government falls, it means a
+great deal to me; means the loss of considerable money&mdash;and prestige.
+I must look to you to land those guns, Captain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan did not reply, but gazed earnestly toward the city as though
+meditating a dash.  But that was out of the question, considering those
+aboard.  As the chug of the engines died out and the cough of the
+exhaust hit the glooming air and the clumsy black hull slid to a
+gurgling standstill, a gig was lowered from the <I>El Toro</I>, the
+flag-ship, and the officer, Admiral Congosto, was soon stumbling up the
+gangway of the freighter.  Mr. Howland was inclined to have him thrown
+overboard at once, but the better counsel of the Captain prevailed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very well," growled the ruffled owner, "have your fling."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Admiral Congosto was a pompous Spaniard, obese, with bristling brows
+and moustaches, who wrinkled his forehead and winked his eyes
+constantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So," he said, with unctuous dignity, as Dan met him at the rail, "the
+Capitan?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes; the Capitan," and Dan bowed courteously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are for San Blanco with supplies?&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;ah!"  The Admiral
+completed his sentence with a significant shrug of the shoulder.  Dan
+was equally cautious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We were putting in for water, for fresh water," he said.  "Our
+condenser's filled with bread crumbs or something, and we can't make
+enough for our boilers, let alone drinking."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With an ample shrug of his shoulders, the Spaniard suggested that the
+Captain might obtain all the water he wished if he would go in, leaving
+his cargo outside.  And then, as though weary of the subject, he turned
+to more congenial topics.  He thirsted for good wine; that fact was
+early elucidated, after which he rambled along indefinitely, allowing
+Dan to gather that all the officers of the fleet were also thirsting
+for wine.  At last he came straight to the point.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A case&mdash;a dozen bottles&mdash;it would suffice&mdash;it would be
+appreciated&mdash;ah!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan had an idea, and began to build upon it forthwith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Admiral," he said, "there is much of what you seek aboard.  As you
+well know, Señor Howland never travels with empty lockers&mdash;there is
+much of a certain wine that sparkles&mdash;see?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I see, but I do not hear what I mean," replied the perplexed Admiral,
+indulging nevertheless in anticipatory internal gratulations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, hang it, man, champagne!"  The Admiral's beady eyes danced.  "Mr.
+Howland desires me to say that it is his wish that the friendly
+relations between his officers and those of the navy of San Blanco
+shall never wane.  There will, in short, be a dinner in half an hour to
+the officers of the fleet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A dinnaire!"  Congosto sprang forward and embraced his prospective
+host, and five minutes later was speeding to his ship, the bearer of
+glad news.  For, behold, where he thought to meet an enemy, devious and
+tricky, he had encountered instead, a friend, generous, hospitable!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I fail to see your play, quite, Captain Merrithew," grumbled Mr.
+Howland.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," interpolated Virginia, "it was a very interesting play.
+Captain, I had no idea you could be so eloquent."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you," laughed Dan.  "Mr. Howland," he added, "I shall make my
+play plain very shortly.  All I ask now is that you have your party
+assemble at the rail when the officers arrive and receive them as
+though they were representatives of the British Navy.  They will be
+conducted to the saloon.  Let no one of the party follow them in.
+Please make that clear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The guests came&mdash;in gigs, in launches, dinghies, and longboats&mdash;came
+with laughter, came with rejoicing, for they were to dine with the
+señor of the open hand, Señor Howland, who always opened wine as they
+would open tins of beef.  The gods never repaired more blithely to a
+Bacchanalian revel on Parnassus.  Two by two, in rigid order of rank
+they were escorted into the saloon, and the eloquent popping of corks
+was as music in their ears.  The Admiral took his place at the head of
+the table; the rest disposed themselves suitably.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a muttered excuse, Dan slipped out of a near-by door; the stewards
+disappeared; every one on the <I>Tampico</I> stole quietly away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Admiral Congosto had no sooner raised his glass for the first toast
+than the two iron bulkhead doors slid together with a clang, followed
+by the rasp of bolts flying home.  The Admiral of the fleet and his
+lords commanders were hopelessly imprisoned amid the luxury of saloon
+surroundings, as hopelessly imprisoned as though they had been shut
+into the darkness of the lower hold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the meantime, the <I>Tampico</I>, from hold to masthead, was blazing like
+a tall Sound steamboat.  Dan gained the bridge and gazed at the
+illumination with a smile; for all this splendor of electrical display
+was for a purpose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You've locked them in, eh?" said Mr. Howland, abruptly.  He had been
+pacing the bridge, the victim of many doubts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," replied Dan; and there was a sharp inflection in the
+monosyllable which precluded further questioning.  The owner had
+instructed his Captain to land the guns which were lying in the hold of
+the steamship, and the young Captain was intent on the matter in hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He pulled a certain crank, upon which the steam winches began to
+revolve with ghostly creakings, bringing the anchor up out of the mud.
+Then he signalled for full speed ahead.  There was a creaking, a sound
+of roiling water, and then, still blazing with light, the steamship
+made out for the open sea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They had gone but a quarter of a mile when those who were left on the
+fleet suddenly came to a realizing sense of the diabolical plot hatched
+under their very noses.  A gun boomed, a six-pounder shell squealed
+past the bridge, but the <I>Tampico</I> slipped on her way seaward, while
+the funnels of the fleet belched clouds of smoke blacker than the
+velvet skies.  From the saloon came muffled shouts and ineffectual
+poundings on the bulkhead doors.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The walls are good and thick," said Dan, grimly.  "I doubt they will
+be heard&mdash;unless some one of the craft gets within a hundred yards of
+us.  They ought to have full steam up by this time.  I might as well
+stop her right here; this is about right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the steamship swung heavily on the tide, the Captain shouted an
+order, which was taken up on deck and carried down a hatchway.  The
+next instant the lights in the lower part of the hull went out.  A few
+minutes later, another stratum of lights disappeared, and still later
+the deck lights.  Then out went the port and starboard lamps.  Then
+there was a ten-minute wait, while Mr. Howland, Virginia, and the rest
+of the party who had ventured on deck, thrilled and delighted with the
+situation, held their breath.  Dan pulled another switch and the
+masthead lights went out.  The <I>Tampico</I> was now a part of the night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!" exclaimed Virginia, "I see.  You have given them an imitation of
+a vessel disappearing hull down in the darkness.  How clever!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An exclamation from Mr. Howland broke the silence.  "Oh!" he cried.  "I
+see."  And he placed his hand on Dan's shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The stillness was intense.  The water swept softly past the hull; the
+extremities of the vessel were lost in a blur of black.  Mr. Howland
+became impatient.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What can be the matter with those fellows?  Why don't they chase us
+and be done with it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan touched him on the shoulder.  From the outer darkness floated a
+mysterious bourdon, which rapidly outgrew that definition and became a
+veritable commotion.  One light twinkled, then another, and still
+another.  Finally the swift pulsation of engines at high pressure rived
+the night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are coming."  The Captain turned to those who had gathered on the
+bridge, adding, "Now I want this place cleared, please.  If this scheme
+falls through, we shall have our perch raked with machine guns.  Go
+down on deck and either keep below, or to the side of the forward steel
+deck-house, which is away from the warships&mdash;and no noise.  Not a
+sound!  Understand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia, Mrs. Van Vleck, Oddington, and two others of the party
+decided to take their position in the shelter of the deck-house, where
+they could see and yet be protected if the vessel were fired upon.  All
+amusement had gone from the situation for Virginia.  She knew that her
+father, who insisted upon remaining on the bridge, might at any moment
+be placed in jeopardy.  And there was another emotion, which she sought
+not to deny&mdash;the Captain, what if he should fall?  Ah, she did not want
+that&mdash;particularly now he was risking himself, not for honor, not for
+any interest of his own, but because he was her father's employee.
+Then, too, she wished to study, to know him better; yes, that was what
+she wanted, and she had been conscious of it all along, to see, to
+learn, to know more of him.  She could distinguish his tall, straight
+figure against the darkness, moving swiftly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had forgotten about the pursuing warships and what might follow,
+until her aunt tugged at her sleeve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are coming, Virginia," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were indeed, and angry craft they were, a spectacle to marvel at,
+viewed from the shrouded <I>Tampico</I>, lying black and motionless, with
+every light out, with tarpaulins over the engine-room hatches and
+gratings; with even the ventilator hoods blanketed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There they are!"  The whisper shot through the <I>Tampico</I> like a draft
+of cold air.  Virginia was quivering with excitement.  She could see
+the leading boat as it passed not three hundred yards away, and the
+next, both spouting flames from their funnels, throwing up water, which
+fell in silvery, phosphorescent spray&mdash;racketing, clawing the restless
+sea, chugging, hissing with shouts of vengeance hurtling from their
+decks, First ploughed the flag-ship <I>El Toro</I>, next <I>El Teuera</I>, and
+last the "battleship" <I>El Manuel</I>, sitting almost on her stern,
+plugging along doggedly in a Herculean effort to be first in at the
+death of the presumptuous kidnappers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was alarming, too, and the young people, trembling behind their
+shelter, gave a great sigh of relief as the last avenger passed, and
+the head of the <I>Tampico</I> swung slowly around in the direction of the
+harbor.  Virginia again turned her eyes to the bridge.  The young
+Captain was standing like a statue, with his hands on the engine-room
+indicator, jumping the <I>Tampico</I> across the waves under full headway.
+He was looking back over his shoulder, and the girl, following his
+gaze, saw to her great trepidation that the flag-ship, <I>El Toro</I>, had
+ceased headway and was lying motionless, as if those aboard her had
+divined the trick and were pausing a moment for fresh bearings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly came a crash of heavy glass; a girl screamed.  One of the
+saloon dead-lights had crashed out, the thick glass rattling down the
+steel hull to the sea.  There was another crash and a yellow glow
+flared into a bright blaze, illuminating the hull of the shrouded
+vessel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now they've done it!" cried Oddington.  "They have soaked a
+table-cloth with kerosene; it's all off now!  So much for Captain
+Merrithew's scheme.  I&mdash;"  A voice rang from the bridge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Everybody down, quick!"  The warning was none too soon, for a second
+later a rain of lead from the <I>El Toro</I> swept through the top of the
+funnel.  Then with straining engines the gunboat made a swinging
+detour, with the intention, plain to every one, of heading off the
+freighter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The firing was incessant now, and every one of the Howland party, as
+well as the crew, grovelled flat on the deck and heard lead whistling
+above.  Virginia, glancing at the bridge in an agony of terror, saw the
+Captain crouching just a trifle, but still at his post.  One man, a
+quarter-master, knelt at the wheel.  But she missed her father, and a
+great dread filled her mind.  It was but momentary, however, for Mr.
+Howland joined the party behind the deck-house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh father!" cried the girl, "I feared you were hurt.  Why doesn't
+Captain Merrithew stop the boat and leave the bridge?  Surely his life
+and those of his men there are of more value than your interests in
+Blanco!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I told him to stop, to throw ourselves upon the protection of our
+flag," and Mr. Howland laughed nervously.  "But it was no use.  I
+believe I reared a Frankenstein monster when I selected him as the man
+to land our guns.  Frankly he as much as told me to mind my business.
+He's in a fighting mood now; his jaws are set like steel-traps&mdash;I know
+his kind.  And do you know, Virginia, he will land us and the guns,
+too.  You wait!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The <I>El Toro</I> had stopped firing, and was bending all energies to
+heading off the freighter; it looked as though she would do it, too,
+for she had once been a private yacht and had evidently lost none of
+her speed.  It was a mighty race.  The <I>Tampico</I> was by no means a
+slouchy craft, and she ripped her way through the waters, clawing for
+the harbor mouth and San Blanco City like a thing possessed.  Swinging
+on a tactical semi-circle, the trim little flag-ship flew like a white
+ghost, tearing the waters, curling them up on deck until they ran out
+of the scuppers.  She unlimbered another gun and the leaden hail swept
+away the <I>Tampico's</I> port lifeboat, crumpling the stanchions and davits
+like thin wire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Their marksmanship is bad, as usual," said Mr. Howland, trembling
+nevertheless, in suppressed excitement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But if their marksmanship was bad their speed was not.  The <I>El Toro</I>
+was, in fact, shooting up rapidly; and as she began to circle in on the
+freighter it was plain to every one that her path would cross that of
+the fugitive.  There seemed nothing to mar the success of the gun-boat
+in her efforts to prevent the steamship entering the harbor.  Dan could
+judge of this better than any one else.  And yet he kept on.  His
+spirit dominated the entire vessel.  Virginia, as she watched him, with
+all that anger that a loser must feel, knew that she was brave, too,
+felt that to be otherwise would be a sacrilege.  Suddenly her eyes were
+riveted on the Captain; she saw him run to the megaphone rack and take
+up a cone.  Then she saw him dash it to the deck and turn and speak a
+few words to the man still kneeling at the wheel.  The man nodded and
+moved aside, and Dan took his place, erect, immovable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he did so, the pursuing gun-boat, not more than four hundred yards
+away, let fly another rain of lead, and a few minutes later she slowed
+down, swinging broadside across the course of the <I>Tampico</I>, firing a
+six-pounder shell over the bow of the advancing steamship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Too late, too late!" exclaimed Mr. Howland.  "All this trouble and
+danger for nothing!  Now we are caught!  But some one will pay&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His daughter seized his arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father!  Oh, father!  We are not stopping.  Look!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was true.  The <I>Tampico</I> was not stopping; she swept on as if
+endowed throughout all her length of great black hull with her master's
+burning energy and fierce resolve to succeed.  A sharp cry came from
+the gun-boat, a cry sharply in contrast with its crew's former yells of
+triumph.  There came another six-pounder shell, this time cutting
+cleanly through the Tampico's bow.  But that was the last.  On, on like
+an avenging sea-monster swept the <I>Tampico</I>, sullen, silent, with the
+potential energy of dynamite lurking in the force of her momentum.  And
+straight, inexorable, Captain Merrithew stood on the bridge with his
+hands on the wheel spokes.  No longer was he young in the eyes of
+Virginia Howland.  No, he was old, old as the avenging ages and as
+cruel, as cold as the march of time.  Straight he made for the pretty
+white side of the gun-boat, as some grim executioner might measure for
+the blow of the sword which was to sever the white neck of some captive
+maid, some Joan of Arc.  And the girl caught his spirit and became
+cruel too.  She laughed at the gun-boat, as she fired again; she
+laughed as the <I>Tampico</I> quivered and went to the heart of the quarry;
+she laughed as Dan, with another twist of the wheel, made more sure of
+his victim.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The screw of the gun-boat revolved desperately.  She was backing; but
+it was too late.  Another sound now!  A heaving swell rose in between
+and threw the bow of the steamship slightly off.  With an angry cry Dan
+jerked at the wheel.  But the lost point could not be regained, and the
+<I>Tampico</I>, instead of hitting the gun-boat amidships and cutting her in
+two as intended, struck the quarter obliquely, slicing off a triangle
+of the hull and stern as a big knife cuts a cheese.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There was a terrible crash and grinding, shrill screams, with the
+sharp, taunting laughter of Dan ringing clear, as his vessel swept
+clear of the wreckage, flashing by the crowded small boats which had
+been lowered a few seconds before the crash came.  Hardly knowing what
+she was doing, utterly beside herself, Virginia turned to her friends,
+her lips parted, her eyes flashing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There!" she cried, "did you ever see a man?  I recommend you to look
+at Captain Merrithew&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, Virginia, it was bully."  Oddington's cool, thoroughbred manner
+chilled her ardor like a cold blast.  "It was mighty fine.  You are
+excited, girl."  And the young man removed the cigarette which had been
+between his lips.  Virginia regarded him steadily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are right, Ralph," she said at length; "I was excited."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the meantime, the <I>Tampico</I> was dashing into the harbor at full
+speed, her whistle blowing like mad, bringing all officialdom,
+including the <I>Presidente</I>, to the water front; for, as Mr. Howland had
+said, they were expected.  Soldiers from the guard-boats swarmed aboard
+and took the rebel admiral and his fellow-officers ashore, and a few
+hours later well set-up mercenaries were dragging Mr. Howland's machine
+guns and eight-inch rifles from the quay to strategic points, where in
+the morning the insurrection would be broken as a strong man breaks a
+rattan cane.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Later, at the end of a sunrise collation, <I>Presidente</I> Rodriguez rose
+and, with one hand on his heart and the other clutching the stem of a
+wine glass, metaphorically presented the keys of San Blanco to the
+"Saviour of his country," and intimated not only a permanent suspension
+of tariff regulations in his favor, but a future statue of heroic size
+in the palace plaza.  Whereat Mr. Howland turned swiftly to Dan at his
+side, and from behind his napkin momentarily altered an expression of
+beatific if humble gratitude, and winked almost grotesquely.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IX
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+AN ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+The next morning Dan stood at the rail of the <I>Tampico</I>, gazing out
+over the quay to the distant walls of the city, over which hung a heavy
+saffron pall.  The faint pat-a-pat-pat-pat of machine guns and the roar
+of heavier ordnance was incessant.  At first he had been disposed to go
+out and participate in the fighting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But second thought had altered his inclination.  He had come to know
+something of the business methods of Mr. Howland and men like him; and
+while he had no doubt that his employer considered them legitimate, and
+could, if he had to, submit many strong reasons for various measures
+which capital seems to find it necessary to employ in its relations
+with Latin-American Governments, yet he decided that the wholesale
+slaughter then in progress had far better be left to those who were
+employed for that purpose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How did he know but the men who had been fighting to capture the city
+and were now being shot down like sheep were not the real patriots,
+anxious to govern their own country in their way and not in the
+interests of foreign corporations?  As for Rodriguez, he knew enough of
+him to&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia Howland, coming up from behind, touched him on the arm, while
+her father, who followed her, placed his hand on Dan's shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Captain," said the girl, "I am disappointed.  I wagered a box of candy
+with father that you were already out fighting."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan, unable to suppress the thoughts which had filled his mind, smiled
+grimly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't think I have any desire to turn butcher," he said, with just a
+tinge of bitterness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl flushed and regarded Dan for a moment with a curious
+expression, and then glanced at her father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it really&mdash;that?" she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mr. Howland smiled easily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Butchery?  It seems to amount to about that.  Poor beggars!  But war
+is war," Mr. Howland tapped the rail with his finger by way of
+emphasis, "and those who attempt to overthrow governments generally do
+either one of two things: they succeed, or they pay the penalty of
+failure."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In this case," said Dan, coolly, "they seem to be paying the penalty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, thanks to you," replied Mr. Howland, "which is what I wish to
+speak to you about."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He paused, and as Dan made no reply he continued:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You did a mighty fine piece of work for us in landing those guns&mdash;you
+have placed my company considerably in debt to you; but of that more
+later.  At the present time I want to tell you that these infernal
+revolutionists have burned Belle View&mdash;which," turning to his daughter,
+"may alter your sympathies a trifle, Virginia&mdash;and therefore
+necessitates more or less of a change of programme&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Belle View burned!" interpolated Virginia.  "Why, father, what&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As I was saying," resumed Mr. Howland, "we've got to shift things
+about.  In the first place, if Belle View were not burned, I should
+hardly feel safe in having the crowd there with conditions as they
+are&mdash;and things are not especially pleasant in this city.
+However,&mdash;how long will it take to get away from here, Captain?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We must take on some coal, and Hendrickson has drawn the fires and is
+reaming in some new boiler-tubes.  We could get away inside of
+forty-eight hours, I think."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good; let's do it, then.  We'll call at San Domingo, Hayti, Jamaica,
+and other places to make up for spoiling your house-party, Virginia.
+In the meantime I have secured good quarters for our guests at the
+Hotel Garcia, where to-night I give the Government a dinner.  I shall
+expect to see you there, Captain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan would have preferred to stay away from that dinner.  The thought of
+his practical connivance at the day's slaughter, so obviously suggested
+by Mr. Howland, grated on him, and the implied command in the
+invitation to the dinner bothered him too.  The day was to be filled
+with duties about ship, and he wanted the evening to himself, to sit in
+his cabin with his pipe and his books and mull over these and other
+things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Of course he might have known what would follow the landing of the guns
+from the <I>Tampico</I>.  He did know, as a matter of fact, but orders are
+orders, and duty is duty; and when you are employed by a man you accept
+your salary and any other accruing benefits solely upon the
+understanding that you shall serve his interests to the best of your
+ability.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Yes, Dan could see that perfectly, and he could also see the bad taste
+that lay in intimating dissatisfaction with his employer's methods
+while wearing the uniform of Mr. Howland's company and receiving good
+pay therefor.  And anyway, Mr. Howland had not asked him to cut Blancan
+warships in two and endanger the lives of the entire ship's company and
+guests.  No, that was on his own head, his own hot head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the days of the present voyage he had felt a strong tendency to look
+beyond the bridge of the <I>Tampico</I> into the future.  Of course he liked
+adventure, but of late he had begun to feel that perhaps he had had
+enough of the strenuous life to last him the remainder of his years.
+He certainly did not intend to grow gray on coastwise lines.  Bluff,
+gnarled old Harrison, his predecessor on this vessel, had served as a
+striking object lesson.  He could spin yarns of his adventures by the
+hour, but at best no one would call him anything but an interesting old
+character, a retired shell-back on half pay.  Dan found no pleasure in
+looking forward to anything of the sort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Since he had gained a command in the famous Coastwise and West Indian
+Shipping Company, he had begun to commend himself to persons who never
+before had played a part in his life, principally a cousin of his
+father's, a wealthy merchant of Boston, who had written him a long
+letter, received just before the <I>Tampico</I> sailed on her present
+voyage, expressing a desire to meet him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not possible," the letter read, "you will want to follow the sea
+all your life.  There must be plenty of opportunities ashore for men of
+your evident executive ability and initiative.  I want you to come to
+Boston at your first opportunity.  I know I can give you good advice,
+and it may be I can prove of material assistance to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he first read the letter, Dan smiled to himself, not failing to
+note the interest taken in him by relatives, now he seemed to be
+proving his ability, who, heretofore, had known little about him and
+cared less.  But that is life, and he had a great deal rather be
+accepted for what he had done than because of mere ties of blood.  Thus
+thinking, he came to attach greater significance to the letter.  He
+would go on to Boston when the <I>Tampico</I> returned to the United States.
+In the meantime he was Captain of a Howland boat, and he would obey
+orders, he smiled grimly, and go to the dinner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The dinner was a memorable one in San Blanco City.  The revolution had
+been shattered.  The Rodriguez Government was supreme.  The
+<I>Presidente's</I> palace was a blaze of lights.  Conspirators were being
+arrested and cast into prison.  Vehicles of all sorts were bearing
+dinner guests to the Hotel Garcia and dashing away.  There were foreign
+consuls in uniforms, and their wives; there was Rodriguez and his
+cabinet, and officers of the army in resplendent garb, and women who,
+when they threw their mantillas aside, revealed tawny necks and
+shoulders.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The <I>Presidente</I>, Mr. Howland, and high officers of the Government sat
+on a long dais at the head of the room; the other guests, including the
+<I>Tampico's</I> party, were at round tables with red-shaded lamps.  It was
+a pleasing picture, and Dan, for the first few courses, was glad he had
+come.  However, when he found that those with whom he was seated could
+not speak English, while he could understand little of Spanish, the
+evening began to wear.  At length, with the long post-prandials at
+hand, he arose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Flanking one side of the room, which was large, were windows reaching
+from the floor almost to the ceiling, which, when the weather was fair,
+were opened, giving access to a garden of small, twisted trees and
+tropical plants with small tables beneath, to which the pleasure-loving
+population came at night, to sip iced drinks and listen to the music of
+the orchestra as it flowed out of the dining-room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here Dan made his way and, stepping out of one of the windows, paused
+on the garden's edge.  The cool air was grateful, and with a sigh of
+relief he drew a cigar from his pocket and lighted it slowly, From
+beneath the trees came little patters of conversation, and the red
+lights of cigarettes and the glint of white gowns enlivened the
+darkness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he stood there, Virginia Howland and Oddington came out of one of
+the windows.  The girl was talking vivaciously, familiarly, and
+Oddington was laughing.  She was in what she would have termed one of
+her "Oddington moods," when his personality appealed to her most, when
+the congenial bond seemed closest.  To-night the lights, the music, the
+soft air rustling the lampshades, after all the long days on shipboard,
+exalted her.  She looked at her companion with kindling eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed hardly the moment to run full upon the Captain of the
+<I>Tampico</I>, who had just thrown his cigar away with the intention of
+returning to the dining-hall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan realized this instinctively.  He smiled at the two in an abstracted
+manner, as though his mind were occupied with thoughts which he did not
+care to interrupt, and turned toward the window, when Virginia, who had
+greeted him simultaneously with a smile obviously designed to convey a
+similar impression, and, piqued to perversity by the fact that Dan had
+so readily interpreted her wishes, paused in the middle of a sentence
+and looked back over her shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Captain," she said, "is it possible you prefer speeches in Spanish to
+our company?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan paused.  Oddington was smiling in an exceedingly perfunctory
+manner, and the young Captain was about to make some laughing
+acknowledgment when the girl, still looking at him, said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Oddington and I were just arguing about the night air of San
+Blanco.  He says it is filled with malaria.  Is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan walked slowly toward them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not any more than the day air," he replied, declining Oddington's
+proffered cigarette case and drawing his pipe and pouch from his
+pocket.  "I should say that San Blancan air is filled with malaria at
+all times&mdash;and with other bad things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oddington laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is like most of these cities," he said; "things get pretty messy
+here, I imagine.  I could not exactly commend its sanitary&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A voice calling him from the window broke the sentence.  It was Reggie
+Wotherspoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Oddington.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That you, Ralph?  Oh, I see you.  Say, come in here like a good chap,
+will you?  I've run across a sort of an anarchist circular about
+Rodriguez.  I want you to come up with me while I put it up to him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right," replied Oddington.  "Will you go in, Virginia?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you, I'll wait here for you.  I've had enough of that dreary old
+dinner; at least until father speaks.  And now," said the girl, smiling
+at Dan, "what have you to tell me that is thrilling?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan looked at her as she stood framed against the light of the window,
+tall, straight, in the full glow of youth and health and animal
+spirits.  One bare arm was stretched down, clutching the train of her
+dress.  With the other hand she was idly lashing her gloves against her
+skirt.  As she spoke she reached out a gleaming slipper, extremely
+small for a girl of her height, to push an overturned flower-pot away,
+and Dan caught the flash of the silk ankle and a foam of lace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He felt he was viewing the girl in a new way.  Hitherto he had regarded
+her as something almost intangible, an essence of elusive femininity,
+radiant, overpowering, and in nowise to be considered as a material
+embodiment of young womanhood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But now, while the old spell was still potent, with the moods of the
+day still strong, he found new viewpoints struggling for mastery.
+Clearly the girl had shown a deep interest in him, and entirely on her
+own initiative.  If it was to be in the future an interest born of
+friendship, why, it should be, he told himself, an engaging future for
+him.  But he did not desire that her interest in him from now on should
+be offered as a sort of largess, or that he should be placed in the
+position of posing as an object of merely charitable attention from
+her.  As these thoughts formulated themselves flashingly in his mind,
+he could not but marvel at the sudden transition in his attitude
+concerning her.  But nevertheless, the transition had taken place, as
+well defined as though it had come of weeks of pondering&mdash;and
+unchangeable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can't think of anything thrilling to talk about&mdash;unless I select you
+as a subject."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl glanced at him swiftly and then turned her face toward the
+harbor, where a few lights quivered on a velvet floor.  She caught the
+new note perfectly and her bosom rose in a quick breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sure we might select a more interesting topic.  I detest
+personalities.  Tell me how you have enjoyed your first dip into
+Blancan society."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But that would be personal," smiled Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The women here to-night are a great deal less dowdy than one would
+imagine, don't you think?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wonder if you realize your responsibility?" said Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia did not reply for a moment.  She had not considered this
+outgrowing phase of her unreserved interest in the young Captain.  So
+long as he had remained a sort of quiescent <I>protégé</I>, there could be
+no possible harm in her attitude toward him.  Evidently he did not
+intend so to remain.  There was of course, therefore, nothing to do but
+reestablish their relations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am afraid my responsibilities are too varied and serious for
+discussion with&mdash;with any one," she said at length.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But where they concern me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl stepped back slightly, drawing her skirts about her as though
+recoiling, or, rather, withdrawing from the question.  Yet despite her
+desire to end the conversation, she really was curious as to his drift;
+and, besides, he made the most romantic sort of picture as he stood at
+her side, clean cut, bareheaded, and as self-assured evidently as any
+man she had ever talked with.  Her wish was to dismiss him with
+admonition, gently, if plainly to be understood.  But this she could
+not do just then, and the realization of the fact irritated her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose," she said slowly, "at least I have read that our
+responsibilities do not cease with one's friends, but extend,
+sometimes, even to&mdash;to acquaintances, or to persons, perhaps, whom one
+does not know.  What have I done or not done that suggested in your
+mind ideas of my responsibility to you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan shook the fire from his pipe and smiled.  "Why, you haven't done a
+thing or left a thing undone," he said.  "I thought the humor of my
+suggestion would strike you as funny, make you laugh.  But it didn't,
+so I'll be serious.  You were decent to me on the <I>Tampico</I> and before;
+and to-night, I don't know, but the lights and the music and the night
+and all seemed to have gone into me, and I wanted to talk to a
+woman&mdash;to you&mdash;out here in the moonlight, not as we've talked before,
+but as a man and woman who feel pretty much the same way about many
+things might talk.  This was what I had in mind when I spoke of
+responsibility.  Not an alarming one, would you say?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl gazing out into the darkness did not speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wanted you to look down at the harbor there and exclaim over the
+path the moon is cutting from the horizon to that queer little
+lighthouse on the point; and I wanted you to talk enthusiastic nonsense
+about the big, soft stars and the cigarette lights under the trees; and
+I&mdash;I just wanted to listen and, of course, agree with all you said."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan was smiling as he spoke; but the girl, whose eyes had fallen
+beneath his steady gaze, was aware that no jest underlay his light
+words.  By no means could she construe what he had said into
+impertinence, but she did feel he was presuming upon the kindly
+attention she had paid him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Captain Merrithew," she said at length, "I have been thinking.  I have
+been wondering whether I do not think you more inspiring on the bridge
+of the <I>Tampico</I>, cutting warships in two, or fighting a storm than&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Than talking with you in the moonlight?" interpolated Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>About</I> the moonlight," corrected the girl.&#8320;  "If we are to be
+friends you must not devise responsibilities&mdash;unadvisably."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan made a slight gesture, as though to assure her she had made her
+meaning quite clear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If we are to be friends, Miss Howland, you must not devise
+restrictions unadvisably."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan was still smiling, and he was speaking easily.  But no man had ever
+spoken to her in that way before.  She flushed, and her eyes sparkled
+angrily as he ceased.  Her glance did not disconcert him.  He stood
+looking at her&mdash;not masterfully, but with the quiet dignity of
+conviction.  It was plain that if their association were to continue,
+it must be at the price of something more than the scientific, aloof,
+touch-and-go interest which had hitherto characterized her attitude
+toward him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She must be his friend in all that the term implies.  Until to-night,
+had the alternative been proposed, she would have had no hesitation in
+deciding, if only because she had no viewpoint other than their
+relative positions in the past year.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But his words had opened a new perspective.  She could see that he
+might be regarded in a different light, that he already so regarded
+her.  The transformation bewildered her, and when the heated reply died
+behind her lips and she smiled quiveringly instead, she felt for the
+first time in her life the thrill which all women, however strong, have
+when they yield to the dominant personality of a man.  She tried to
+fight back the overpowering, undefinable surge; she succeeded
+partially.  All she could now ask was time to think to recover her
+equilibrium.  She put out her hand involuntarily and touched Dan
+lightly on the arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let us not say anything more about it," she said.  "Tell me&mdash;tell me
+something about San Blanco."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she ceased speaking, she turned slowly toward the banquet hall.
+Dan, following her, complied with what he knew to be a purely
+perfunctory request, talking in an easy conversational tone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have looked into the history of the country a good bit," said he.
+"It is quite interesting.  They have had just twenty-three
+<I>presidentes</I> and four dictators, and there have been twelve
+assassinations.  I believe candidates for the office are liable to
+arrest for attempted suicide&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl paused at the window.  She had not been listening.  Her eyes,
+were fastened upon the figure of a man whose skulking form she had made
+out where the glow of the window almost opposite the speakers' table
+fell upon the garden.  Now she saw him again.  He had a gun in his
+hands and was beginning to kneel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Breathless and rigid the girl slowly stretched out her hand and touched
+Dan on the shoulder; with the other she pointed silently at the
+crouching figure.  The gun was now being raised to aim, probably at the
+<I>Presidente</I>, who was speaking, possibly at Mr. Howland.  Dan
+apprehended the situation at once.  In the flash of an eye he was
+making for the assassin like an antelope.  Hearing the approaching
+footfalls, the man turned his head, and then, with a cry, Virginia saw
+him arise and shift his weapon toward Dan.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-184"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-184.jpg" ALT="In the flash of an eye, Dan was making for the assassin." BORDER="2" WIDTH="398" HEIGHT="664">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: In the flash of an eye, Dan was making for the assassin.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+But he was too late.  At least ten feet away Dan left his feet and
+launched himself into one of those old-time tackles which even in
+Exeter had attracted the eyes of the football authorities of three
+universities.  Hard and straight he went, head to one side, jaws shut
+tight.  Then he struck, one brawny shoulder snapping full into the
+man's midriff.  You have to know how to fall when tackled by a good
+man.  This San Blancan did not.  He went down like a falling tower.
+The gun was discharged in the air with a resounding report and flew
+into the bushes.  The man lay still, gasping.  The dinner ended
+abruptly and in great confusion.  Guests poured out of the windows,
+tables were overturned.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan quickly dragged the prostrate man into a clump of mesquite.  His
+first impulse had been to turn him over to the soldiers.  But the
+defiant, if faint murmurs of the patriot, "Long live San Blanco; death
+to Rodriguez!" bringing back to him his emotions of the morning, caused
+him to decide differently.  He seized the man by the collar.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Stand up," he said, "you are not hurt; only a bit winded.  I guess
+Rodriguez has had enough heads without yours.  You thought you were
+acting for your country's good; I guess you were, from all I hear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The man had been looking at the speaker wonderingly, not understanding
+a word.  Dan turned to him impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get out!" he said.  He pushed the man, searching his brain for the
+Spanish equivalent.  "What the mischief&mdash;oh," he glared at the
+trembling prisoner.  "<I>Vayase Vd!  Largo de aqui!</I>"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The poor wretch needed no more.  With a quick, smiling gleam of white
+teeth he bowed, and the next instant was loping through the garden.
+Dan sauntered slowly toward the hotel.  Soldiers acting upon
+information given by Miss Howland were beating the grounds, and there
+was much shouting and occasionally a pistol shot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the hotel was deserted of the brilliant guests who had filled it
+but a quarter of an hour before.  The spell of darkness lay upon the
+banquet hall.  A few men and women were loitering in the court,
+awaiting developments.  Oddington was there, and another man of the
+party, but the rest, including the Howlands, had evidently gone to
+their rooms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Howland told us you made rather an interesting tackle,
+Merrithew," said Oddington as Dan nodded to him.  "I am sorry I missed
+it.  Where is your prisoner?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan smiled.  "The tackle was so artistic," he said, "that I jarred most
+of my senses out of me.  He got away.  Here's his gun," and Dan held up
+an old-fashioned carbine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Oddington glanced at the weapon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Howland will be sorry you let your man escape, if only because he
+prevented the carefully prepared speech he had been laboring over.  It
+was pretty nervy of you, although Howland tells me they are all the
+time potting at Rodriguez and missing him.  Still, I should think they
+would give you the Order of San Blanco."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think I can struggle along without it," said Dan.  "Good-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned toward the harbor and the <I>Tampico</I>.  The moon had now broken
+from the clouds which had partially hidden it all evening, and the
+hotel grounds and the slope leading to the water front were bathed in
+light.  Dan's mood was rather bitter.  They might have waited for him,
+he thought.  At least, Miss Howland and her father might have, in view
+of what had happened.  But still, why should they?  The old feeling of
+aloofness filled him, and all the self-assurance which had
+characterized his attitude with Miss Howland a half-hour before
+vanished.  He was angry with himself for having dared to maintain such
+an attitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned to look at the hotel and bowed gravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It seems that one Daniel Merrithew has been forgetting he is a mere
+steamship captain.  He will remember it in future&mdash;at all times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then he walked slowly to his ship.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER X
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE WRAITH IN THE MOONLIGHT
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Twenty-four hours later the <I>Tampico</I> was at sea.  The itinerary proposed
+by Mr. Howland had been altered for the reason that cable despatches from
+New York had contained financial tidings that made it incumbent upon him
+to return to the United States without more delay than was necessary; and
+Ralph Oddington's firm had been retained by a corporation seeking
+protection against assaults of the Attorney-General's office, and he was
+wanted in the city at his "earliest convenience," which he had
+interpreted as meaning "right away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And so there was to be no stopping at various ports, but a quick run to
+the States.  Mr. Howland imparted this information to Dan as the two sat
+at table in the saloon over cigars and coffee the evening after the
+departure from San Blanco.  The other members of the party had gone on
+deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They can do their sightseeing at Galveston and Savannah, where you can
+call for your cotton and naval stores as usual."  As Dan raised his
+eyebrows, Mr. Howland shook his head emphatically.  "Can't help it," he
+said.  "You see by this despatch," pointing to a pile of papers on the
+table, "that the <I>Tybee's</I> out of commission for a month; and business is
+business, party or no party.  And now, Merrithew," stuffing the papers
+into his pocket as though all matters concerning them were finally
+settled, "I want to ask you about something else.  Of course you're in
+this Central American service here and will be for a time.  I've been
+thinking what you said about the fighting the other morning." He lit a
+cigar and pushed his case toward Dan.  "I gathered you did not exactly
+approve of it.  Didn't you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Howland," replied Dan, "it was not the fighting that bothered me, it
+was the idea I had landed guns which your men were using to shoot down
+other men like sheep.  It was a new sensation, and it got into me, I'll
+say that.  Still it was none of my business; I was carrying out your
+instructions.  I am sorry I was so unwise as to give you the impression I
+did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not at all."  Mr. Howland gazed at his cigar a moment, flicking the
+ashes off with his little finger.  "Is that why you let the assassin go?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan rose to the situation without hesitating.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Howland, you were fishing when you asked that question.  You don't
+have to do that.  I did let that chap go.  I believed he had attempted a
+good job.  I saved Rodriguez's worthless life and took a risk in doing
+it.  I would not have done so, but I thought the man was aiming at you;
+but since I did, the only reward I was entitled to, or wanted, was to do
+as I pleased with the man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Howland.  "Of course it occurred to you that
+Rodriguez's life, however worthless you hold it in other ways, might be
+extremely valuable to the San Blanco Trading and Investment Company,
+which is myself?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I did think of that," replied Dan, "although I am employed by the
+Coastwise Company, I know you practically own both.  I realize, too, your
+kindness to me in the past; but I did look on the fellow as a man
+honestly trying to serve his country; and when it came to deliver him up
+to be hanged&mdash;why I simply could not do it."  Dan rose slowly.  "I showed
+myself ungrateful to your interests.  As I say, I appreciate what you
+have done.  I am going to show that I do by asking you to consider my
+resignation in your hands to act upon as soon&mdash;whenever you please."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sit down, Captain Merrithew," said Mr. Howland, as though he had not
+heard the last words.  "In the first place, you recognize that where
+there is no law and order legitimate business cannot be carried on.
+Where a country is governed in a haphazard manner, while it may be easy
+to secure contracts, it is impossible to collect on them.  Business
+interests having connections with such countries find conditions
+intolerable, and where we can we rectify them.  If you have studied San
+Blancan affairs you know that under Rodriguez (who, despite his cruelty,
+is honest) business here, whether controlled by myself or any one else,
+may for the first time in history be conducted on an honest and reliable
+basis.  That is all I ask or have asked.  I have no benefit of
+discriminating duties.  I am largely interested in the business affairs
+of this country; but I obtained those interests fairly, and it is my duty
+to myself and my daughter and my business associates to maintain and
+develop them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I talk to you this way, Merrithew, because I have felt you were going
+wrong, and I wanted to set you right.  I'll say frankly I know I'll not
+lose anything in so doing.  I owe you a great deal.  I am glad I do; for
+I like your sort.  I wish I had a boy growing up as you have grown.  You
+have a future before you&mdash;if you will only watch that damned hot head of
+yours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Much that Mr. Howland had said in regard to the disinterested nature of
+his business activities was true; some things involved tactical evasion.
+In expressing his attitude toward Dan he was sincere.  The Captain did
+not attempt to analyze.  He was completely won, just as Mr. Howland
+wanted him to be.  As he essayed to speak, Mr. Howland placed his hand on
+Dan's shoulder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, not a word, Merrithew.  We'll forget it all and start fresh."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the days of the voyage that followed, while it might not have been
+said that Virginia Howland snubbed Dan, neither could it have been said
+she was not at pains to see that she was never alone with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In fact, the attitude of either in relation to the other might in no way
+have been termed receptive.  So far as Dan was concerned, he felt that,
+whether unwisely or not, he had made quite clear to her the terms upon
+which their friendship could continue; she had expressed her views no
+less clearly.  The stand of both was irrevocable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The second day out, feeling it to be his duty, he made tentative advances
+which, if not directly declined, at least left him the impression he had
+been gently and skilfully rebuffed.  Since then he had been careful not
+to place himself again in a similar position.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the table she would address him in the line of general conversation,
+and was at pains to greet him cordially whenever they met about the ship.
+But otherwise she left no doubt as to her wishes concerning him.  Once
+she came into the saloon for breakfast before the rest of the party had
+taken their places.  Dan was in his accustomed seat at the head of the
+table; he arose and wished her good-morning.  She replied faintly, and
+then she sat toying idly with her rusk, her eyes for the most part
+fastened upon Dan, who had resumed his breakfast as though oblivious of
+her presence.  She seemed trying to make up her mind to speak; but she
+failed.  When Dan arose, bowed slightly, and left the saloon, she was
+still sitting silent with her breakfast untasted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At Galveston Oddington left for New York by train, but Mr. Howland,
+receiving more assuring despatches, decided to remain with the party.
+They crammed cotton into the <I>Tampico's</I> holds, and later at Savannah
+they put pine-tar and pitch and other naval supplies aboard; thereby
+increasing Dan's responsibilities a hundredfold.  But business was
+business, as Mr. Howland had said; and Dan had but to accept his worries
+and keep them from the party, which had fared well at the hands of
+friends in the two ports.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The <I>Tampico</I> left Savannah one afternoon about an hour after a trim
+Savannah liner had dropped down the river.  At dinner that night the
+merriment was supreme, for in four days the <I>Tampico</I> would be in New
+York, and the Howlands' guests had had about all the excitement and salt
+air they wanted.  The air was soft; there was brilliant starlight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan had spent most of the evening on the bridge, Mr. Howland having
+requested him to make up the coast well out to sea in order to give the
+party a "final soaking" of real ocean air.  He had not complied
+absolutely.  Still, the Tampico was a good ninety miles off shore, well
+outside the track of south-bound vessels.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Shortly after nine o'clock he left the bridge and walked along the deck.
+The party was breaking up.  Miss Howland had sauntered away from the
+group, and was leaning over the rail with her chin resting on her hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-evening, Miss Howland," said Dan, pausing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia looked up quickly, and then resumed her former position.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't know whether I ought to be nice to you or not, Captain
+Merrithew," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something in her voice gave Dan encouragement to make his reply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Won't you please try to be?  In less than four days now you will be
+ashore&mdash;and then you'll probably never have any more opportunities."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl settled her chin more deeply into her palms.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But <I>you</I> have not been nice.  You have been horrid, ever since we left
+San Blanco."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Here was a phase of feminine character which Dan, not knowing, had not
+reckoned upon.  However, he instinctively said the tactful thing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I am sorry.  I thought I was pleasing you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl slowly dragged her chin sidewise along her palms until she faced
+the Captain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, you did!  Has your experience with women taught you that is the best
+way to please them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan, now completely at sea, simply regarded her in silence.  Virginia,
+inwardly triumphant, smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now what can you do in four days to atone?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I might jump overboard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That would be romantic, but hardly&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the girl was speaking she turned her eyes to the water rushing past
+the hull, just as a dull, wallowing shape flashed by the bow, assuming
+form right under her eyes&mdash;a dark, soughing, coughing derelict, moving in
+the waves spinelessly, like a serpent; black, slimy, repulsive, with
+broken, hemp-littered masts and rusty chains clanking over the bow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh!"  Virginia jumped back with a startled cry and looked fearfully at
+her companion.  He was smiling, and intuitively she recognized that it
+was not a smile of amusement, but of sympathy, reassurance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, wasn't it horrid!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it was not a pretty sight," replied Dan.  "Derelicts never are.
+There are lots of them around here; they travel in currents, sometimes in
+short orbits, sometimes hundreds of miles in a straight line."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The terror had not left her eyes, and she glanced astern to where the
+ugly shape was burying itself in the gloom.  She was an impressionable
+girl, and that loathsome object, rising as it were out of the bottom of
+the deep, clanking, sighing, brought to her an epitome of all the fear
+and mystery of the great, dark, silent waste.  And she looked at the
+Captain with new interest.  Here was one of the men who brave these
+things, who brave great big problems, who face the unknown and a future
+as full of mystery, as fraught with evil possibilities as when the first
+mariner put out to the Beyond in a boat hollowed from a tree.  In a flash
+that derelict taught her to read Dan better; gave her a better insight
+into the look that she sometimes caught in his steely, inscrutable eyes,
+and the grave lines in his sun-bronzed face.  And in the light of this
+knowledge her soul went out to this man, this type of man, so strange, so
+utterly foreign to a girl brought up in an environment where such types
+do not exist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She held out her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am going to my stateroom now, Captain.  Good-night.  We are going to
+be better friends, aren't we?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you," said Dan; and he watched her tall, white form as it
+disappeared down the deck.  He gazed moodily out at the dark horizon.
+Friends!  He searched himself thoroughly, and he could not deny the truth
+as formulated in his mind.  Friends!  How hollow the word sounded!  He
+knew how hollow it would seem all through his life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Better it should be nothing.  Yes, far better, instinct told him that.
+Miss Howland had come into his existence, radiant, pure, beautiful, and
+so utterly feminine; as a meteor flashing across the night pauses for a
+brief instant in the sky before shivering to nothingness.  This simile
+occurred to Dan, who, though no poet, was at least a sailor and as such a
+student of the heavenly bodies.  Yes, a meteor which had illumined his
+life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He had never permitted himself to think in this way before.  It is
+doubtful if before to-night he could have felt as he now did.  It had all
+come over him suddenly with a rush.  When he talked with her at the hotel
+in San Blanco he was filled with thoughts of his future, and assumed as
+granted his footing upon her plane.  How absurd, how ridiculous this
+seemed now!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Why, why was it, he asked himself, that society or convention or whatever
+it was had drawn the grim <I>chevaux de frise</I> between those who had
+accomplished, or whose forebears had accomplished for them, and those who
+were yet to accomplish; with hosts eager to applaud the achievements of
+finality, but who had no adequate encouragement for those who had yet to
+achieve their mission, who fought their battles in the dark and won them
+in the glorious light, or losing, sank back into that oblivion out of
+which they had striven to emerge?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If fate had been different&mdash;yet if fate had been different he would never
+have seen her, perhaps.  Yes, he should be satisfied; he had seen his
+star.  And when it faded, as fade it must, in the vastness of the
+dark&mdash;why, what then?  Well, at least he had seen his star; even this
+much is denied many.  So, he would live it out and be thankful he had
+been permitted to feel the great thrill&mdash;to know that at least he had the
+heart for the greatest passion the world knows.  Poor consolation, he
+told himself with a grim smile.  And yet he who hitches his chariot to a
+star might well be content with less.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XI
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE BURNING OF THE "TAMPICO"
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+Just an hour later the <I>Tampico</I> lay burning at a point in the Atlantic
+where if the white lights of Cape Fear and Cape Lookout had converged
+ninety-two miles farther out to sea they would have rested full on the
+reeking hull.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan had been fearful of the results of Mr. Howland's policy in loading
+the <I>Tampico</I> with inflammable cargo.  He had been reared with the fear
+of fire in his heart.  From one of his voyages his grandfather, Daniel
+Merrithew, had never returned.  A charred name board had told the grim
+tale, and so Dan had gone out into the world with a long, red, flaming
+line across his fate, as in knightly days a man might have included the
+bar sinister or some other portentous device among his symbols of
+heraldry.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Pacing the forward deck with his pipe, thinking deeply of his talk with
+Virginia, Dan had seen pitch bubbling out of the deck seams and
+spilling into rich black pools.  And thus the fire was discovered&mdash;some
+fifteen minutes too late, however, to effect the rescue of several of
+the crew, who shrieked and pounded at the bulkhead door, warped and
+welded tight by the heat; shrieked and pounded, until the throttling
+smoke bade them hold their peace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+First, Dan had the vessel swung about with her stern to the wind, the
+fire being forward; and the crew had piled up on deck and rushed
+without confusion or undue noise to their various stations.  Some
+unscrewed deck valves over the burning hold, fastening thereto the ends
+of seven-inch rubber hose; while below, the engine-room staff, with
+soldierly precision, attached the other ends to the boilers and stood
+like statues until a signal gong sounded through the black depth.
+Whereupon they handled certain valves, and with a hissing scream great
+volumes of hot vapor poured into the blazing compartment.  On deck
+other seamen dragged lengths of hose forward, forced the nozzles
+through narrow deck-vents, and held them there while the force pump
+sent up thousands of gallons of brine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan, ubiquitous, cheerful, commanding, lending a hand to one set of
+men, directing another, came upon a station two short of its quota.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where are Phillips and Fagan?" asked Dan, sharply.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They bunked in the steerage," replied a sailor, choking in the smoke
+weltering up through the hose vent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young Captain's breath caught; but there was no time for sentiment.
+He inspected the vessel, bow and stern, marshalled the members of the
+Howland party into the saloon and bade them stay there until otherwise
+ordered, and then went up to his men and fought with them.  An hour
+passed, and twenty more minutes.  The lurid tinge to the smoke,
+bellying up through the deck-vents, gave sharp hint of the undiminished
+fury of the flames raging below.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's like pouring in oil," muttered Dan to himself; and then he added
+aloud, "Keep right to it, men, you're holding it," and thus saying he
+left them and ran aft to where the second mate and the reserve section
+of eight men were growling impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take up your hose, men, and come with me down into hold No. 2.  The
+fire's going to clean out No. 1 to the skin, sure.  We'll have to keep
+it from breaking through to the other holds.  Come on!  Hurry!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without a word the men picked up the three lengths of emergency hose
+and followed their Captain.  As Dan ran along the deck, leading the way
+to the hatch, he heard his name called, and looking up quickly, saw Mr.
+Howland and Virginia approaching.  The girl's hair was flying loose and
+she had a long blue coat thrown over her shoulders.  The deck was
+filled with heavy smoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Captain," said the shipping magnate, "how are we now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan paused just an instant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fighting hard," he replied, and then he added quickly, "Mr. Howland,
+we need men.  Two of the crew are gone.  Ask some of the men of your
+party, please, to go forward and report to Mr. Jackson.  And you, Miss
+Howland, go into the saloon right away&mdash;and stay there.  Tell the
+others that if they appear on deck before I give the word I shall have
+them locked in."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl obeyed silently, but Mr. Howland paused irresolutely a second,
+in which time Dan had turned and was hastening after his men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will do as you say," Mr. Howland called after the retreating form of
+the Captain, "but I want to talk to you first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"All right, sir, come on then.  You'll have to talk to me down in the
+hold, I'm afraid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The second mate and his men had in the meantime pried the battens from
+the hatch and thrown it open.  The hold was about half full of cotton
+bales, railroad ties, oakum, resin, and the like, and they descended to
+them by means of a scaling ladder, clambering thence toward the forward
+bulkhead.  One of the men had a lantern which cast a pallid glow about
+the immediate vicinity, bringing into vague relief the well-ordered
+masses of cargo, and ending suddenly against a hard wall of dark as
+palpable as a barrier of stone.  The air was heavy with musty sweetness
+and with yellow smoke which streaked lazily past the lantern globe&mdash;and
+with silence, save for the dull roar in the adjoining hold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Make a stand right here," and Dan's voice sounded hollow through the
+gloom.  "Stand right here.  You've got water in your hose; I want that
+bulkhead kept soaked.  Let her go."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the streams of water plunged against the steel wall Dan turned to
+his employer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You wanted to speak to me, Mr. Howland?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I want to compliment you on your discipline and&mdash;and what is the
+exact situation?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not so good; but a working chance.  It will be a short and sharp go;
+for the hold's lined with tar and sugar reek&mdash;otherwise the cotton
+might go for days.  It won't in that hold, though.  The fight'll be
+right here.  If it breaks through into this we've got to run; if not,
+it will burn out where it is."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What are the chances that it won't?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, you know more about the structural strength of this boat than I
+do.  To be honest, I never liked your bulkheads, else I would have
+opened a stop-cock and flooded the hold long ago.  Still, what water
+would burst through, fire might not."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Horace Howland, who had paid his own price for the <I>Tampico</I>, and who
+by the same token had his own opinion of her, said nothing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have arranged about the boats," resumed Dan.  "If the worst comes,
+my men know what to do and they are the men to do it.  It's not too
+rough to launch safely.  Now, Mr. Howland, I've wasted too much time
+talking.  Don't forget to send two men to Mr. Jackson," and he sprang
+up the ladder and hurried forward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The feet of the men at work over the burning hold were blistering.  Dan
+yanked out an inch hose and set a cabin boy to sluicing the deck where
+they stood, sending up dense clouds of enveloping steam.  A broad
+tongue of blue flame curled out of the port hawse-hole, licked along
+the half-protruding anchor, rose above the rail, and then burst into a
+puff of red fire which floated away in the wind.  A cargo port door
+warped in the heat, buckled outward, tearing plates and rivets with a
+rasping screech, and dropped hissing into the black waters; and the
+wind, blowing from astern, was sucked into the opening, fanning the
+flames to screaming ferocity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The tale was plain for every one, and Dan read it to the last word.
+Water would be of more service elsewhere, that was certain.  So he
+withdrew the four crews from their hose vents, ordered two of them to
+take their lines into the second hold, and set the others flooding the
+deck.  He shifted two of his seven-inch steam lines to the midship
+plugs, and then followed the hose men, who had joined their comrades in
+the darkness of the second hold.  Streams of water were hissing against
+the steel barrier and flying back at the faces of the nozzle men in hot
+spray.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's a bulge in the centre," reported the second officer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said Dan, who seized a lantern and held it above his head,
+pointing out new objective marks for the water.  The smoke had grown
+thicker.  One man gagged at a nozzle; but drinking from the pipe the
+air which the water brought, he lowered his head and fought on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They fought as men should fight, in the pungent half-gloom, colliding
+or falling prone as the vessel pitched, eyes fixed straight ahead,
+following the powerful silver lines of water which ribbed the dark and
+splashed against the steaming steel; white-yellow smoke spirals writhed
+about their heads like some grotesque saraband; coatless, shirtless,
+their streaked, sweating bodies gleamed dull and ghastly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of them straightened from the nozzle and glared at his side
+partner; and Dan, whose eyes were everywhere, saw him and moved close
+to him, where his fist could do best work if necessary.  Any sign of
+mutiny now called for decided measures.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Say, Mike," said the man in a rich brogue, "give us a hunk o' yer
+'bacca&mdash;this makes the mout' dry"; and Dan chuckled his admiration for
+the fighting spirit of the Irish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once a tiny lance of flame leaped out through some hidden
+crevice&mdash;leaped far out at the men as a rifle spits its deadly fire,
+and then, curling about a sugar sack like a serpent's tongue, withdrew
+so suddenly, so silently, that it seemed to those who saw it as
+something which had flashed through their imaginations.  A stream of
+water sought the outlet and the flame came no more then.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly a cry came from one of the men, and all eyes turned to a point
+in the bulkhead where a hectic flush glowed like a death's head.  Four
+streams struck it simultaneously.  It went out, but reappeared in
+another place.  The water quenched this also, but it came back again
+and widened, and the plunging water was dried to mist at the instant of
+contact.  The glow grew brighter, then dim, and then brighter, rising
+and falling as life pulses in a fevered body.  A flood of smoke choked
+in from a viewless breach.  Two of the men cried out, gurgled, fell on
+their faces, and turned over on their backs, struggling; then they lay
+still.  Dan carried them to the deck, and returned with a sailor.  The
+two had just gained the sugar sacks when the centre bulkhead quivered.
+A cross section collapsed into a V.  A score of rivet holes yawned wide
+and red-hot bolts fell on the sacks and set them on fire.  A line of
+plating, separating from its fellows, sagged open in a red grin and
+gave view of the raging hell within.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, into it, boys!" yelled Dan, and the men, bowing their heads,
+advanced five feet, directing the streams into the fiery pit.  For a
+minute the flames were driven back by the concentrated rush of water;
+two minutes, and then a gush of fire flared through the break.  It
+broke as a stream hit it, but its ghost, in the guise of hot gases,
+choked the men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A great roar of flame almost enveloped them, and the heat crisped their
+hair and seared their bodies, and they dropped their hose and raced for
+the ladder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on, men!" shouted Dan as they struggled out of the hold.  "You've
+done all I can ask.  Hurry!  Get out!" and they got out and then turned
+to batten the hatch cover down.  But the rush of fire was too swift to
+be denied.  A thick-bodied pillar choked through the opening and
+spouted to the top of the funnel&mdash;great gouts of the devouring element
+pulsed softly, but with lightning swiftness, down the deck, and
+shrivelled a life raft.  Long tongues and jets of fire were bursting
+everywhere out of the forward deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It had come at last, just as Dan had seen it coming all through the
+night&mdash;all through the years.  His voice roared from the bridge:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To the boats&mdash;every man to his station!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The command was taken up and carried along, and noiseless shapes limned
+briefly in the fire glow, scuttled quickly to their appointed places.
+Mr. Howland and his party stumbled out of the saloon with blanched
+faces and parted lips, but quietly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Women to the rail!"  The cry echoed out over the sea,&mdash;over the sea,
+which has heard these chivalrous words so often.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Women first&mdash;women to the rail!"  Dan's cry was taken up by the
+officers.  Silent figures in trailing garments moved as they were bid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+From the port quarter a gruff voice sounded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ready, men&mdash;ease away."  Came the creak of tackle, the thud of iron
+upon steel&mdash;then a silence&mdash;then a rattle of oars in thole-pins&mdash;then a
+clear hail from the darkness: "All's well, Captain Merrithew!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another boat clattered down the steel sides and cleared safely, and
+still another.  The last boat was filling with the last of the crew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Everybody accounted for?" Dan's shout as he rushed down from the
+curling bridge brought Mr. Howland up with a sudden fear.  He had taken
+his daughter to the starboard boat only to find it full, and had sent
+her across to the third boat, while he superintended the adjustment of
+a wedged block.  This done, he had hurried to the starboard, only to
+find the third boat overboard and well away.  He had assumed that she
+was all right.  But a cold rush of doubt assailed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Virginia, Virginia&mdash;are you all right?" he called in tones of agony.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I saw her at the third boat," said the first officer.  "You must look
+alive, Mr. Howland&mdash;we'll have to lower directly the Captain comes.
+The deck's going now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The ship-owner heard these words with a sigh of relief and stepped into
+the boat without further ado.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Every one accounted for?" repeated Dan as he dashed along deck to the
+boat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Something, a faint suggestion of sound rather than sound itself caused
+him to pause.  He heard nothing more, though he listened for a full
+minute.  Instinctively he turned to a stateroom in the midship
+deck-house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Captain Merrithew&mdash;are&mdash;you&mdash;coming?" The first officer's voice arose
+in impatient cadence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes&mdash;hold there a minute!" replied Dan, twisting the knob of the door.
+It was locked.  He ran back a few paces and sprang at it with his
+shoulder.  It trembled and gave.  He rushed again and the door crashed
+inward.  The room was filling with smoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And on the bunk sat Virginia, her hands on her knees, her head hanging
+low and swaying dazedly from side to side.  She was on the verge of
+collapse; but she looked up and smiled faintly as Dan burst in.  Then
+her head fell again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I knew you would come," she muttered.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Without a word Dan seized her by the arm and led her swiftly to the
+shattered door.  As they reached the threshold there came a dull boom
+from below&mdash;the vessel shivered.  A sheet of flame swept the entire
+forward deck, and Dan looked out into a red, pulsing wall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In terror the men in the fourth and last boat, the fire licking their
+faces, let go the falls, and the little craft struck the water with a
+crash, but on an even keel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Knowing he could not reach the boat even were it still on the davits,
+Dan left the stateroom and half led, half carried the girl toward the
+stern.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The forward deck was now a seething inferno.  The foremast, a pillar of
+thin name, flickered like a pennon of gold until it broke in the middle
+and sent up a shower of sparks.  The shrouds and ratlines which went
+with it had barred the black heavens with ruddy lines.  From all the
+openings dull red clouds rolled and bellied skyward, cloud upon cloud;
+the funnel spouted like a blast furnace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the vessel slowly, but very surely, was falling off the wind; it
+would soon blow astern.  The shelter of the after deck-house would
+serve for a while, perhaps until some vessel, attracted by the terrible
+light, would bring them succor.  Dan placed the girl behind this steel
+structure and then, running to the taffrail, leaned far out and called
+to the boats.  But the roar of the flames drowned his cries, and the
+boats, which had moved out to windward, could not see him.  Foot by
+foot crept the fire; but the stiff wind which finally came over the
+stern did its work well, and the red avalanche began to slant toward
+the bow.  This meant respite.  But he knew that at the very best it
+could be only a respite, and short at that.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again and again and again he called for the boats, until his voice grew
+husky and faint.  Then, hopeless of aid from his men, he returned to
+the girl.  She was exactly where he had left her, slightly crouching as
+though to shut from her eyes the fearful red light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The wind rush had revived her smoke-dimmed senses.  When she was
+approaching the star-board boat to which her father had directed her
+she had lost her head, as persons will do in time of fire, and had
+wandered mechanically, unconsciously, to her cabin and locked herself
+in.  But she was not frightened now.  There was that in Dan which she
+trusted.  She looked at him strangely and smiled.  She caressed him
+with her eyes, trusting in, hanging upon, the strength of a man who
+possessed in divine measure all of man's strength.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A half-hour they crouched together, until the steel walls of their
+shelter burned to the touch, until the flames licked up over the
+forward end, ran over the roof, and looked down upon them.  But still
+they remained as they were, while the <I>Tampico</I> circled again and
+brought the wind in their faces, which they drank greedily.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came a time when the fire hissed constantly on the
+deck-house&mdash;when, indeed, flames plunged around it and touched the two
+figures.  Swiftly Dan reached out his arm and encircled the waist of
+his companion and drew her to the taffrail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Four feet below the gilded name on the stern was a six-inch ledge.  He
+lifted the girl as he would a child and placed her on this ledge,
+bidding her hold to the rail.  Then he passed a section of small chain
+about a stanchion, allowing the end to hang over.  If the rail became
+too hot for their hands they could hold by the chain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Dan joined Virginia on the ledge the vessel slued around, bringing
+the wind full over the bow.  With a roaring shout of exultation the
+fire bridged the last gap, bursting clear over the stern.  It bit at
+their hands; they withdrew them, supporting themselves by the swinging
+chain.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl moaned.  Nearer drew the hot breath.  She felt Dan's arm
+tighten about her waist.  It was like a curved bar of steel.  Looking
+down, she saw the water racing below&mdash;she saw a wave leap up&mdash;she felt
+it touch her foot with its feathery head, gently, beneficently, and yet
+traitorously; for how quickly would it quench the lives that it seemed
+to tempt from the flames!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Put your face tight against my chest&mdash;put your hands over your nose
+and mouth&mdash;quick!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She obeyed upon the word and a thrill, not of pain, shot to Dan's
+brain.  He could feel her, soft and trembling, against him, and her
+warm hair brushed his cheek.  With an effort he choked back the
+flooding emotion.  Was it fair, was it right to her&mdash;now?  But his arm
+unconsciously tightened about her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The red glow shone through the girl's closed eyelids&mdash;a great heat
+scorched the back of her neck, and she felt a quiver in the body
+shielding her; but the grip of the arm remained.  There came a blast of
+God's merciful salt cold air, and she opened her eyes.  He was looking
+down at her&mdash;and he saw what he saw.  For they were two souls hanging
+together on the verge of eternity&mdash;alone; two souls with death all
+about fusing them until they were as one.  She looked at him long.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you hurt?" she asked.  The words sounded thick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;a little.  It got my neck and ears.  The ship was yawing, though,
+and that saved us.  It was like snapping your hand through a gas flame."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'm afraid," said the girl with a sob catching her voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No&mdash;don't be afraid!  I'll save you&mdash;some way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She opened her eyes and looked in his face again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My nobleman! my&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't!" cried Dan, interrupting her.  "You don't know what you are
+saying.  It's so different now."  He well knew that impulses which
+might move a woman in the arms of a man, no matter who, battling for
+her life, might be for the moment only and lead to nothing but regret
+and alarm afterwards.  How could it be otherwise with Virginia Howland?
+The girl, as though she had not heard him, as though she had forgotten
+the emotions which had swayed her, closed her eyes wearily and turned
+her face away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The ship was yawing again.  Tongues of flame reached hungrily for them,
+licking above Dan's red-gold hair and his back, but never touching the
+girl.  Then the swing of the vessel and the wind again; then the fire
+and the torturing heat.  Once Dan saw his grandfather's vessel burning
+as he had often pictured it in boyhood, and he trembled horribly for a
+second, but only for a second; then he became rigid and smiled at the
+apparition.  The girl had evidently fainted; she hung a dead weight
+upon his arm.  Again the wind drove the flames far out over the stern.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came a time when the fight for life was waged mechanically, when
+all sense of thought vanished, and the carrying on of the struggle came
+down to mere animal instinct.  At such times a brave man need not be
+ashamed to die&mdash;the time has long elapsed when cravens perish.  But the
+very brave, the physically as well as mentally brave, fight on to the
+end, instinctively.  And so Dan fought.  He knew that Virginia Howland
+hung on his arm&mdash;but the fire had gone from his ken; he was fighting
+something, that was all he knew, or cared, since it was for her.  Once
+the red sheet enveloped them for a flashing second, but the merciful
+wind came to save.  It could not last long, though.  Dan's arm weakened
+about the limp form of the girl.  He closed his eyes and ground his
+teeth and brought new force to the encircling arm.  He glared down at
+the mass of soft hair scattering over his breast; he thought of that
+beautiful life and quite impersonally asked himself if all this beauty
+must die.  Where would all the beauty of the world be then?  This
+question ran deliriously through his mind.  Eh! where would it all be?
+If they died together, would they wake together?  And the flames came
+again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But as they swooped down with redoubled fury he saw almost
+subconsciously a great tangled litter of wreckage passing beneath him.
+He uttered a little cry, and with the girl still in his arm he dropped
+from the ledge.  With a sigh of relief he felt the cooling, revivifying
+water, and the sharp, cold taste of brine in his mouth was like the
+touch of a new life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Instinctively he had put his free arm around a section of cargo boom,
+with a grating caught in the twisted gear.  Upon this he pushed and
+lifted the half-unconscious girl.  Then he clambered astride the boom.
+Thus they drifted, while Dan, his mind slowly clearing, struggled
+pitifully for full possession of his faculties.  He had a dull sense of
+pain, but the one dominant idea was the girl.  Leaning slightly over,
+he twisted his hand in the folds of her dress lest she slip into the
+waters.  The stars were paling; on the horizon were the first vague
+hints of dawn.  He gazed at the faint gray curtain with interest.  It
+was a dawn he had not expected to see, he told himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, as he looked, a shape arose before his eye out of the gloom.  Dan
+watched it with dumb fascination.  Suddenly a realizing sense of the
+nature of the apparition shot through his mind.  A vessel&mdash;God!  Dan's
+voice raised in a long, hoarse cry for assistance.  But there was no
+answer.  Yet the craft was bearing toward them, not a hundred yards
+away, silently as a ship of the dead.  Dan cried again, rising on his
+rolling perch.  But the hail died on his lips.  He could see now.  It
+<I>was</I> a ship of the dead.  It was the derelict they had viewed from the
+fancied security of the <I>Tampico's</I> deck, a few short hours before.  An
+imprecation trembled upon Dan's lips.  For the last half-hour Virginia,
+who had crawled to a kneeling posture, had been watching Dan with
+unlighted eyes.  Now as he turned to her and pointed at the slowly
+advancing vessel, she nodded slowly, as though comprehending his
+meaning, and stretched out her arms to him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Softly, quietly the bow of the hulk slid up and nuzzled gently among
+the wreckage.  Quickly Dan secured the litter to the bow by twisting a
+length of wire cable through the rusty green fore-chains of the
+derelict.  Then gaining a footing in the mess of gear, he assisted the
+girl to her feet on the tottering grating, and placed her hand on the
+chains.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hold here tight," he said.  She nodded, and Dan looked about for the
+easiest way to the deck.  It was not difficult to find.  The end of the
+jib-boom had dropped into the water, making an easy incline, and the
+foremast had also fallen over the bow and was directly alongside.  Both
+were covered with sections of canvas and a maze of gear and rigging.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan clambered up, and then, lying flat across the bowsprit and the
+mast, he put his arms under the girl's shoulders and literally pulled
+her to his side.  Hand in hand they slowly worked their way up among
+the wreckage to the deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And there with the dawn beginning to glow rosily far on the eastern rim
+of the slaty waste the girl sighed and sank to her knees; and Dan, his
+head reeling with sleep and exhaustion, sank also.  When the darkness
+had all gone and the sun had cleared the horizon, the first level rays
+flooded the sullen deck of a gray-green hulk, sodden, desolate, and
+fell upon the faces of a man and woman sleeping, her head resting on
+his shoulder, strands of her dark hair lying across his face.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XII
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+ALONE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+As the sun rose higher still they slept.  The genial rays flowed over
+them, drying their wet, clinging garments, filling their stiffened
+frames with languorous warmth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Finally the girl sighed and smiled.  Half waking now, she thought she
+was at home in her own bed.  The sunlight always awakened her there.
+She wondered if it was time for her maid to enter.  She hoped not; it
+was so comfortable, and she was, oh, so sleepy!  She turned on her
+side.  Then suddenly she started.  Certainly she was lying on nothing
+that would remotely suggest a bed.  Sleepily she tried to open her
+eyes, but the long lashes were glued together by the heavy salt water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Arousing still further, she rubbed them open.  And then as a heaving,
+littered deck, with patches of blue sea showing through the shattered
+rail bore upon her vision, a realizing sense of the situation and the
+tragic events leading to it came to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment she lay still, shuddering.  Her head still rested upon
+Dan's arm.  She knew it, but she was afraid to arise.  Somehow that arm
+seemed the only thing which assured her she was in a living world.
+Even in the brilliant morning sunlight the vessel, soughing, creaking,
+groaning, as it moved slouchily over the waters impressed her as the
+shape of terror.  From the deck little mist spirals arose like spirits
+of the men who had deserted the ship.  And hovering all about was the
+gray, sordid reek of desolation, eerie, awe-inspiring.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet the Captain must not find her thus.  Slowly she withdrew her
+head.  She hated to awaken him.  Yet she felt she must hear his voice,
+for the all-pervading loneliness was unbearable.  She sat up and shook
+him gently by the shoulder.  It was as though she had applied an
+electric shock.  With a muffled exclamation he lifted himself by his
+elbow, and the next instant he was on his feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Howland!" he exclaimed.  The sound of his voice echoed hollow
+along the deck, but it was the most joyous sound Virginia had ever
+heard.  Leaning down, he assisted her to her feet.  Their eyes met, and
+they gazed at each other, wondering, uncertain.  Alone of all the
+world, these two, in the midst of a vast, lonely domain where hidden
+terrors lurk, where elements unharness their might and work their harm
+unchecked, where wind and wave whisper of murderous deeds, where the
+rime of dead ages is still fresh.  It was all too big for minds to
+encompass, for their senses to grasp.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A great sob shook the girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will&mdash;will you please go away&mdash;a moment?  I think I am going to cry,"
+she stammered.  She turned from him hurriedly and walked toward the
+rail.  She tottered as though about to fall.  Dan sprang to her side
+and placed his hand lightly on her arm.  The touch seemed to strengthen
+her.  With a convulsive effort she gained control of herself, and as
+Dan's hand dropped to his side she looked at him with a quivering smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am going to be brave.  I am not going to cry.  Captain, tell me, is
+my father safe, and my aunt&mdash;and the rest?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is not the slightest question about that," replied Dan.  "They
+got overboard smartly.  The lifeboats were steel, well manned and
+supplied with provisions for a week.  If they weren't picked up last
+night by some steamship attracted by the fire, they will be within a
+short time."  The girl regarded him closely, as though trying to
+determine whether he was speaking from conviction or merely to
+dissipate her fears.  Interpreting her expression, Dan shook his head
+impatiently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am sincere, Miss Howland.  I have no more doubt of the safety of
+your father and the others than I have that I am alive.  The sea has
+been comparatively smooth, the weather clear.  Our situation is the one
+to bother about."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But some steamship will surely see us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope so, but remember we are on a derelict.  Where we are, or where
+we are going heaven only knows.  Sometimes&mdash;there is no sense in trying
+to avoid the truth&mdash;derelicts go for weeks and even months without
+being sighted.  Still, I don't think we shall.  At night we'll have our
+distress lights.  We shall come out all right.  In the meantime we may
+not even have to be uncomfortable.  Usually when men desert these
+schooners they go in a hurry, leaving almost everything behind.  I am
+going to investigate affairs.  Will you come?  You may never have
+another opportunity of this sort."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan's voice, at first grave, had gradually assumed a lighter tone, and
+at the humorous allusion in the last sentence she smiled.  Virginia was
+a sensible girl, but it must be confessed that her position alone with
+a man on a derelict in the middle of nowhere would have dazed a woman
+who held even broader views of the ordinary conventions than she did.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As for the Captain, he evidently intended to accept the inevitable in a
+matter-of-fact, common-sense way.  There was nothing for her but to do
+likewise.  That he would be tactful and considerate in every way she
+knew.  And he would save her too, in the end.  Something seemed to tell
+her that.  She smiled at him bravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think it will be fun, Captain!  Lead on."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Their course aft was attended with difficulty.  All along the deck was
+a thick mass of wreckage, broken casks, boxes, sections of spars,
+tattered canvas, and enough wire rope and other gear, it seemed, to
+encircle the world.  Amidships the hull sagged so that the deck was not
+three feet above the water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ascending the slight incline, Dan led the way to the entrance to the
+after cabin, containing four rooms&mdash;two on either side of a corridor.
+The cabins were just below the level of the deck but were not flooded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," said Dan with his hand on the knob of the door at his right, "we
+will pay the Captain a visit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The bunk was mussed as though the skipper had left it hastily, but
+otherwise the apartment was in good order.  There was a little oaken
+desk containing a dictionary, several books on navigation, and writing
+appurtenances.  In the middle, on a piece of blotting-paper, was an
+overturned inkstand with a pen still in it.  Along the top were several
+photographs of home scenes, probably New England, and a picture of a
+rather comely young woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And here's a woman's hat," cried Virginia, picking from a corner a
+rather garishly trimmed creation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan paused and looked at it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's good," he said.  "His wife was evidently aboard."  He opened a
+door leading into the next cabin.  "This was her room undoubtedly," he
+said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl peered in with a delighted expression.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, of course."  Her eyes took a quick inventory.  An ornate if cheap
+dressing-table!  Four waists on coat hangers!  Four skirts, beautifully
+hung!  And what a litter of brushes and things on the floor!  She
+turned to Dan, who had not entered, but was standing in the doorway,
+smiling.  "It must have been perfectly maddening for the good lady of
+the ship to leave all this behind."  She walked to the dressing-table
+and peered into the mirror.  It must be said she saw a girl whom under
+other circumstances she would hardly have recognized.  Her heavy hair
+was dishevelled.  Her long, blue broadcloth ulster was stained with
+salt water and altogether out of shape.  A great black smudge ran along
+her cheek, and on her chin was a deep red scratch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She looked at Dan from out the mirror, blushing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am afraid I should compare rather unfavorably with the Captain's
+lady.  I think, first of all, I shall sit right down and do my hair.
+But no&mdash;of course not now."  She opened her eyes wide.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, you can," laughed Dan.  "I am going to leave you now and look
+about the ship."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, no, you're not," exclaimed the girl; "you're not to leave me alone
+on this horrid ship just yet.  The hair can wait.  I'll go with you.
+If everything is as nice as this cabin I shall feel quite at home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The cabin opposite the Captain's had been the mate's, and behind it was
+the mess cabin.  Here the greater part of crockery and glass was
+shattered on the floor.  An overturned bird-cage with a dead canary in
+it lay under the table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Dan, "we ought to be comfortable.  Now, Miss Howland, I
+think you ought to go to your cabin and get off those damp skirts.  I
+have got to take a look at the cargo, see what plans I can make to
+render us something else than a log on the sea, and nose about in the
+galley."  He started.  "By George!  I had forgotten about food.  That's
+rather important."  He hastily left the cabin and started down the
+corridor, with the girl's warning not to be long following him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+First he stopped in the carpenter's room and secured the very thing he
+was looking for,&mdash;an axe.  With this he broke down the door of the
+storeroom, which, as he had expected, was locked.  There were a barrel
+of flour, tins of beef and of soups and vegetables, condensed milk, and
+a number of preserve jars filled with coffee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Taking one of the jars in which he saw the coffee was ground he poured
+out a cupful and drew some water from a cask.  Then going into the
+galley, he dug up a coffee-pot from the mass of cooking utensils which
+covered the floor, and proceeded to light a fire in the range.  It was
+soon roaring, and Dan had just mixed the coffee and water when Virginia
+appeared at the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an instant Dan hardly recognized the girl in her trim blue skirt,
+white sailor waist, open at the throat, and a red leather belt with a
+great brass buckle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have done well," he said at length.  "I had no idea you would be
+so fortunate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, everything fits pretty well," laughed the girl, "except that the
+skirt is a trifle short, but of course that doesn't matter here.
+That's not the point, though."  She gazed at him sternly.  "Who gave
+you permission to come in here and cook?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Dan looked at her in amazement she continued:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now see here, Captain Merrithew, we might just as well face our
+situation.  This is no time for observance of the minor conventions or
+gallantry.  We are shipwrecked.  We are nothing more nor less than two
+human beings cast away on a derelict.  You are to regard me, not as
+Virginia Howland, helpless, dependent, to be waited upon and watched
+over, but as you would Ralph Oddington or any one else were he in my
+place&mdash;as an assistant in the common cause of safety.  I am going to
+help you in every way I can, and I am going to begin by establishing
+myself as cook of this party from now on.  Please don't imagine I can't
+cook.  I attended a French culinary school for two seasons.  And now&mdash;"
+she stepped into the galley and seized Dan by the sleeve, drawing him
+gently toward the door&mdash;"won't you please go so that I shall have elbow
+room&mdash;this is such a tiny box of a place.  Please!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan hesitated no longer.  Seizing his axe he left the galley and went
+forward.  The mainmast had snapped about six feet below the truck; of
+the other two masts nothing was left but the stumps.  He chopped away
+the wreckage hanging over the bow, including the bowsprit and
+foretopmast, and had made good progress in clearing away the forward
+deck when Virginia, standing in the doorway of the after cabin, called
+him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Breakfast, Captain," she cried.  "Breakfast is served."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl was laughing excitedly as she led the way to the dining-cabin
+and seated herself in front of a great, steaming nickel coffee-pot.
+Blushing radiantly she pointed to the other chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sit down, Captain Merrithew."  But Dan protested.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, really, Miss Howland," he laughed, "I can just as&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Captain," interrupted Virginia, sharply, "don't be a goose.  There&mdash;"
+She began to pour the coffee.  "It isn't really much of a breakfast,"
+she added; "I shall do much better for luncheon.  But, as it is&mdash;" she
+inclined her head with mock unction as she handed him his cup.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan never forgot that breakfast.  It was one of those events which
+linger in memory, every detail indelibly stamped, long after more
+important pictures of the past have lost even a semblance of outline.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sunlight flowed in through the portholes and rested on the red
+tablecloth and the glittering steel cutlery.  For a centrepiece she had
+a half shattered clay flower-pot containing a geranium plant which she
+had picked up from the deck outside the woman's cabin.  It was droopy
+and generally woebegone, but it served its purpose.  In front of Dan
+was a heaping dish of toast artistically browned, and a generous glass
+jar of marmalade.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And opposite, smiling at him, talking to him as though they had
+breakfasted together for a number of years, was the most radiant girl
+he had ever looked upon.  The simple costume was wonderfully effective.
+The white, full throat and the curves of the neck running to the
+shoulders were revealed by the low rolling collar, and the hair coiled
+low shone with lustrous sheen.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-236"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-236.jpg" ALT="Opposite, smiling at him, as though they had breakfasted together for years, was the radiant girl." BORDER="2" WIDTH="405" HEIGHT="667">
+<H4>
+[Illustration: Opposite, smiling at him, as though they had breakfasted
+together for years, was the radiant girl.]
+</H4>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Despite Dan's fears as to the manner in which their tenancy of the
+derelict might terminate, he abandoned himself to the sheer charm of it
+all.  When he finally arose, ending a light, laughing conversation, the
+girl regarded him seriously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Captain," she said, "I want to ask you something, and you must
+tell me truthfully.  You have examined this vessel, and you have
+doubtless some idea as to what we are to do.  Tell me the exact
+situation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan looked her straight in the eye a moment, and the girl returned his
+gaze unflinchingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am perfectly honest," she said; "I want you to be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said Dan, "first of all I'll tell you what I am going to try to
+do: I am going to try to sail this derelict into some port.  There is
+enough of the mainmast standing to allow some sort of a sail, and we
+can't be so terribly far from land.  Besides, this hold is filled with
+logwood and mahogany.  Now this is a valuable cargo, worth at least
+fifty thousand dollars.  The vessel herself isn't worth a great deal,
+but still something.  Here is the point: if we take this vessel into
+port alone we can claim fifty per cent salvage, and we'll get it, too.
+That means that we shall net, through our little experience, some
+twenty-five thousand dollars between us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia stepped toward him with a delighted exclamation.  Dan raised
+his hand admonishingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," he continued, "we must first get the vessel into port.  Several
+things may prevent this.  The chief preventive will be a storm.  If God
+gives us good weather for three or four days that is all I ask.  If He
+doesn't, then we&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on," said the girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then we must simply pray for small favors."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia nodded gravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I understand," she said.  "I trust you, Captain."  She looked at him
+fixedly.  "Can you imagine how much I trust you?  I shall be strong and
+brave and do exactly as you tell me."  She started forward suddenly.
+"What have you under your coat sleeves?  Are your arms bandaged?" she
+cried.  "And your neck, too?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan laughed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's nothing," he said.  "My hands and arms and the back of my neck
+were pretty well scorched.  I dug some picric acid out of the Captain's
+medicine chest and tied myself up a bit.  I am all right now.  The pain
+has all disappeared."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl flushed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you didn't ask me to help you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There was absolutely no need.  Honestly, if I had needed to bother you
+I should not have hesitated.  The flames did not touch me, you know,
+just their hot breath; the bandages do not amount to anything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," replied Virginia, shaking her head, "I don't like it one bit.
+If I can do anything to repay you, however slightly, for all you have
+done for me, please give me the opportunity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I shall remember that," said Dan.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIII
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+NIGHT ON THE DERELICT
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+When the sun that evening sank like a red ball behind the purple
+horizon, Dan laid aside various implements and went aft with the
+realization of a day well spent.  He had cleared the deck.  Using the
+mainboom and a goodly section of the tattered canvas he had improvised
+a capacious leg-of-mutton sail which flapped idly in the almost
+motionless air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He found Virginia seated in a camp lounging-chair, with a paper-covered
+novel lying open face downward in her lap, gazing thoughtfully at the
+dusk which seemed rolling toward them over the sea like a fog.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was a beautiful sunset," she said; "but now it has gone, the ocean
+seems to have such a cruel, cold look.  And there are whispering voices
+on the water."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She shivered slightly and looked at him half humorously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know," said Dan.  "But the stars will be out to-night, and, later,
+the moon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will be dreary at best," replied Virginia.  "I think it would be
+nice if there weren't going to be any night until we&mdash;until we&mdash;" she
+paused.  "Oh, Captain, you think we&mdash;"  She stopped short and frowned.
+"There," she said reproachfully, "I told you I was going to be brave.
+I'm succeeding admirably!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You <I>are</I> succeeding admirably," said Dan.  "Yes, I think we are going
+to get out of this.  Of course we are.  In the meantime, pending
+dinner, or supper, rather, I am going into my cabin to see if I can't
+confiscate some of the Captain's clothes.  I feel as if I had been in
+these for years.  And&mdash;" he hesitated.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And if the Captain has left a razor, I am going to shave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you really?" laughed the girl.  "And while you are about it, won't
+you please telephone for my hairdresser?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the dark came a light breeze&mdash;and the stars, which Dan hailed with
+delight as giving him something to go by.  The breeze came over the
+starboard beam, the sail filling nicely, and Dan, taking a stand by the
+wheel, directed the derelict toward land.  He had lighted the red
+starboard lamp&mdash;the port lamp was missing&mdash;and hung a lantern at the
+head of the foremast.  Virginia sat beside him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For an hour Dan had been absorbed in the business of manoeuvring his
+sodden charge.  Waterlogged as she was it was no easy matter to swing
+her out of the current and head her upon a course.  But at last he had
+succeeded.  Having but one sail it could not have been better placed
+than amidships.  Placed in the mainmast it was easier to maintain
+steerage way and at the same time it served to push the derelict
+forward.  Turning to the girl, he laughed triumphantly; and she, who
+had begun to be almost jealous of the derelict, inasmuch as it had
+taken so much of his attention, smiled politely, if faintly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And now," said Dan, sitting beside her, with his hands on the lower
+spokes of the battered wheel, "we are homeward bound.  The stars have
+told me a great deal.  See them all.  Over there are Regulus and his
+sickle, and in the northwest you see Queen Vega.  There is Ursa Major
+up there, nearly overhead.  There's the Little Bear north of it; and
+still north is the good old North Star.  We are going straight for
+land, Miss Howland."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are awfully clever, Captain Merrithew."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan looked at her quickly.  She was smiling mockingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," she continued, as though communing with herself, "I really
+believe he would rather talk about his old stars than bother coming
+down to the level of a girl who is dying to bring him to earth.  I
+cannot imagine a more disagreeable man to be shipwrecked with."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor I a more agreeable&mdash;"  He checked himself.  "I am entirely at your
+service, Miss Howland," he added; "which is to say, I have alighted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She did not answer at once.  Instead she leaned forward with her hands
+supporting her chin, her elbows in her lap, gazing solemnly at the
+western stars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is nearly eight o'clock, isn't it?" she asked, without moving her
+head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," replied Dan, "about that.  Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just now in New York," said Virginia in her low, full tones, "they
+have finished dining on Broadway.  All the lights are, oh, so bright!
+and women in the most gorgeous spring gowns and men in evening dress
+are pouring out of the Astor, the Waldorf, the Knickerbocker,&mdash;every
+place,&mdash;and stepping into red and green taxi-cabs, or strolling
+leisurely to see the latest play.  And on Fifth Avenue, in the club
+opposite our house, the same five stout men are just about to occupy
+the same five stout chairs in the big windows.  I have watched them for
+years, and&mdash;"  The girl paused.  "Our house!  Do you suppose my father
+is there now?"  She closed her eyes.  "I can almost see him.  Of course
+he is mourning me for lost; and Aunt Helen is trying to comfort him and
+other persons.  But there, I must not think of that, must I?"  She
+turned to Dan and smiled bravely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, you must not," he said gravely.  "He is a man; he will bear his
+grief like a man.  And when you return&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I return?" interpolated the girl, quickly.  "Have you thought
+about that, Daniel Merrithew?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a great deal, except to resolve that if I ever get ashore I shall
+never again go to sea as a sailor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't mean that," said Virginia.  "Ever since the night when you
+were shielding me from the fire&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan raised his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Anything you said that night, Miss Howland, need cause you no regret,
+no misgiving.  As well judge the words, the actions, of a man who knows
+he has but an hour to live."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia looked at him puzzled.  She started to speak, but closed her
+lips tight upon the words.  She was vividly flushed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did I say anything so terrible then?" she asked at length.  "I am sure
+I can remember nothing I regret.  Of course I don't remember much; I
+suppose I was awfully flighty, then.  But you were fine and brave and
+noble; and, whatever I said, I stand pat, as father says," the girl
+laughed.  "This is such a conventional age that when a knight of modern
+times revives the daring and chivalry of older ages, we women have no
+adequate way in which to requite it, you know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You must not think about it at all," replied Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And why not?  That night I hung at the mercy of your strength and
+endurance to pain, when you could easily have saved yourself by letting
+me go.  Ah, don't deny it," as Dan made a gesture.  "I know!  My life
+was in your keeping, to save it or let it go, as you willed.  Daniel
+Merrithew, do you ever feel that now you have the right to be
+interested in that life that you alone saved?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What do you mean?" Dan was looking at her curiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl laughed excitedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't know exactly what I do mean&mdash;except, except that I have
+simply felt, well, as though I have no right to be altogether my own
+selfish self&mdash;in the way I used to be, I mean; that I have no longer an
+absolute right&mdash;&mdash;  Oh, how can I explain it clearly?  Let us say that
+I have a conviction that any serious change I might wish to make in my
+life should not be done without&mdash;well, not consent, exactly, but good
+wishes&mdash;no, I mean consent.  There, that may be putting it clumsily,
+but don't you understand?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan flushed.  "I have saved lives before," he said; "and twice men have
+saved my life, and I never felt,&mdash;felt the way you say toward my
+rescuers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But that is different; it is impossible to compare man's attitude
+toward man as you would a woman's."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, that's so."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you, too, have felt as I feel?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I never thought of it in that way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was silent a moment, but she regarded him searchingly.  His face
+was upturned, gazing at the flapping sail on the mainmast.  She caught
+the strong, classic profile in the starlight, and over her flooded the
+deep sense of her utter dependence upon him, upon his skill, his
+strength, his resource, and the deeper sense of her implicit trust in
+him as the embodiment of all these qualities.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She yearned now to express to him her emotions; she almost felt she
+must.  And yet she hardly knew how.  She had tried to do so, but how
+inadequate her words had seemed!  Bearing in upon her mood, Dan's cool,
+even voice sounded miles away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Howland, had you thought&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She interrupted him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See here, Daniel Merrithew, I said before that ceremony had no part on
+this boat.  Hereafter, if you won't call me by my first name you must
+address me by my last.  It must be either one or the other."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan made no comment.  He hesitated just a moment, then he said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was going to ask you, Virginia, if you had thought of going to your
+cabin yet."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She smiled and blushed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&mdash;I wanted to speak to you about that," she said, speaking rapidly.
+"I saw you this evening taking things from the Captain's room into the
+mate's cabin.  Now, if you have any idea that I am going to sleep on
+this horrid, grisly boat, so far away from you, you are mistaken.  You
+must sleep in the Captain's room&mdash;and the door leading into mine must
+be ajar, too.  Oh, I am terribly unmaidenly!  I cannot help it; I shall
+be horribly forlorn and frightened, and shall hear all sorts of sounds;
+I can hear them now, and so can you&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But," interrupted Dan, "I cannot go to sleep, Miss&mdash;Virginia.  This
+boat must be sailed to land.  There is a breeze.  She cannot be left
+alone; she would go a hundred miles out of her course; and, besides, we
+might meet a vessel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For a moment the girl gazed at him uncomprehendingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean to say you are going to stay up all night and sail?  But
+you have not had a wink of sleep and I shall certainly not go into
+that&mdash;" she suddenly arose.  "How stupid of me!  Of course both of us
+must stand watch in turn.  While you are steering I shall sleep at the
+wheel.  While I am steering you shall sleep there.  How simple!  Then
+we need not be alone at all.  Here, I'll hold the wheel first and you
+go to sleep.  I shall wake you at midnight, perhaps before if I get
+frightened.  Then I shall be asleep through those creepy morning hours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan demurred vigorously, but she was steadfast.  So he went to the
+after cabin and brought out several blankets and a pillow, which she
+arranged deftly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As he prepared to lie down, he looked at the girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See that star up there?" he said.  "Well, just keep the vessel going
+the way she is, with that star over your shoulder.  Don't let it get
+anywhere else.  If it does, wake me quickly.  If you become afraid, or
+see anything, let me know at once."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes," said the girl, "I understand.  Good-night, Daniel."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-night, Virginia."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In a few minutes Dan was fast asleep.  Through the night sailed the
+girl, alone, sore afraid, but comforted with the assurance that a touch
+of her hand would bring to her the powerful man who slept at her feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Straight she stood at the wheel, and tall, like some figure of a
+goddess of antiquity.  The moon rose, and its light glorified her.  It
+fell upon the shattered deck, defining every dreary detail.  The waves
+rose and fell with the lilt of music.  The tinkling breeze was cool and
+fresh and invigorating.  Fear vanished from her.  She felt herself a
+part of the elements, a part of the night, the lone representative of
+life and consciousness, and God amid the waste of primeval desolation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So she sailed, exalted, ennobled, until long after midnight.  When her
+thoughts turned to the man sleeping at her feet, she leaned down,
+gazing long and earnestly upon his face.  Then, as he stirred, she let
+her hand rest on his forehead a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is time to awaken, Daniel," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was upon his feet in an instant.  There was a strange expression
+upon his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was far away from here," he said.  "I was dreaming, the bulliest
+sort of a dream."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dreaming?  And what about, pray?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were!  Tell me the dream."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They say dreams that are told never come true," replied Dan, slowly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Their eyes met.  Both were smiling.  Then her eyes fell; but she still
+smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then," she said, "I guess you had better not tell me&mdash;unless&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Unless?" asked Dan, as she paused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Slowly she arranged the blankets, while Dan waited for the completion
+of the sentence.  Then she lay down.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Good-night," she said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When she awoke, the sun was rising high.  The breeze had died away.
+The wheel was deserted.  She looked down the stretch of deck, but Dan
+was nowhere to be seen.  With a fluttering heart she arose and shook
+out her skirts, hardly daring to peer into the cabin for fear her
+dreadful intimations might prove true.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was not in the cabin.  She called his name in a low voice, but only
+the hollow echo resounded from the corridor.  In agonized suspense now
+she ran out on the deck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dan!" she called with all the power of her lungs, not expecting that
+he would hear her now.  "Dan Merrithew, have you left me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came an answering hail, and looking toward the bow she saw Dan
+clambering out of the forward hatch.  His shoes and trousers were
+dripping wet.  As he ran to her she waited, weeping.  He caught her
+hands and held them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, Dan, Dan!" she cried, "you frightened me so!  I thought you had
+gone.  I thought you were dead.  You are not going to leave me again,
+are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never," said Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then both started as though the underlying significance of the question
+and answer had suddenly dawned upon them.  Gently she withdrew her
+hands, which Dan did not seek to retain.  In conversational tone, he
+said:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am awfully sorry, Virginia.  While you were sleeping, the wind fell,
+an hour or two after dawn, and the blue of the water struck me.  I
+found the Captain's thermometer and lowered it overboard.  My best
+hopes were realized.  We are in the Gulf Stream, Virginia, and moving
+northward at about four miles an hour.  We are all right now if all
+goes well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But why were you hiding?" asked the girl.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wasn't.  I wanted to see if the water had hurt the logwood, so as to
+impair its value, and to learn the condition of the hull.  You know the
+cargo is all that is keeping us afloat.  Everything is pretty soggy
+down there, but we'll hold together, I guess; and I don't believe the
+logwood will suffer a bit.  Of course the mahogany is all right.  We're
+lucky.  One schooner in a million has mahogany these days."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She had been gazing at him almost vacantly while he was talking.  Now
+she smiled beautifully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I am so glad to see you again," she said.  "It seems almost as if
+you had been away a thousand years."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," said Dan, "almost pays me for frightening you.  Are you ready
+for breakfast?  I knocked it together a while ago."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For which you shall be punished&mdash;when we get ashore."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap14"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIV
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+DAN AND VIRGINIA
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+After breakfast they drew chairs to the wheel and sat out on deck.  It
+was a wonderful May morning.  Thin clouds hung in the blue, like little
+yachts; and the cool, balmy air and the sparkling sunlight brought the
+clear, steady call of work to be done, of life to be lived beautifully
+and nobly, and strong things to overcome, or to accomplish&mdash;the call of
+youth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And they heard the call, these two, and responded to it with the
+joyousness of youth, wherein a phrase is a lifetime, and a word,
+volumes.  They talked of themselves, regarding each other wonderingly
+as hidden depths of character were revealed, or a word, or a sentence,
+or a sympathetic silence threw light upon a new element of personality.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He spoke of the <I>Fledgling</I>.  He used to see her through a golden haze.
+She was his first command.  Yet each day came the old question, What
+next?  And the answer.  Why, everything.  A future&mdash;bigger things and
+better, broader work, not on the sea at the last.  No; landward,
+somewhere, anywhere.  But onward, onward!
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Something is linked with every one's destiny, Virginia.  Fate fires no
+salutes; every shot is solid and aimed at something.  And the thing
+that is hit you have to step over and go on; if you stop to look at it
+and think over it and try to look for something else for Fate to knock
+down for you, something easier to step over and get away from, you
+find, perhaps, years later, that just there you missed your chance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She regarded him with kindling eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so that has been your philosophy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For want of a better, yes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I think it is a splendid one, and it has stood its highest test&mdash;it
+has served you well.  Do you know, the first time I had any idea you
+were interested in the higher things was that day we were in your cabin
+on the <I>Tampico</I>.  Do you remember my looking at your books and
+exclaiming over the selection?  I don't know, but somehow the Bible
+impressed me most."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I had a pretty good English foundation at Exeter," replied Dan, "and I
+kept it up after I left there.  That Bible&mdash;I think I did grow and
+broaden after leaving school, but I never grew beyond Psalms and St.
+Paul; which proves that a little knowledge is not dangerous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Most men would be ashamed to say that," she said.  "Most of the men I
+have known," she added.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never would have said it to any one but you."  He said this with
+quiet conviction, and the girl inclined her head slightly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I thank you.&#8320;  Do you remember that night at the dinner when I
+told you that if our friendship was to continue it was to be one of
+limitations?  How long ago that seems now&mdash;and how absurd!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Does it seem absurd?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Doesn't it?"  She laughed.  "It seems to me you were inclined to
+regard it so that night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Much to your indignation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it so?  If you had asked me, I might have admitted that the fact I
+ever could be indignant with you was the principal reason why that
+night of the dinner seemed so long ago."  She hastened to qualify.
+"For, you see, I count you now among my very closest friends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is saying a great deal," smiled Dan.  "When we get ashore and you
+are comfortably installed as queen of your father's drawing-room and
+Dan Merrithew is&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An exclamation from the girl interrupted him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dan Merrithew, don't you dare!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Dan Merrithew is just a&mdash;"  She had risen, and before he could
+complete the sentence her hands were pressed tightly over his mouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you be good?" she cried.  She released her hands and regarded him
+with mock severity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&mdash;" laughed Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Again the hands flew to his face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will," said Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And you'll promise not to say or think such nonsense again?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I promise," said Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And then for a while both fell silent, thinking of the future which lay
+before them.  The girl smiled as her day-dreams opened and expanded.
+Dan frowned, and the fingers of his well-shaped hands locked and
+unlocked across his knees.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly Virginia sprang to her feet with an exclamation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I forgot," she said, and ran, laughing, to the galley, whence she
+returned with a large plate of fudge.  At Dan's look of surprise she
+tossed her head in mock disdain of what he might say or think.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I unearthed two great cakes of chocolate last night," she said, "and
+as I was simply dying for some candy I made fudge while preparing
+breakfast.  I had to use condensed milk, watered; and as there was no
+marble slab I had to stir it in the pan.  I don't know how good it is;
+it's awfully grainy"; and thus, rattling on, she took a square of the
+confection and placed it gingerly between her lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, it's not so bad," she said.  "Here!  Open your mouth and shut
+your eyes!"  Which Dan did, declaring that he had never eaten anything
+half so delicious.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Really!" she exclaimed, with falling inflection.  "Then I must say I
+feel sorry for you.&#8320;  Now, why have you that little amused twinkle
+in your eyes?  I used to see it sometimes at the table on the <I>Tampico</I>
+when Reggie was boasting, and&mdash;and sometimes when I was trying to be
+very brilliant.  Do you know, sometimes I felt like boxing your ears,
+you seemed so superior."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was not superiority in your case," laughed Dan, "it was
+appreciation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank you," said Virginia; "and now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh," smiled Dan, "the thought of fudge on a derelict was and is
+responsible for this twinkle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I don't care," she frowned.  "It is the person that rises superior to
+conditions who triumphs in this world.  Anyway, you seem to be
+disposing of your share, despite your notions of incongruity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you thought," said Dan, "that it might pay to be very economical
+with your chocolate?  If we stay here two or three months and all our
+food runs out we can live on ever so little chocolate each day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two or three months!" echoed Virginia.  "Now, you are tactful, aren't
+you?  And just as I was sitting here chattering away, with no thought
+that we were not on a yacht ready to turn home the minute I wished to!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan smiled.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If we were on a yacht, how soon would you&mdash;wish to?" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl met his eyes undauntedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I answered you in one way I should not be at all polite," she said;
+"and if in another, I should not be&mdash;be&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Honest?" suggested Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That would depend upon what I said," she answered with a non-committal
+shrug.  "Now I am going.  I've a lot to do in my cabin, and a luncheon
+menu to make out.  <I>Au revoir</I>!"  She paused at the entrance to the
+cabins, smiled brightly at Dan, and then disappeared.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Long he sat, gazing out over the serene waters, filled with a great
+inward thrill.  The wonder of all the fast-crowding events of the past
+fortnight was asserting itself potently in his mind, and it was
+difficult to realize he was not now living some wild, improbable dream.
+But, after all, he found the sense of responsibility dominant.  To his
+care was committed a beautiful life,&mdash;a life that must be saved,
+cherished, and ultimately restored to its proper environment.  Of late,
+it seemed, an evil star had pursued him; everything he had commanded or
+had anything to do with had either sunk or burned&mdash;an extraordinary
+train of misfortune not lacking in the lives of many able masters of
+craft.  What next?  He passed over that thought with a frown.  He was
+living in a beautiful present; the future would be met as the past had
+been, bravely and with no cry for quarter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The present!  He was immediately to learn how dearly he prized it; for
+as he gazed seaward, the smoke of a steamship, below the horizon,
+appeared.  He sprang to his feet and watched it eagerly; and yet when
+that faint column grew more dim and finally faded, he sat back
+constrained to confess that he was almost glad the course of the
+steamship was as it was.  He fought against it, thinking of the girl in
+the cabin and her interests.  And yet&mdash;and yet?  He shrugged his
+shoulders and walked toward the door, lured by the song which he
+remembered so clearly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+  "If I had you!  If I had you!  You!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will <I>I</I> do?" he laughed, peering in at her open door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For the present, yes," she bowed, "because I want you to admire.  See,
+I have been decorating my room with unbleached muslin.  Aren't those
+curtains dear?  And those silesia bunk tapestries, aren't they
+fascinating?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are, indeed.  How much would you charge to beautify my cabin?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia blushed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You had better ask how much you owe me," she said.  Then, "You haven't
+looked in your cabin!  And after all my labor, too!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With an exclamation Dan darted across the corridor and beheld, with
+kindling eyes, many evidences of that feminine touch without which
+hardened bachelors may fancy their quarters complete.  She had followed
+him to the door and was gazing over his shoulder.  Something caught in
+Dan's throat.  Always a man's man, as the saying is, the full force of
+the realization of his strange situation seemed rushing from the
+interior of that cabin to overpower him.  A girl, a beautiful girl, one
+whom he had looked upon as he had looked upon the beautiful
+unattainable things of this life, planning and executing for his
+pleasure, and blushing joyously to find that which she had done for him
+pleasing in his sight, left him bereft of words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He turned to her and strove to speak, and then suddenly he faced about
+and walked hurriedly to the deck.  She came up behind him and placed
+her hand upon his shoulder and smiled, understanding.  His eyes met
+hers, and then, with an involuntary movement, his arm was about her
+waist.  For a full minute they stood thus, neither moving, she
+regarding him with wondering eyes, but still smiling slightly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly he started; his arm swiftly dropped, and he glanced with a
+jerk of his head towards the sail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are we getting out of our course?" she asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I was," he said, scowling, "but I won't again.  Can you forgive one
+who is no better than a&mdash;than a blamed pirate?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I can forgive you everything but calling yourself names," she said
+gently.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Before another hour had passed, clouds began to rise from out the sea.
+There came a fitful breeze, with a little hum to it.  To the
+southeast-ward the horizon assumed a grayish-white tinge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan watched it anxiously, and the girl followed his gaze and then
+glanced at him inquiringly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's going to cloud over," he said.  "There may be some deviltry
+before we make shore."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He moistened his fingers, moving them to and fro in the air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It isn't a storm," he said; "it is fog."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fog!"  The girl was trembling.  "What does that mean?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It means that for a while old ocean is going to destroy all our pretty
+scenery, and that it is going to be cold and nasty and disagreeable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Already, in fact, the ocean had lost its color.  Heavy blue-white
+clouds with shredded, filmy foundations, which seemed almost to sweep
+the waters, moved swiftly to the westward, while in the background the
+wall of mist advanced silently to encompass them.  They could feel its
+breath, heavy, clammy, chilling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Presently a mass of vapor, like a detached squadron of cavalry, swept
+about the derelict and then moved on, leaving little shredded patches
+hanging about the foremast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Quite unknown to the girl, Dan, the preceding day, had constructed a
+raft, which he regarded as being quite as safe for ocean travelling, if
+not quite so comfortable, as the derelict.  He had lashed supplies, a
+small cask of water, and the like thereon, and now, with the fog-pall
+gathering about, he went amidships, examined it carefully, and made
+sure that nothing would prevent a hasty launching in event of disaster.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he returned the murk had closed in thickly.  It was as though the
+vessel were immured from the world.  Virginia was standing at the
+wheel, and with the pall throwing the derelict into more sombre relief,
+Dan caught more strongly than ever the utter contrast which her
+presence brought to this abandoned hulk.  Whenever she had walked along
+the deck it had seemed a profanation to him that the uneven planking
+should know her tread; that she should be on the derelict at all was,
+he felt, a working of Fate against everything that was beautiful and
+graceful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, as she stood there in the pallid gloom, she suggested some tall,
+beautiful genius, presiding over the wrack of elemental things, facing
+a more glorious future.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How shut in everything seems!" she said, as Dan took the wheel from
+her hands.  He had a long fog-horn which he blew at intervals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We haven't seen a speck of a ship," he explained, "but now the fog is
+about us there's liable to be a fleet of them in our vicinity at any
+time.  At least that has been my experience with fogs.  It would not be
+much fun to be rammed, although in our present condition I fancy it
+would hurt the other vessel more than it would this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Hour after hour they went on blindly, silently, save at such times as
+Dan's raucous horn blasts went tearing through the fog.  The wind had
+died away.  Sometimes the forward part of the vessel was hidden from
+their view.  Frequently it seemed distorted; strange phantom shapes
+filled the deck, and the soughing of the yielding hull brought strange,
+uncanny sounds to their ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan was seated on the deck, his eyes peering about on all sides, trying
+to pierce the veil, every nerve taut, every sense alert.  The girl
+crept close beside him, so that she touched him, and there she
+remained, while all the terrors of the ghostly ship arose to confront
+her.  The weed-hung, slimy rails and wave-bitten deck stretched away in
+ever-fading perspective to the foremast where everything ended in an
+amorphous blur.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came a time when the two felt almost a part of the deep&mdash;two
+mortals admitted into all the hidden evils that lurk thereon.  Their
+lot to witness the inception of mighty tempests; to hear great gray
+waves boast of the harm they had done and the winds to plan their
+rending deeds.  Perhaps they themselves would be called to the work, to
+deal to some proud vessel the death blow as so many derelicts have done.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once far off there sounded a series of whistle blasts, hoarse,
+tremulous notes of warning and inquiry.  But as the two listened with
+straining ears the sounds became more dim.  Finally they ceased
+altogether.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl eventually lost all sense of acute feeling.  She sat dumb, her
+undeviating eyes fastened upon Dan's face, as though in him she found
+all that was tangible or normal or real.  Her hand was resting on his
+shoulder now, clutching it tight; but if he knew it was there, he made
+no sign.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At length, toward evening, as though in a dream, Dan's voice bore upon
+her ears.  For a moment she gazed at him dully, and then she
+comprehended his words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is beginning to rain, Virginia.  The fog will go away now."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, good!" she exclaimed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The wind is freshening, too," he added, "and it doesn't feel very
+good.  I think we're going to have a blow for a change."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed so.  Already the mists were beginning to scuttle away before
+the increasing wind-rush which moaned with evil breath.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you hold the wheel for a moment, please," said Dan.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As she placed her hands on the spokes he went forward and lowered the
+sail.  There were two lines of reef points in the section of canvas and
+Dan took in both.  When he hoisted it again there was just a patch of
+three-cornered sail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Within half an hour it was raining hard.  The wind was increasing
+slowly but surely, and the sea was rising.  Dan asked the girl to go
+into the cabin and to remain there either until the storm was over, or
+he summoned her.  She obeyed him partially.  She went into the cabin,
+but returned quickly with two slickers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you suppose," she cried, "I am going to let you be alone now?  I am
+going to help you, and, if it must be, to die with you.  I am not a bit
+afraid any more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan placed his hand on her arm.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Get down here, then, under the lee of this cabin.  We are not going to
+die.  At least not yet a while."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So the storm came.  With his patch of sail Dan had headed the craft up
+into the wind; and thus, with the boat already beginning to rise and
+fall, with the broad bow groaning, and oozing ends of planking, and
+dirty water, and the deck, contracting and expanding like the belly of
+a stricken whale, he settled down to the long fight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The fog had all departed now.  North, east, south, and west, nothing
+but the gray of onrushing waves and a shrouded sky as implacable as the
+morning of doom.  Darkness was falling swiftly.  Soon the terrible
+night began.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Not that it was the worst storm in which Dan had ever been, but
+certainly he had never faced North Atlantic tumult under such a
+disadvantage, under conditions so desperately precarious.  The bow rose
+but heavily to the seas, and never topped them.  The water rushing
+over, poured down the deck in mill-races, filling it to the rails,
+occasionally springing up over the poop and the top of the after cabin,
+lashing the faces of the two crouching at the wheel behind it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a sou'easter, I'm almost certain," roared Dan in the girl's ear.
+"It will work up to a climax gradually, and then gradually go down, at
+this season of the year.  Don't be afraid of the water.  We can't sink,
+I believe; the only danger is that we might break up&mdash;and we won't do
+that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But despite the optimism of his words, Dan was not altogether certain
+that the wallowing wreck would hold together.  There was nothing to do
+but wait and see.  The situation he grasped in all its grievous
+details.  He had never been so happy, so utterly at peace as aboard
+this derelict.  No gilded barge of antiquity had ever been so glorious,
+so golden as this mangled wraith of the seas in the sunlit hours of the
+immediate past.  Her voice, her laughter, had filled them with music,
+her presence with all the poetry and romance of the world, and the
+light in her eyes shining for him alone had filled him with a great
+tenderness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, the night, the storm, danger&mdash;death, perhaps.  He shut his jaws
+and drove the flooding thoughts from his mind.  Anger,&mdash;the anger of
+bereavement,&mdash;filled him, and he glared into the tempest and twisted
+the wheel as though combating a sentient adversary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An hour passed, Cimmerian blackness had fallen.  The waves came
+savagely, ill-defined masses let loose from a viewless limbo to work
+their harm.  Sometimes they caught the dull gray flash of breaking
+waters, but more often everything was hidden.  The roar of the wind and
+wave was incessant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan's efforts to keep the derelict's head to the seas had failed.  The
+hulk had slued around and was driving before the tempest, whither he
+did not know.  Groaning, crashing, crackling, the hulk lumbered on.
+Once a wave leaped over the stern, stunning them with its thunderous
+impact, dragging at them powerfully, as though to draw them back into
+the sea whence it came.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Plunging thus, helpless, unseeing, they seemed to be flying as swiftly
+as the wind.  A wild ride&mdash;to where?  Were they driving out into the
+lonely heart of the deep, there to perish in a last long dive?  Or was
+it shoreward, with oblivion coming in the dreadful grinding and
+crashing and shattering of timbers?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Neither had the heart for even a faint hope for safety; and yet Dan,
+with his hands stiffened on the wheel spokes, fought on.  The girl,
+with her head bowed, sat still, her hands clinging to his shoulders.
+They did not speak.  Twice Dan had attempted to utter a cheering word,
+but the wind had swept the sounds from his lips.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both knew that at any moment the derelict might succumb to the forces
+striving to destroy her.  And, as they sat waiting, the realization
+came to both what a small part of the incidents of this heaving night
+the dismemberment of their washing vessel would be.  In the vortex of
+the riot, when the heavens and the ocean seemed united in the creation
+of chaos, they sensed the littleness of their own lives and the vanity
+of their affairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As a thunderous roar of wind smote the vessel Dan felt the pressure of
+Virginia's hand on his shoulder suddenly tighten.  He turned to her,
+and through the darkness caught the vague outlines of her face, which
+was fixed on the faint blur which marked the forward part of the hulk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His eyes followed just as her fingers loosened their grasp.  He saw
+nothing save the dull flash of swirling waters and the amorphous blotch
+of hull.  Slowly her hand tightened again; and then, as he looked he
+caught above the deck an impression of something moving.  It seemed to
+be something that was revealing itself to the instinct rather than to
+their visual senses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the wind passed on, leaving that confused murmur, broken only by the
+dogged rush of waters, Virginia spoke to Dan with trembling voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan's eyes were still staring forward.  He spoke through his clenched
+teeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait a moment."  More accustomed to the gloom ahead he was able to
+determine that the sail had torn from the boom and was waving out from
+the shattered mast-top like a flag.  The mast itself seemed to be
+reeling.  Was the hull opening and disintegrating?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Almost without volition he half arose to his feet.  The girl followed
+his action, still clinging to his shoulder.  Dan inclined his head to
+speak to her, when with a shriek the wind came again.  There was a dull
+crash forward, a splintering and rearing of wood, a quivering of the
+entire hull; and then, as though hurled by a giant hand, a huge section
+of wood, whether a part of cargo or hull Dan could not tell, shot out
+of the night, crashing a hole in the roof of the cabin behind which
+they were crouching, and then bounded over their heads into the sea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Both remained still, as though carved in stone.  Forward there was a
+crashing sound, a series of blows, as though some great hammer were
+engaged in disintegrating the hull.  There was a grinding of wood
+against wood which caused the deck under their feet to tremble.  Still
+neither moved.  The terrible thought that the derelict was going to
+pieces was in both their minds.  They had no doubt of this now.  They
+simply waited.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia had no great fear.  Her dominant thought was the dread of the
+first immersion in the cold, cruel, black waters.  But it would not
+last long.  Not long, not long&mdash;these two words kept ringing in her
+mind.  Her shoulders were drawn up, as though preparing for the shock.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Dan had not moved.  Half crouching, half kneeling, his eyes were
+fastened upon the vague deck ahead.  Now, as though the elements had
+worked to give him sight, the black sky was suddenly seared by a long,
+lurid line of lightning.  It was but the fraction of a second; it was
+long enough.  In that blue glow the derelict took form, grim, ghostly,
+heaving, as a spirit picture might be thrown upon a black cloth, every
+detail limned in filmy perfection.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With a cry Dan leaped to his feet and seized an axe lying by his side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are not breaking," he shouted.  "The mast has torn out of its step
+and is pounding us.  I am going to cut it away.  We shall be all right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl heard his voice, caught the enthusiasm of it, but
+distinguished not a single word.  As he crawled slowly by the side of
+the cabin to the steps leading to the deck she half arose as though to
+follow him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dan, Dan," she cried, "don't leave me!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He waved her back, and a second later had gained the deck.  For a few
+minutes she sat there, wondering, fearing, and then in a lull in the
+storm she heard the blows of the axe.  A great wave rose over the
+quarter and ran forward with a roar.  There came a shout.  She
+listened.  The sounds of the axe were heard no more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dan!" she called.  "Dan!"  Her words were whistled away on the wind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In desperation she worked her way to the steps and peered down upon the
+deck.  She heard nothing but the wind and the waves.  And then with her
+hair streaming wild, with lips bloodless, she stood upright and rushed
+to the deck.  The wind tore at her, flying water buffeted her, and the
+hulk swayed under her feet; but, as though endowed with superhuman
+power, as though scorning the elements to which she had bowed through
+the night she ran forward, heedless of everything but that her
+companion was in danger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Where she was going she knew not, nor cared.  A hand grasped the end of
+her slicker and brought her to a halt.  She looked down and saw Dan
+stretched upon the deck, the mast lying across his legs.  She knelt at
+his side.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dan!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He drew her head down so that her ear was near his mouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not hurt," he said coolly.  "The wave knocked the mast across me just
+as I had almost cut it through.  Find the axe.  Two strokes will free
+me.  Hurry.  Another wave may drown me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl swept her hands hastily over the deck.  She found the axe a
+few feet from Dan, and with that frenzied, nervous strength which comes
+to women in times of stress, she hacked at the mast, which Dan had
+almost cut through when the wave struck him.  Three times the edge of
+the implement glanced.  She ground her teeth, raised it a fourth time
+taking careful aim.  Then she let fly with all her strength, and the
+axe bit deep.  She raised it again, smiling now.  Two strokes, three
+strokes, four strokes.  The keen blade severed the last inch of wood,
+the hulk pitched forward, and the mast with its boom and its tangle of
+rigging and canvas rolled from Dan and plunged into the sea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was on his feet in a second, and with his arm about her waist they
+ran astern and reached their posts at the wheel in safety.  But there
+was no need to bother with the wheel now.  There was nothing to do, in
+fact, but sit inactive and accept what came to them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+And yet, had they but known it, Fate, which it may be said takes the
+lives of the young grudgingly, had worked for their ultimate good.  The
+Gulf Stream had carried them to a point off Hatteras, and there the
+storm had enveloped them.  As Dan had surmised, it was from the
+south-east, and laboring and flailing as sorely as she might, the winds
+and the waves had steadily lashed the vessel toward safety.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They could not know that.  It was only after an unusual interval in the
+powerful wind-blast that Dan looked upward and suddenly held up his
+hand.  He looked at the vague form of the girl and bared his teeth in a
+quick, mirthless smile.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The wind is changing," he muttered.  "What now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+There came another rush of wind.  But it was not so strong as its
+predecessors had been; and looking into the sky he could see the cloud
+movement.  He shook Virginia by the shoulder, and there was a
+triumphant ring in his voice as he shouted into her ear,
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The gale is passing!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gradually but surely the shrieking of the elements diminished; the seas
+were palpably falling.  Great, dark shapes could now be seen rushing
+across the lightening firmament, and once the girl, stretching her arm
+upward, exclaimed, as through a rift overhead she caught a glimpse of a
+little star.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Half an hour&mdash;there came a great peace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, a man and a woman out of the chaos&mdash;with the world and all its
+civilization and its manners and its men and its affairs as though they
+had never been, as though the two had lived for a flashing minute in
+some old dream&mdash;the strain of years that makes for ceremony and
+diffidence and convention and custom suddenly stopped, turned backward.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were the first man and the first woman on the verge of upheaval,
+having felt fear, not as we feel it, but in a dull, instinctive
+way&mdash;wondering horribly.  Just two, just a man and a woman, emerging
+from all the destructive might of the world.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She&mdash;not Virginia Howland now&mdash;just She&mdash;turned toward the man who
+crouched with one hand still clutching the wheel, the other lying
+loosely, palm downward upon the deck.  Her face was filled with the
+glow of returning blood, her hair streamed, her eyes shone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Gone, the tempest.  The waves were lashing, surly, hissing a monotone
+as old as Time is old.  The darkness was the gloom of an age before the
+sun was born.  The air was filled with low sounds that had been dead
+for aeons.  And she turned to him, and he turned to her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her bosom was rising and falling; he could hear her quick, hard
+breathing.  As though without volition, she moved a step forward, and
+with a low cry held out her arms to him, trembling no more, her heart
+filled with a wild, joyous song.  Suddenly she felt his breath upon her
+face, felt herself crushed in his arms, as she would be crushed.
+Gently he kissed her upon the lips, and then again and again and again.
+For a moment she lay dumb in his arms, and then as he drew back his
+head she put her arms around his neck and held his lips to hers.  So
+they stood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A force far greater than the unharnessed might of the ocean now
+thrilled and filled and exalted them.  Slowly she raised her hands and
+passed them over his face, lingeringly; once more she felt herself
+drawn to him, and laughed joyously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Dan turned, out of the darkness ahead he saw a light.  He looked
+again.  He saw it plainly now, that steady white disc with its red
+sector.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cape Henry!" he cried.  "Good God!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The girl started.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" she said, wonderingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cape Henry to port, Virginia.  We'll have a tug in an hour.  The dawn
+is coming now.  The sun will see us in Newport News."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Virginia regarded him dreamily, and tightened her clasp about his neck.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Newport News," she said; "and what do I care!  You have not kissed me
+in an age."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap15"></A>
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XV
+</H2>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CONCLUSION
+</H3>
+
+
+<P>
+The next afternoon Horace Howland sat in his office at No. 11 Broadway,
+staring moodily at his desk with its accumulation of papers.  For long,
+it seemed, he had lived in an agony of suspense.  Friends had come and
+gone and said their words, and passed on unrecognized and unheeded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+How many times had he wished that the Ward liner which had crossed the
+path of the boats and picked them up the morning after the fire had
+left him at least to perish.  A full half-dozen tugs and steamships had
+been sent to the scene of the conflagration there to cruise about until
+some trace of the missing should be found.  A Clyde vessel had sighted
+the burned steamship, a mere mass of charred and twisted frames and
+plates, sinking low in the sea.  A Government cruiser and a revenue
+cutter had joined in the search.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But no word had come.  An hour before, a messenger boy had arrived with
+a telegram.  It was one of many received by Mr. Howland every day, and
+he tossed it, unopened, upon a pile of similar envelopes upon his desk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Now, as he turned his eyes yearningly out of a window which gave upon
+the harbor, the name of a reporter was announced.  Mr. Howland had
+talked and talked and talked to reporters until he was sick of them as
+of every one and everything else.  He turned to his secretary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"See that fellow, will you?" he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In less than a minute the secretary hurried into the office with an
+excited manner, the reporter at his heels, bearing a long sheet of
+tissue paper filled with typewriting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have come to see you about the rescue of your daughter, Mr. Howland."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The merchant wheeled quickly in his chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What!" he cried.  Then he sprang to his feet and seized the manuscript
+which the reporter held out to him.  Quickly he read it.  Then he read
+it again, more slowly.  He read it a third time.  His hand flew to his
+forehead, and he staggered back to his chair.  The secretary stepped to
+his side, but Mr. Howland waved him away.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When did this come?" he asked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A few moments ago," replied the reporter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," and Mr. Howland gazed at his informant with suffused eyes, "I
+thank you for your kindness.  You must know how grateful I am.  Of
+course there is nothing I can tell you&mdash;nothing you want to know."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The reporter hesitated a moment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No," he said, "I don't suppose you can tell me much.  Except&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Eh?" said Mr. Howland.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Except&mdash;you read the despatch.  It speaks of Captain Merrithew as Miss
+Howland's <I>fiancé</I>."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes."  Mr. Howland's years of business resource and acumen were
+beginning to assert themselves.  "Oh, <I>fiancé</I>!  I see.  Romance will
+help your article.  Well, there isn't any.  Captain Merrithew and my
+daughter were engaged before we started on this <I>Tampico</I> jaunt."  He
+looked at the reporter steadily.  "Merrithew, you know, is really the
+Assistant Marine Superintendent of the Coastwise Company; also a
+stock-holder.  He was sailing the <I>Tampico</I> merely for experience."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The reporter smiled at Mr. Howland.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Merrithew is to be congratulated," he said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I fancy so," replied Mr. Howland.  "In fact," he added, "do you know,
+I have reason to be quite sure of it."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+THE END
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dan Merrithew, by Lawrence Perry
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dan Merrithew, by Lawrence Perry
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Dan Merrithew
+
+Author: Lawrence Perry
+
+Illustrator: J. V. McFall
+
+Release Date: September 24, 2005 [EBook #16742]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAN MERRITHEW ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Al Haines
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Tongues of flame reached hungrily for them, licking
+above Dan's red-gold hair, but never touching the girl.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Dan Merrithew
+
+By Lawrence Perry
+
+
+
+Author of "From the Depths of Things," "Two Tramps," "The Bounder,"
+"The Sacrifice," etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLORS
+
+BY J. V. McFALL
+
+
+
+
+
+A. L. BURT COMPANY
+
+PUBLISHERS                NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT
+
+By A. C. McClurg & Co.
+
+A.D. 1910
+
+
+
+Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England
+
+
+
+Published, March 12, 1910
+
+Second edition, March 19, 1910
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+_Thanks are due Mr. Arthur W. Little, president of the Pearson
+Publishing Company, for permission to use in this novel several
+incidents in the life of Dan Merrithew which originally appeared in
+"Pearson's Magazine."_
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+LARRY
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER
+TOC
+    I.  THE GIRL ON THE "VEILED LADYE"
+   II.  DAN'S SEARCH FOR THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
+  III.  A FIGHT IN THE DARK
+   IV.  DAN STAKES HIS LIFE, AND WINS
+    V.  THE LOSS OF THE "FLEDGLING"
+   VI.  THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR
+  VII.  DAN IS COMMANDED TO A PARTY
+ VIII.  WITS VERSUS MACHINE GUNS
+   IX.  AN ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION
+    X.  THE WRAITH IN THE MOONLIGHT
+   XI.  THE BURNING OF THE "TAMPICO"
+  XII.  ALONE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
+ XIII.  NIGHT ON THE DERELICT
+  XIV.  DAN AND VIRGINIA
+   XV.  CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+Tongues of flame reached hungrily for them, licking above Dan's
+red-gold hair, but never touching the girl . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+"Oh, father," broke in the girl, "tell him it was noble!"
+
+In the flash of an eye, Dan was making for the assassin
+
+Opposite, smiling at him as though they had breakfasted together for
+years, was the radiant girl
+
+
+
+DAN MERRITHEW
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE GIRL ON THE "VEILED LADYE"
+
+The big coastwise tug _Hydrographer_ slid stern-ward into a slip
+cluttered with driftwood and bituminous dust, stopping within heaving
+distance of three coal-laden barges which in their day had reared
+"royal s'ls" to the wayward winds of the seven seas.
+
+Near-by lay Horace Howland's ocean-going steam yacht, _Veiled Ladye_,
+which had put into Norfolk from Caribbean ports, to replenish her
+bunkers.  There were a number of guests aboard, and most of them arose
+from their wicker chairs on the after-deck and went to the rail, as the
+great tug pounded alongside.
+
+Grateful for any kind of a break in the monotony of the long morning,
+they observed with interest the movements of a tall young man, in a
+blue shirt open at the throat and green corduroy trousers, who caught
+the heaving line hurtling from the bow of the nearest barge, and hauled
+the attached towing-cable dripping and wriggling from the heavy waters.
+
+He did it gracefully.  There was a fine play of broad shoulders, a
+resilient disposition of the long, straight limbs, an impression of
+tiger-like strength and suppleness, not lost upon his observers, upon
+Virginia Howland least of all.  She was not a girl to suppress a
+thought or emotion uppermost in her mind; and now she turned to her
+father with an exclamation of pleasure.
+
+"Father," she cried, "look!  Isn't he simply stunning!  The Greek
+ideal--and on a tugboat!"  Her dark eyes lightened with mischief.  "Do
+you suppose he'd mind if I spoke to him?"
+
+"He'd probably swear at you," said young Ralph Oddington, with a grin.
+Then, seized by a sudden impulse for which he afterwards kicked
+himself, being a decent sort of chap, he drew his cigarette case from
+his pocket and, as the tug came to a standstill, tossed a cigarette
+across the intervening space.  It struck the man in the back, and as he
+turned, Oddington called,
+
+"Have a cigarette, Bill?"
+
+The tugman's lips parted, giving a flashing glimpse of big, straight,
+white teeth.  Then they closed, and for an instant he regarded the
+speaker with a hard, curious expression in his quiet gray eyes, and the
+proffered cigarette, as though by accident, was shapeless under his
+heel.
+
+It was distinctly embarrassing for the yachting party; and partly to
+relieve Oddington, partly out of curiosity, Virginia Howland leaned
+over the rail with a smile.  "Please pardon us, Mr. Tugboatman.  We
+didn't mean to offend you; we--"
+
+The young man again swept the party with his eyes, and then meeting the
+girl's gaze full, he waited for her to complete the sentence.
+
+"We," she continued, "of course meant no harm."
+
+He did not reply for a moment, did not reply till her eyes fell.
+
+"All right--thanks," he said simply and then hurried forward.
+
+At sunset the _Veiled Ladye_ was well on her way to New York, and the
+_Hydrographer_ was plugging past Hog Island light with her cumbersome
+tows plunging astern.
+
+It came to be a wild night.  The tumbling blue-black clouds of late
+afternoon fulfilled their promise of evil things for the dark.  There
+were fierce pounding hours when the wrath of the sea seemed centred
+upon the _Hydrographer_ and her lumbering barges, when the towing-lines
+hummed like the harp strings of Aeolus.
+
+It was man's work the crew of the _Hydrographer_ performed that night;
+when the dawn came and the wind departed with a farewell shriek, and
+the seas began to fall, Dan Merrithew sat quiet for a while, gazing
+vacantly out over the gray waters, wrestling with the realization that
+through all the viewless turmoil the face of a girl he did not
+know--never would know, probably--had not been absent from his mind;
+that the sound of her voice had lingered in his ears rising out of the
+elemental confusion, as the notes of a violin, freeing themselves from
+orchestral harmony, suddenly rise clear, dominating the _motif_ in
+piercing obligato.
+
+When he arose it was with the conviction that this meant something
+which eventually would prove of interest to him.  One evening some
+three months before, he had visited the little sailors' church which
+floats in the East River at the foot of Pike Street in New York, and
+listened to a preacher who was speaking in terms as simple as he could
+make them, with Fate as his text.
+
+Fate, he said, works, in mysterious ways and does queer things with its
+instruments.  It may sear a soul, or alter the course of a life in
+seeming jest; but the end proves no jest at all, and if we live long
+enough and grow wise with our years, we learn that at the bottom, ever
+and always, in everything, was a guiding hand, a sure intent, and a
+serious purpose.
+
+It was a good, plain, simple talk such as longshoremen, dock-rats,
+tugmen, and seamen often hear in this place, but it impressed young
+Merrithew; for, although he had never accepted his misfortunes, nor
+reasoned away the things that tried his soul in this philosophical
+manner, yet he had always had a vague conviction that everything that
+happened was for his good and would work out in the end.
+
+The words of the preacher seemed to give him clearer understanding in
+this regard, taught him to weigh carefully things which, as they
+appeared to him, were on the face insignificant.  This had led him into
+strange trends of thought, had encouraged, in a way, superstitious
+fancies not altogether good for him.  He knew that, and he had cursed
+his folly, and yet on this morning after the storm, on the after-deck
+of a throbbing tugboat he nodded his head sharply, outward acquiescence
+to an inward conviction that somehow, somewhere, he was going to see
+that face again and hear that voice.  That was as certain as that he
+lived.  And when this took place he would not be a tugboat mate.  That
+was all.
+
+Whatever he did thereafter he had this additional incentive, the future
+meeting with a tall, lithe girl with dark-brown hair and gray
+eyes--brave, deep eyes, and slightly swarthy cheeks, which were crimson
+as she spoke to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+DAN'S SEARCH FOR THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
+
+Daniel Merrithew was one of the Merrithews of a town near Boston, a
+prime old seafaring family.  His father had a waning interest in three
+whaling-vessels; and when two of them opened like crocuses at their
+piers in New Bedford, being full of years, and the third foundered in
+the Antarctic, the old man died, chiefly because he could see no clear
+way of longer making a living.
+
+Young Merrithew at the time was in a New England preparatory school,
+playing excellent football and passing examinations by the skin of his
+teeth.  Thrown upon his own resources, his mother having died in early
+years, he had to decide whether he would work his way through the
+school and later through college, or trust to such education as he
+already had to carry him along in the world.
+
+It was altogether adequate for practical purposes, he argued, and so he
+lost little time in proceeding to New York, where he began a business
+career as a clerk in the office of the marine superintendent of a great
+coal-carrying railroad.  It was a beginning with a quick ending.  The
+clerkly pen was not for him; he discovered this before he was told.
+The blood of the Merrithews was not to be denied; and turning to the
+salt water, his request for a berth on one of the company's big
+sea-going tugs was received with every manifestation of approval.
+
+When he first presented himself to the Captain of the _Hydrographer_,
+the bluff skipper set the young man down as a college boy in search of
+sociological experience and therefore to be viewed with good-humored
+tolerance--good-humored, because Dan was six feet tall and had
+combative red-gold hair.  His steel eyes were shaded by long
+straw-colored lashes; he had a fighting look about him.  He had a
+magnificent temper, red, but not uncalculating, with a punch like a
+mule's kick back of it.
+
+As week after week passed, and the new hand revealed no temperamental
+proclivities, no "kid-glove" inclinations, seemingly content with
+washing down decks, lassooing pier bitts with the bight of a hawser at
+a distance of ten feet, and hauling ash-buckets from the fireroom when
+the blower was out of order--both of which last were made possible by
+his mighty shoulders--the Captain began to take a different sort of
+interest in him.
+
+He allowed Dan to spend all his spare moments with him in the
+pilot-house; and as the Captain could shoot the sun and figure latitude
+and longitude and talk with fair understanding upon many other elements
+of navigation, the young man's time was by no means wasted.  Later, Dan
+arranged with the director of a South Street night school of navigation
+for the evenings when he was in port, and by the time they made him
+mate of the _Hydrographer_, he was almost qualified to undergo
+examination for his master's certificate.
+
+Mental changes are not always attended by outward manifestations, but
+all the crew of the _Hydrographer_, after that mad night off the
+Virginia Capes, could see that something had hit the stalwart mate.
+The edge seemed to be missing from his occasional moods of abandon;
+sometimes he looked thoughtfully at a man without hearing what the man
+was saying to him.  But it did not impair his usefulness, and his
+Captain could see indications of a better defined point in his
+ambitions.
+
+So that was the way things were with him when, on a gray December
+afternoon, the day before Christmas, the _Hydrographer_, just arrived
+from Providence, slid against her pier in Jersey City, and the crew
+with jocular shouts made the hawsers fast to the bitts.  Some months
+before, the _Hydrographer_ had stumbled across a lumber-laden schooner,
+abandoned in good condition off Fire Island, and had towed her into
+port.  The courts had awarded goodly salvage; and the tug's owners,
+filled with the spirit of the season, had sent a man to the pier to
+announce that at the office each of the crew would find his share of
+the bounty, and a little extra, in recognition of work in the company's
+interest.
+
+"Dan," said the Captain, as the young man entered the pilot-house in
+his well-fitting shore clothes, "you ought to get a pot of money out of
+this; now don't go ashore and spend it all tonight.  You bank most of
+it.  Take it from me--if I'd started to bank my money at your age, I
+would be paying men to run tugboats for me now."
+
+"Oh, I've money in the bank," laughed Dan.  "I'll bank most of this;
+but first I'm going to lay out just fifty dollars, which ought to buy
+about all the Christmas joy I need.  I was going to Boston to shock
+some sober relations of mine, but I've changed my mind.  About seven
+o'clock this evening you'll find me in a restaurant not far from
+Broadway and Forty-second Street; an hour later you'll locate me in the
+front row of a Broadway theatre; and--better come with me, Captain
+Bunker."
+
+"No, thanks, Dan," said the Captain.  "If you come with _me_ over to
+the house in Staten Island about two hours from now, you'll see just
+three little noses pressed against the window pane--waiting for daddy
+and Santa Claus."  The Captain's big red face grew tender and his eyes
+softened.  "When you get older, Dan," he added, "you'll know that
+Christmas ain't so much what you get out of it as what you put into it."
+
+Dan thought of the Captain's words as he crossed the ferry to New York.
+All through the day he had been filled with the pleasurable conviction
+that the morrow was a pretty decent sort of day to be ashore, and he
+had intended to work up to the joys thereof to the utmost of his
+capacity.
+
+Now, with his knowledge as to the sort of enjoyment which Captain
+Bunker was going to get out of the day, his well-laid plans seemed to
+turn to ashes.  The trouble was, he could not exactly say why this
+should be.  He finally decided that his prospective sojourn amid the
+gay life of the metropolis had not been at all responsible for the
+mental uplift which had colored his view of the day.
+
+It had come, he now believed, solely from the attitude of the Captain
+and Jeff Morrill the engineer, and Sam Tonkin the deck-hand--soon to
+become a mate--and Bill Lawson, another deck-hand; all of whom had
+little children at home.  Well, he had no little children at home.
+That settled the matter so far as he was concerned.  Blithely he began
+to plan his dinner and select the theatre he should attend.  But, no;
+the old problem returned insistently, and at length he was obliged to
+confess that he could devise no solution, and that he did not feel half
+as good as he had a few hours before.
+
+At all events he would be as happy as he could.  After leaving the
+company's office, where he received a hearty "Merry Christmas" and a
+fat yellow envelope, he went to the neat little brick house on Cherry
+Street where he had rooms, and learned that Mrs. O'Hare, his landlady,
+had gone to her daughter's house on Varick Street to set up a Christmas
+tree and help to start things for the children.  Dan was sorry.  He had
+rather looked forward to meeting this cheerful person with her
+spectacles and kindly old face, who mothered him so assiduously when he
+was ashore.
+
+Why the devil had he not thought of finding out about those
+grandchildren and of buying them something for Christmas?  But he had
+not, and now he did not know whether they were girls or boys or both,
+nor how many of them there were.  So he had no way of knowing what to
+buy, or how much.  Somehow he had here a feeling that he had been on
+the verge of an interesting discovery.  But only on the verge.
+
+He walked slowly out of the house and turned into South Street.  In the
+life of this quaint thoroughfare he had cast his lot, and here he spent
+his leisure hours; not that he had ever found the place or the men he
+met there especially congenial.  But they were the men he knew, the men
+he worked with or worked against; and any young fellow who is lonely in
+a big city and placed as Dan was is just as liable, until he has found
+himself and located his rut in life, to mingle with persons as strange,
+with natures as alien, and to frequent places which in later years fill
+him with repulsive memories.
+
+At all events Dan did, and he was not worrying about it a bit, either,
+as he sauntered under the Brooklyn Bridge span at Dover Street and
+turned into South, where Christmas Eve is so joyous, in its way.  The
+way on this particular evening was in no place more clearly interpreted
+than Red Murphy's resort, where the guild of Battery rowboatmen, who
+meet steamships in their Whitehall boats and carry their hawsers to
+longshoremen waiting to make them fast to the pier bitts, congregate
+and have their social being.
+
+Here, on this day, the wealthy towboat-owners and captains are wont to
+distribute their largess to the boatmen as a mark of appreciation for
+favors rendered,--a suggestion that future favors are expected,--and
+here, also, punch of exalted brew is concocted and drunk.
+
+An occasional flurry of snow swept down the street as Dan reached the
+entrance.  Murphy was out on the sidewalk directing the adornment of
+his doorway with several faded evergreen wreaths, while inside, the
+boatmen gathered closer around the genial potstove and were not sorry
+that ice-bound rivers and harbor had brought their business to a
+temporary standstill.  They were discussing the morrow, which logically
+led to a consideration of the ice-pack, among other things, and thence
+to Cap'n Barney Hodge's ill luck.
+
+"Take a hard and early winter," old Bill Darragh, the dean of the
+boatmen, was saying, "then a thaw in the middle o' December, and then a
+friz-up, and ye git conditions that ain't propitious, as ye may say,
+fur towboatmen--nur fur us, neither."
+
+"True fur ye," said "Honest Bill" Duffy.  "Nigh half the tugs in the
+harbor is in the Erie Basin with screw blades twisted off by the
+ice-pack, or sheathin' ripped.  And it's gittin' worse.  They'll be
+little enough money for us this year--an' I was countin' on a hunder to
+pay a doctor's bill."
+
+"Well, maybe you'll get more than you think," said Dan, whose words
+always carried weight because he was mate of a deep-sea tug.  "Captain
+Barney Hodge's _Three Sisters_ was laid up yesterday; a three-foot
+piece of piling bedded in an ice-cake got caught in her screw,
+and--zip!  The other fellows are feeling so good about it that I think
+they'll be apt to be generous."
+
+"We'll drink to Barney's bad health," said Darragh, raising his glass.
+"I saw him half an hour gone.  He looked like a dead man.  Cap'n Jim
+Skelly o' the _John Quinn_ piloted _Gypsum Prince_ inter her dock last
+night.  No one ever handled her afore but Cap'n Barney.  An' the
+_Kentigern_ from Liverpool is due to-night.  Skelly's layin' fur her
+too; an' he'll git her.  That'll take two vessels from Barney's private
+monopoly."
+
+Darragh was right.  The towboatmen had Captain Barney where they wanted
+him, and they meant to gaff him hard.  He had always been too sharp for
+the rest, too good at a bargain, too mean; and what was more, he was in
+every way the best towboatman that ever lived.  No one liked him; but
+the steamship-captains engaged his services for towing and piloting,
+nevertheless, for the reason that they considered him a disagreeable
+necessity, believing that no other tugboatman could serve them so well.
+
+As a matter of fact, there were several tugboat-captains hardly less
+skilful than Captain Barney, and in the time of his idleness they bade
+fair to secure not a few of his customers.  It was an old saying that
+Captain Barney, touched in his pocket, was touched in his heart and
+brain also--they meant to touch him in just those places.
+
+"I see him this morning," said Duffy, "when he heard that Cap'n Jim
+Skelly 'd come in on the bridge of the _Gypsum Prince_.  He was
+a-weepin' and cursin' like a drunk.  Hereafter he'll have to divide the
+_Gypsum_, and she arrives reg'lar, too."
+
+"And he'll lose the _Kentigern_ to-night," laughed Dan.  "Well, I don't
+care.  It'll do him good.  I hope they put him out of business."
+
+"Thankee, gents, for your Christmas wishes.  I'm glad my friends are
+with me."  The words, in low, mournful cadence, came from the doorway;
+and all eyes turning there saw the stout, melancholy figure of Captain
+Barney, his great hooked nose falling dejectedly toward his chin, his
+hawk eyes dull and sombre.  He had been drinking; and as Duffy made as
+though to throw a bottle at him, the fallen great man turned and
+stumbled away.
+
+A few minutes later Dan left the resort, faced the biting north wind,
+and walked slowly up South Street.  Somehow he could not get Captain
+Barney out of his mind.
+
+The year before, in violation of an explicit agreement, Captain Barney
+had worked in with an outside rowboatman from West Street, towing him
+to piers where vessels were about to dock.  This, of course, got that
+boatman on the scene in advance of the Battery men, who had only their
+strong arms and their oars to depend upon.  Thus the rival had the
+first chance at the job of carrying the lines from the docking
+steamships to men waiting on the pier to make them fast.  Captain
+Barney received part of the money which this boatman made.  It was
+little enough, to be sure, but no amount of money was too small for
+him.  And so Dan, the Battery boatmen being his friends, was glad to
+see Hodge on his knees--yet he was the slickest tugboat-captain on
+earth.
+
+Dan could not help admiring him for that; and now he could not dismiss
+from his mind the pitiable picture which Murphy's doorway had framed
+but a few minutes before.  He tried to, for Dan was an impressionable
+young fellow and was worrying too much about this Christmas idea,
+endeavoring to solve his emotions, without bothering about the troubles
+of a towboat-skipper who deserved all he got and more.
+
+All along the street were Christmas greens.  The ship chandlers had
+them festooned about huge lengths of rusty chains and barnacled anchors
+and huge coils of hawser, and the tawdry windows of the dram shops were
+hidden by them.  A frowsy woman, with a happy smile upon her face,
+hurried past with a new doll in her arms.  Dan stopped a minute to
+watch her.
+
+Something turned him into a little toyshop near Coenties Slip and he
+saw a tugboat deck-hand purchase a pitiful little train of cars, laying
+his quarter on the counter with the softest smile he had seen on a
+man's face in a twelvemonth.
+
+"Something for the kid, eh?" said Dan rather gruffly.
+
+"Sure," replied the deck-hand, and he took his bundle with a sort of
+defiant expression.
+
+He saw a little mother, a girl not more than twelve years old, with a
+pinched face and a rag shawl about her shoulders, spend ten cents for a
+bit of a doll and a bag of Christmas candy.
+
+"Going to have a good time, all by yourself?" growled Dan.
+
+"Naw, this is fur me little sister," said the girl bravely, if a little
+contemptuously.  A great lump came into Dan's throat, and feeling
+somewhat weak and ashamed, he left the shop.  Elemental sensations
+which he could not define thrilled him, and the spirit of Christmas,
+now entirely unsatisfied, rested on his soul like an incubus.  He began
+to feel outside of everything--as though the season had come for every
+one but him.
+
+Near Pike Street a little group of the Salvation Army stood on the
+curb.  One of them was a fat, uncomely woman, and she was singing,
+accompanying herself upon a guitar.  The music was that of a popular
+ballad, and the verses were of rude manufacture.
+
+There were perhaps half a dozen listeners scattered about the sidewalk
+at a distance sufficient to prevent possible scoffers from including
+them in the service.  Two of them were rough workmen, and they stood in
+the middle of the sidewalk staring vacantly ahead, trying to look
+oblivious.  Two longshoremen sat on the curb ten feet away, and a man
+and a woman leaned against the door of a near-by warehouse.  When the
+song was finished the two workmen hurriedly approached and threw
+nickels on the face of the big bass drum lying flat on the street,
+retreating hastily, as though ashamed; the woman did likewise, and one
+of the longshoremen.
+
+"Buying salvation," grinned Dan, as he walked on up the street.  But
+the pleasantry made inadequate appeal.  Every one was getting more out
+of the season than he was.  Once he drew a dollar from his pocket and
+started back.  But no.  What was a dollar to him?  He knew where there
+were more.  That wasn't it.  He put the money in his pocket and walked
+on.
+
+Dan's mental processes leading to a determination to help Captain
+Barney were too clouded for clear interpretation, but he knew there was
+no more uncertainty in his mind after he had sought the Captain out and
+offered to put him on board the _Kentigern_.
+
+Hodges fairly wept his gratitude.  "Dan, Dan, you say you can put me
+aboard the _Kentigern_!  You'll save my business if you do.  I don't
+care about the towing part, because if I can get aboard and pilot her
+in, I can hand the towing over to those who'll take care of me.  Dan,
+you're a good boy.  How'll you do it?"
+
+"No time to tell now," said Dan.  "Meet me at Pier 3 in an hour."
+
+"Say," cried Captain Barney, as Dan hurried away; "how much'll it be?
+Not too much--"
+
+Dan stopped short.
+
+"Nothing!" he roared.  "It's--it's a Christmas present."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A FIGHT IN THE DARK
+
+The short gray December twilight was creeping over the bay as Dan
+pulled out from the Battery basin in a boat which he kept there for
+recreative jaunts about the harbor.  Hard pulling and cold it was, but
+the boatman bent his back and shot up the East River with the strength
+of the young giant he was.  He could see Captain Barney, muffled to the
+ears, stamping impatiently about on the end of the designated pier.
+Without a word he swung his boat in such a position that the Captain
+could drop into it.
+
+Barney was delighted, so far forgetting himself, indeed, as to attempt
+to establish cordial understanding.
+
+"Hello, my boy," he said genially, "we're a-goin' to fix 'em!"  Then
+noting a blank expression on Dan's face, his jaws closed with a click
+and he lowered himself from the pier and into the boat without further
+words, while Dan shoved out into the river and started for the pier
+above, where Captain Jim Skelly's tug, the _John Quinn_, was lying.
+She had steam up and was all ready for her journey to meet the
+_Kentigern_.  That vessel had been reported east of Fire Island and
+would be well across the bar by eight o'clock.  She would anchor on the
+bar for the night, and it was there that Captain Jim Skelly meant to
+board her in order to forestall any possible scheme that wily Captain
+Barney might devise to gain the bridge of the freighter.
+
+As Dan paddled noiselessly around the other side of the pier, they
+could see the pipe lights of the Quinn's crew.  Finally the rowboat
+turned straight under the pier, threading its way among the greasy
+green piles.  Reaching under the seat, Dan drew out a stout inch line.
+
+"When I back in on the _Quinn_," he whispered, "make that line fast to
+the rudder post.  We'll let her tow us to the _Kentigern_."
+
+"What!" hissed Captain Barney, and his face turned pale.  But it was
+only for a second, after which he chuckled.
+
+Slowly, gently, quietly, the rowboat slid among the green piles until
+the stern of the big tug loomed overhead.  When it was within reach
+Captain Barney leaned out, made one end of the line fast to the tug's
+rudder post and then, paying out about twenty feet, he fastened the
+other end to the bitts in the bow of the rowboat.
+
+It seemed an hour's waiting before the _Quinn's_ crew cast off the
+lines, but in reality it was not more than ten minutes.  As the screw
+began to thresh the water and the tug to move swiftly out into the
+river, it required rare skill on the part of the young boatman to
+manoeuvre the boat so she should not be upset at the start.  But Dan
+had the skill required and more besides, as he knelt in the stern with
+one oar deep in the water to the port side.
+
+In the course of a few minutes they were fairly on their way, and
+Captain Jim Skelly was losing no time.  He had full speed before the
+tug was a hundred yards from the pier, and the spray and the splintered
+chips of ice flew back from the sharp bow, smiting the faces of the two
+men in the little boat dragging astern with three-quarters of her
+length out of water.  Dan, kneeling aft, watched with eagle eye each
+quirk and turn of the tow-line.
+
+It is the hardest thing a man has to do--to tow behind a tug or
+ferryboat, even under fair conditions.  In this case, the conditions
+were far from fair, for there was the ice, lazily rolling and cracking
+in the heavy wake of the tug, grinding against the sides of the
+rowboat, until it seemed that they must be crushed.  There was great
+danger that they would be.  There was danger also that the tow-line
+might slue both men into the icy waters and upset the boat.
+
+Captain Barney was tingling with fear.  Dan knew it, and smiled.  It
+was not often that any one had the privilege of seeing Captain Barney
+frightened.
+
+As the tug veered to starboard to round Governor's Island the tow-line
+slued to port and thence quickly to starboard.  The rowboat was snapped
+over on her gunwales and the water poured in like a mill-race.  A roar
+of an oath escaped Captain Barney's lips, but before he had closed them
+the boat had righted.
+
+"Shut up, will you?" hissed Dan.  "Do you want them to discover and
+drown us?  Ugh--she skated clean over that ice-cake!"
+
+"You've got me out here to kill me, Dan," whimpered Captain Barney.
+"'A Christmas present!'  I see--now."
+
+"Will you keep still?" whispered Dan.  "If they hear us, you'll find
+out who wants to kill you.  The root she took that time was nothing.
+There'll be worse ones--this boat is not through rooting yet."
+
+Neither was she.  Ahead the tug loomed, a great dark shape; and the
+pulse of her engines was lost in the roiling water rising from the
+screw blades and the hiss of it as it raced by the row-boat.  There was
+a dim blur of light from one of the after-cabin portholes and the
+shadow of figures passing to and fro inside could be seen.  The decks
+were deserted.  It was too cold to brave the night wind except under
+necessity--a night wind that cut through the pea-jackets and ear-caps
+and thick woollen gloves of the two men in the rowboat.  Captain Barney
+felt a fierce resentment that the _Quinn's_ men should be so warm and
+comfortable while he was shivering.
+
+"Christmas Eve!" he exclaimed.  "Fine, ain't it?" and he flailed his
+arms about to keep the blood in circulation.
+
+"Christmas Eve," said Dan solemnly, as though to himself, "the finest I
+ever spent"; and he added apologetically, "even if I am making an
+eternal fool of myself."
+
+On they sped.  Frequently the tug would hit a large stretch of clear
+water, and at such times the jingle-bell would sound in the engine-room
+and the _Quinn_ would shoot forward at a rate that fairly lifted the
+rowboat out of the water, while Dan, kneeling astern, oar in hand,
+muscles tense, and mind alert, was ready to do anything that lay in his
+skill to prevent an untoward accident.
+
+Swish!  Zip! and the rowboat would suddenly shoot to one side or the
+other, compelling Dan to dig his oar way down into the water, bending
+all his strength in efforts to keep the bow straight.
+
+"She's rooting every second," he grumbled, opening and shutting his
+hand to drive away the stiffness and then casting a vindictive glance
+at Captain Barney, the source of all the trouble.
+
+And as for the tugboat-skipper, he sat and watched his companion, and
+resolved that, after all, there were a few things he did not know about
+watermanship.
+
+Between the shadowy banks of the Narrows shot the _Quinn_.  Out of the
+harbor in a rowboat!  Even professional Battery boatmen do this about
+once in a generation.  The immense, shadowless darkness smote their
+eyes so that they turned to the cabin light for relief.
+
+There was likely to be little ice out there, and the northwest wind had
+knocked the sea flat, as Dan knew would be the case when he figured his
+chances at the start.  It was bad enough though, for there was certain
+to be something of a swell--and other things; and now that he was in
+the midst of it, he had grave doubts as to what would happen.  But his
+strange exaltation rose supreme to all fears; no danger seemed too
+great, no possibility too ominous, to dampen the ardor of this, his
+first big act of self-sacrifice.  The song the Salvation woman sang
+passed through his mind.
+
+  "Gawd is mighty and grateful;
+    No act of my brother's or mine
+  Escapes His understandin',
+    In the good old Christmas time."
+
+"As soon as we get near the _Kentigern_," he said, "we'll cut loose
+from the _Quinn_, and while she is warping alongside we'll make a dash,
+and you can hail 'em and get 'em to lower a ladder.  You can beat
+Skelly that way.  That's what I'm banking on."
+
+"You just put me alongside and I'll see to the rest," replied the
+Captain impatiently.  He would have attempted to scale the steel sides
+of the vessel themselves, if only to escape from that little boat,
+tailing astern of the _Quinn_ in the heart of the darkness, rooting,
+twisting, threatening to dive under the water.
+
+"What are you goin' to do after I get aboard?" asked Captain Barney,
+rubbing his hands as though the victory were already won.  "I declare,
+I never thought of you!  You can't row back."
+
+Dan raised his head angrily and started to utter a sneering reply, when
+the first good swell caught the boat--a great lazy, greasy fellow.  The
+_Quinn_ went up and then down, and after her shot the rowboat, like a
+young colt frisking at the end of her tether, then careening down the
+incline on her side as though to ram the stern of the tug ahead, which,
+fortunately, was climbing another hill.
+
+What the rowboat had been through before was child's play to this, and
+Dan's face grew very stern.  Reaching down with one hand, he seized the
+other oar and shoved it along to Captain Barney.  "Put that down on the
+port side.  Hang on for your life and keep her steady!" he cried.
+
+Then he gave his attention to his side of the boat while Captain Barney
+struggled in the bow.  It was a fight that would have thrilled the soul
+of whoever could have seen it.  But that is always the way in the
+bravest, most hopeless fights--no one ever sees them.  They are fought
+alone, in the dark, on the sea; and sometimes the lion-hearted live to
+make a modest tale of it around a winter's fire; but more often the
+sequel is, "Found drowned"--if even that.
+
+Captain Barney, frightened into desperate courage, and Dan, in grim
+realization that the measure of his good deed this night was the
+measure of the soul he was getting to know, fought sternly.  They were
+on the open sea with all its mystery and lurking fate, and the dark was
+all about.  There was not even the impression of distance; the swells
+arose as though at their elbows, tossed them with great, slimy ease,
+let them down again, plucked them this way and that, while the humming
+tow-line ran out to the vague, phantom, reeling tug ahead.
+
+There was a suspicion of snow in the veiled sky, and the wind stabbed
+like a knife.  Twice the tug cut through a field of ice making out on
+an offshore current, and the thumping the little row-boat received
+seemed likely to rend her into drift-wood.  But that was only one of
+the chances; and the two men went on into the icy blast with jaws so
+tightly clenched that their cheek muscles stood out in great knots.
+
+The silence, the danger, the vagueness hung heavily.  As Dan cast his
+eyes gloomily into the wake of the tug, he saw a dark object shoot out
+of the foam and dart down upon them like a torpedo; in fact a torpedo
+could not have worked more serious effect upon the boat than did that
+heavy, water-soaked log.
+
+"Starboard your oar!" shouted Dan, at the same time digging his own oar
+deep down on the port side and pulling upon it with all the magnificent
+strength of his arms until it bent like a reed.  There was just time to
+avert the direct impact, not to escape altogether.
+
+It was a glancing blow just above the water line; it punched a great,
+jagged hole and gouged out the paint clear to the stern.  Dan drew a
+long breath and murmured in a half-sick voice, "They might as well kill
+a man as scare him to death," while Captain Barney's face made a gray
+streak in the darkness.
+
+The _Quinn_ was now past the point of Sandy Hook and was skirting the
+shore.  The muffled beat of the breakers could be heard through the
+gloom, which was riven every second by the great, swinging search-light
+in the Navesink.  Not a mile ahead was the bar; and the masthead light
+of the _Kentigern_ could be seen, twinkling like a planet.
+
+In twenty minutes the dark hull of the _Kentigern_ came looming out of
+the night.  A hail shot from the _Quinn_, and a faint reply came back.
+Dark figures could now be seen, outlined by the cabin lights in the
+forward section of the tramp.
+
+"Hello, what tug is that?" sounded from the bridge.  "Is that you,
+Captain Barney?"
+
+"No, it's the _Quinn_, Cap'n Jim Skelly.  Hodge is laid up to-night;
+I'll take you into dock."
+
+"All right; come aboard," and after a minute's scurrying of figures on
+the deck a flimsy companion-ladder rattled down over the side of the
+freighter.
+
+Dan heard it and ground his teeth in disappointment.
+
+"Gripes!" he exclaimed.  "They've that ladder down an hour before I
+thought they would.  Now we're up against it, sure."
+
+With a growl Captain Barney whipped out his knife and made a pass at
+the tow-line.  He missed it and dropped back in the stern as Dan struck
+at him with his oar.
+
+"Wait!" hissed the young boatman.  "We'd have no chance at all.  We've
+got to get nearer.  The tug 'd beat us a mile.  Sit tight, you old
+fool!"
+
+Captain Barney recognized the wisdom of the words with a groan.  He was
+far past the arguing point.  The tide was boiling past the side of the
+vessel, swashing like a mill-race.  All they could do under present
+conditions was to cast off when the tug was very near the freighter,
+cut in across, and get under the ladder before the tug could properly
+warp alongside.
+
+Nearer lumbered the _Quinn_.  When within twenty feet of the
+_Kentigern_ she swung broadside on, ceasing all headway and drifting
+into position on the tide.
+
+"Now, then," cried Dan, suddenly leaping into the thwarts and manning
+the oars.  "Haul on the line.  Bring her right under the Quinn's stern
+and then cut, quick!"
+
+Hand over hand hauled Captain Barney and the rowboat came under the
+stern with a jump.  Then he cut the line.  Dan dug his oars into the
+water and the slim boat shot for the ladder, while the great tug came
+down, more slowly, on the side.  Ten, twenty strokes; and then, as Dan
+with a great sigh unshipped his oars, Captain Barney chuckled, seized
+the sides of the ladder, and hauling himself on the bottom rung,
+skipped up with the agility of a monkey.
+
+With a swish and a splash up pounded the _Quinn_.
+
+"Look out!" roared Dan, "there's a boat here!"
+
+It saved him; for a bell clanged in the engine-room, and the tug began
+to make sternway.  It saved him for but a minute, though.
+
+Thoughtless, selfish, and for once an utter fool, the exultant skipper
+of the _Three Sisters_ sought to gloat over his rival.
+
+"On board the _Quinn_," yelled Barney.  "Say, Jim Skelly, this is
+Barney Hodge talkin'.  You didn't know he had friends in the rowboat
+business, did you?"
+
+A curse rang from the Quinn's pilot-house, and Dan did not wait for
+anything else.  Well he knew what would happen next, and he bent all
+his strength to his oars.  He heard the jingle of a bell, and the tug
+started right for him.
+
+"Look out!" yelled Dan, working the oars like a madman.  But not a word
+came from the tug, moving silently, inexorably upon him like, some
+black, implacable monster.
+
+Suddenly Dan cast aside his oars and dived over the side.  The next
+instant the sharp, copper-bound nose of the tug struck the rowboat
+fairly amidships, grinding it against the steel side of the freighter,
+crushing it into matchwood.
+
+A great numbness passed over the man.  He was dazed; and as wave after
+wave splashed over his head, he struggled dumbly to reach the ladder.
+Then under the reaction from the icy shock, an electric thrill of
+energy and vitality passed through his body.
+
+He saw that he had been carried to about amidships, and the ladder was
+well toward the bow.  With lusty strokes he struck out along the steel
+sides, rising over the waves like a duck.  Five minutes elapsed, and
+then with a sudden fear, Dan realized, in glancing at the bow, that he
+had not made ten feet in all that time and effort.
+
+It was the current, which was ripping along the hull at the rate that
+would have affected the speed of a powerful steam launch.  Dan had not
+noticed it before.  He struggled desperately, but to no avail, and then
+he uttered his first cry for help.  He could not see the deck, being so
+close to the hull; and for the same reason he could not have been seen
+had his cry been heard.  Again he called for assistance, but there was
+no answer, no sound, save that of the water buffeting past the vessel.
+
+He ceased to waste his strength in fruitless cries, devoting all that
+remained to his struggle to reach the ladder.  But his strokes were
+weaker than before and he found he was being carried back upon the
+current instead of making headway against it.  Fight as he would, he
+could feel that sliding, hopeless drag against which he was powerless
+to combat.  His strength vanished ounce by ounce.  His arms grew so
+numb with fatigue and cold that he could do nothing but move them up
+and down, dog fashion.  On he went, down toward the stern of the vessel.
+
+He was moving as swiftly as the current was, whirling, twisting like a
+piece of wood.  His mind dulled.  He longed for death now.
+Instinctively he wished to get out of all the worry and struggle
+against dissolution.  His one dominant idea was to throw up his hands
+and go down, down the deep descent.  With a great cry of relief he
+yielded to the alluring thought.  Up flew his arms above his head--and
+he felt so warm and cheerful!  Something struck his outstretched hand
+and the fingers closed upon it.  For a minute they gripped the swinging
+piece of rope.  Then he opened his eyes to find he was hanging to a
+flimsy Jacob's ladder, suspended from the stern.  With a new strength
+born of hope he flung up his feet, shooting them through the hempen
+rungs; and there he stayed for a while--it seemed almost an eternity.
+Then laboriously climbing the ladder, he made the deck and there
+dropped as insensate as a log.
+
+
+It was the happiest Christmas Day that Dan had ever known, and he told
+himself so as he walked slowly down South Street.  Unschooled in the
+ethics of self-sacrifice as he was, he yet knew he had done something
+for a fellow man, for a man he despised; and something indefinable yet
+unmistakable told him it was very good.  He felt bigger, broader, felt
+as though he had attained new stature in something that was not
+physical.  And always, vaguely, he had been as anxious to feel this as
+he had been to get on in a material way.  He had lost his rowboat in
+the act.  And yet withal there was a certain fierce satisfaction in his
+loss--he had caught the spirit of Christmas.  How much wiser, how much
+stronger he was to-day than on the previous afternoon.
+
+So deep were his thoughts that he almost ran into Captain Barney.
+
+"Hey, there!" snarled the tugboatman, most ungraciously, "I just left a
+new rowboat down in the Battery basin for you."  And that was all he
+said.
+
+And Dan, as he trembled with rage, knew that Captain Barney might have
+said the right word and made Christmas Day all the more glorious.  But
+he had said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing, and he had by his
+words and in his act taken much from Dan's Christmas happiness.  Dan
+knew it well; something told him so.  He gazed at the tugboatman
+silently for a minute,--and then he knocked Captain Barney to the
+sidewalk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+DAN STAKES HIS LIFE, AND WINS
+
+Before the Winter passed, Dan had taken his master's examination with
+flying colors and was made Captain of the _Fledgling_, owned by the
+Phoenix Towboat Company.  She was a new boat, rugged, powerful, one
+hundred and twenty-five feet water line, designed and built to go
+anywhere and do anything.
+
+The Phoenix Company was known as a venturesome organization, as willing
+to send its fleet ramping out through the fog to the assistance of a
+distressed liner as to transport arms to West Indian or Central
+American revolutionists.  Before Dan had commanded the _Fledgling_ many
+months he had done both, and was beginning to be known up and down the
+coast as a captain to be called upon in emergencies verging upon the
+extraordinary, not to say extra-hazardous.
+
+All of which he accepted joyously, as the portion of youth in search of
+experience that life has to offer.  He was sufficiently introspective
+to rate the temper of his spirit at something approaching its real
+value, and he knew it was to be cherished, guarded, lest the fine edge
+be lost.  As the world reckons things it was a humble calling upon
+which he had entered, a calling hardly qualified to enlist the pride of
+the family whose name he bore.
+
+As a matter of fact, the pride of his few relations was not enlisted.
+He had been made to feel that.  He did not complain.  He appreciated
+their attitude.  But that did not curb a high-hearted ambition to lift
+his vocation to the ideals he had formulated concerning it--and the
+future lay before him.
+
+But he was not thinking of these things now.  The face of the sea was
+gray in sullen fury.  From a blue horizon, dulled and almost
+obliterated by long, jagged layers of steely clouds, came the ceaseless
+rush of deep-chested waves, as even, as fascinating as the
+vermiculations of a serpent.  And the wind, tearing along the floor of
+the sea, whipped off the wave crests and sent them shivering,
+shimmering ahead, like the plumes of hard-riding cavalry.
+
+The storm had passed.  The effects remained, and Dan Merrithew shifted
+his wheel several spokes east of north and took the brunt bow on.  She
+bore it well, did the stout _Fledgling_; she did that--she split the
+waves or crashed through them, or laughed over them, as a stout tug
+should when coaxed by hands of skill, guided by an iron will.  The Long
+Island coast lay to port, a narrow band of ochre, and all about lay the
+heaving gray of mighty waters, in which the _Fledgling_ was a black
+speck.
+
+Dan's hat was off and his red-gold hair was flying wild; his teeth were
+bared.  He was always thus in a fight.  This was one; a dandy--a
+clinker!  He gave the wheel another spoke and the _Fledgling_ slued
+across a sea and smashed down hard.  From below came a sliding rattle,
+a great crash of crockery, and then a series of imprecations.  The next
+instant Arthur M'Gill, the steward, dashed up the companionway and
+burst into the pilot-house.
+
+"Doggone it all, Cap'n!" yelled the angry man, "why in hell don't ye
+let me know when ye're goin' to sling 'er across seas?  Here I had the
+table all set fur breakfast, an' ye put 'er inter a grayback afore I
+could hold on to anything; and smash goes the hull mess on the
+floor--plates, forks, vittles.  Holee mackerel!" he exclaimed under
+increasing impulse of anger, "what am I?--a steward, or a--or a monkey?"
+
+Dan, clutching grimly at the wheel, turned a genial smile upon his cook.
+
+"Sorry, old man.  Fact is, I forgot.  But never mind.  Pick up the best
+you can."  He smiled again.  "Just a little bit dusty out here, eh,
+Arthur?"
+
+"That's what it is, Cap'n," replied Arthur, mollified by Dan's words of
+regret.
+
+The steward looked at Dan admiringly.  In a way he was the skipper's
+father confessor, not alone because he had a glib, advising tongue, but
+because he was possessed of a certain amount of raw, psychological
+instinct and knew his Shakespeare and could quote from Young's "Night
+Thoughts."  Arthur had something of a fishy look and a slick way with
+him; but he was a good cook.
+
+"It seems funny to call such a kid 'Cap'n,'" he said.  And then he
+added apologetically, "It's 'cause I've sailed under so many grayheads,
+ye know."
+
+"Oh, I'll be gray enough before long," laughed Dan, and his momentary
+inattention to his duties at the wheel was promptly seized upon by the
+wily sea, which smacked the rudder hard and nearly spun the wheel out
+of his grip.  "Stop talking, will you!" roared Dan, wrestling at the
+spokes.  "Do you want me to put you all into the trough?"
+
+Mulhatton, the mate, stumbled into the pilot-house and glared at the
+cook.
+
+"Artie," he cried, "you go below, or I'll just gently heft you down!  I
+went in to git grub just now and 't was all on the floor.  Go on
+now--git!"  And Arthur went, grumbling and sighing that a man's stomach
+should govern his temper.
+
+"Take the wheel a while, Cap'n?" said the mate; and as Dan nodded he
+stepped in close, braced his feet, and took the strain as Dan's hands
+left the spokes.
+
+"We'll both be on the wheel together before long," remarked Dan,
+sitting heavily on the chart locker and opening and shutting his
+stiffened fingers.
+
+"Where is she and what's ashore?" asked Mulhatton.  "You jumped us out
+in such a hurry this morning, I ain't had time to ask you."
+
+"It's an old lumber hooker, and she's ashore on Jones Inlet bar;
+stranded just before midnight last night.  Lord knows how much there is
+left of her by this time.  But I took it a good salvage job to go
+after.  Cripes!"  The _Fledgling_ on her altered course had topped a
+wave forward, which wave, travelling swiftly aft, had withdrawn from
+the bow the support of its mighty shoulder.  Down went the bow with a
+great slap and up went the stern, screw racing and racking the engines,
+sending Mulhatton crashing to the floor.  But bruised as he was and
+dazed, he was on his feet with the quickness of a cat, and seizing the
+spokes, assisted Dan in bringing up the tug's head to where it ought to
+be.
+
+"It's a-goin' to be lively work salvin' any hooker to-day," said the
+mate.
+
+"It is," replied Dan, "but I'll tell you this, Mul; we'll land her if
+anybody can.  For I've a tug under me built under my very eyes.  I know
+every beam and bolt in her.  And I've a crew of rustlers," he added,
+gazing proudly at Mulhatton's broad back--Mulhatton, with round, red,
+bristly, laughing face and eyes like raw onions.
+
+The next minute Dan, in all the delight of the struggle, was making his
+way along the lower deck to the engine-room door.  The water was racing
+past the rail like a wet blur and the deck sloshed ankle deep.  High up
+a wave climbed the _Fledgling_, and as she paused on the top for a
+downward glide, Dan hastily opened the door and clambered down the iron
+ladder.
+
+"Well, Sam, how are they working?" he shouted to Crampton, the chief,
+bending over a fizzing valve bonnet.
+
+Sam rose, pushed back his oily peaked cap until the straight raven hair
+flowed out from under like a cataract, and gave his thin, waterfall
+moustache a twist, while his swarthy, parchment face cracked into a
+hundred smiles.
+
+"Workin'," he said, "as sweet as a babe breathin'."
+
+Up reared the stern, lifting the propeller clear of the water.  The
+engines expending their force in air, raced free.  The clatter was
+infernal; the pistons seemed trying to jump out of the cylinders, while
+the throws and eccentrics lost all semblance of good order.
+
+"Oh, damn!" cried Sam, who, being hurled to the iron floor, swore as
+though he enjoyed it.
+
+Whitey Welch, the fireman, burst into a huge guffaw, in which Sam
+finally joined.
+
+"You're all right down here," laughed Dan, "as happy as a sewing
+circle!  There may be some pulling to do later."
+
+"You get something to pull; we'll tend to the rest," and Sam Crampton
+grinned.
+
+Emerging on deck, Dan collided with Pete Noonan, the deck-hand, with
+shoulders as big as Dan's and a bigger chest.  Pete smiled genially.
+
+"This'll put hair on yer teeth, eh, Cap'n, this will," he said, while
+from the galley below floated Arthur's voice in a deep sea chanty:
+
+  "I'll go no more a-roaming,
+  No more a-ro-o-o-a-ming with you, fair maid."
+
+"Go on back to harbor, you little lobster pot; we'll take care of the
+wreck."
+
+The corpulent captain of the great wrecking tug _Sovereign_, lying
+outside the breakers off Jones Inlet, megaphoned this insult to the
+deck of the _Fledgling_, as she drew near the scene of the wreck,
+rising and falling on the waves like a piece of driftwood.
+
+It was a deadly day.  The promise of the sunlight had waned with the
+earlier hours, and heavy blue-black clouds palled the heavens.  Not one
+hundred yards apart lay the two tugs, rolling and pitching in the
+seaway; the _Fledgling_ trim and stanch, the _Sovereign_ big and
+cumbersome, the funnel belching thunderclouds of sepia, her derrick
+booms creaking and rattling and slatting infernally.
+
+Straight on ahead, where the line of swelling waves burst into
+breakers, where the spume sang like whip-lashes, and where the whine of
+the wind tore itself into a nasty snarl, lay the wreck of the schooner
+_Zeitgeist_.  She lay half on her side and the waves licked up and over
+the faded gray hull, completing the work that time already had begun.
+One mast was very far forward, the other very far aft--Great Lake rig;
+and between the two was a deck-load of thousands of feet of Maine
+lumber.  The topmasts had snapped off, leaving the stumps.
+
+Lashed in the foremast were two men; and in the mainmast were Captain
+Ephraim Sayles and three more of his crew.  At first glance they seemed
+lifeless; at first glance, indeed, they seemed nothing more than faded
+lengths of canvas.  But an occasional lifting of a hand, a flash of a
+gray face, showed that they were men and that they still lived and
+hoped.  Under them, over the deck raced the breakers, waist deep, each
+one a swift, excited trip-hammer.  It was only the lumber that was
+holding the aged hull together.  As it was, sections of the sides had
+ripped out and planks and pieces of deal issuing from the gashes
+littered the waters.  Three times had the life-savers launched their
+boats, and three times they had been cast on the beach like logs, while
+thrice had the lines from their mortars fallen short.
+
+"Go on back; we'll take care of her."
+
+And Dan, his teeth bared and coated with blood from anger-bitten lips,
+gave the wheel to Mulhatton, ran from the pilot-house, and shook his
+fist at the big wrecking tug.
+
+"Why don't you take care of her then, curse you!  Why don't you take
+care of her?  Don't you see there are lives to save?  Oh, you cowardly
+beasts!"
+
+"Nothin' doin' till the sea goes down," came the reply, and Dan sobbed
+aloud in his rage as he entered the pilot-house, where most of the crew
+were gathered, peering out of the windows at the tragedy across the
+waters.
+
+The men in the rigging could be seen plainly now.  There was no
+excitement.  They kept very still, watching the futile efforts of the
+life-savers, waving their hands occasionally as though in token of
+their thanks and their knowledge of the utter futility of human
+efforts.  No, there was no excitement; the uncertainty that breeds that
+was lacking.  Fate was simply clamping its damp hand down over those
+men.  Such things are always quiet--there is nothing to thrill the
+heart or stir the soul in them.  It is just a mighty thing dealing
+death to weaklings, that is all.  And we wonder whether the All-seeing
+Eye does not sometimes close in sheer pity, to shut out the inequality
+of it.
+
+While they looked, a venomous wave got under the bow and lifted it
+high.  Then down it went as a man would crash his palms together,
+bursting out the forepeak like a rotten apple.  Thus weakened forward,
+the loss of the foremast was an imminent certainty.  And there were two
+men in the fore rigging!  Captain Ephraim leaned far out from the
+mainmast; the tug men could see him plainly as he pointed at the
+tottering mast and then at the deck.
+
+"He wants them to leave the mast and go into the mainmast," cried
+Mulhatton.
+
+"But they won't--see, they are shaking their heads 'no,'" shouted Dan.
+"They couldn't; the breakers would sweep them away in a minute."
+
+"Look!"
+
+For man is brave and man does fight, even in the face of injustice, in
+the face of odds.  Thus did Martin Loughran, in the fore rigging of the
+_Zeitgeist_, as with set jaws he struggled upward toward the stump of
+the topmast.  Between the trucks of the fore and maintopmasts ran a
+horizontal line of wire.  It is called the "triatic stay," and Loughran
+was climbing to it.  Dan--all the _Fledgling's_ crew and the crew of
+the _Sovereign_--foresaw his intention, and stentorian shouts, "You
+can't do it!" bounded over the water.  But the sailor did not pause,
+if, indeed, he heard their warnings.
+
+Slowly, laboriously he climbed.  He stretched up one hand and grasped
+the stay.  Up went the other hand.  Then out against the glooming sky
+was limned the swaying form, working its way along the triatic stay
+hand over hand, in an effort to reach the mainmast.  A faint cheer came
+from the men in the main rigging, while two of the _Fledgling's_ crew
+cheered, and two bowed their heads in agony, and Dan sobbed aloud.
+
+"Look at him," cried Dan.  "Oh, God!"
+
+"A sandy man cashin' in," muttered Mulhatton solemnly.
+
+Out, out worked the swaying form.  But he had more than one hundred
+feet to go.  Twenty-five feet--progress ceased.  It hung there silent,
+that figure--it seemed almost an eternity.  It hung as silent as a
+piece of sail and as fitfully swaying.  Suddenly one hand relaxed and
+fell limp.  It was as though something had sucked the breath from every
+onlooker.  The hand was feebly raised in a futile clutch to regain the
+lost hold.  It fell again.  Still there was silence.
+
+A dark form cleaved the gloom and lay in a black huddle upon the lumber
+amidships, until a boarding wave kindly removed it and spurned it upon
+the beach as it would a drowned dog.  Ten minutes later the foremast
+went and the life-savers, dashing into the surf, took out of the
+rigging a dead sea-cook.
+
+And still the tugs lay like vultures awaiting carrion.  Both had come
+down to the wreck in the hope of getting a line over her and pulling
+her from the sands, for which there would have been ample reward.  But
+it was too rough to approach her and she was too far gone to warrant
+salving, even were it possible.  But there were men dying before their
+eyes and no one was lifting a hand.  Dan was in a red-headed glare of
+emotion.  He was too young to look upon such things calmly.  He turned
+his eyes from the wreck to the _Sovereign_, just as her bow went up on
+a wave, showing the red underbody.  And it reminded him of the yawning
+mouth of some sea monster hungry for prey.
+
+"We're lying here like bloodsuckers!" he yelled.  "Waiting for salvage
+while good men are dying!  Dying--and we're doing nothing!  Fellows,"
+he roared, "I'm going to take the tug in to her.  I'm not afraid of a
+risk to save the lives of brave men."
+
+"All right, Cap'n," said Mulhatton, "you know we'll go with you.  But
+there's no use in bein' fools.  Take the tug in--yes.  But how'll you
+take her out again?"
+
+Dan glared across the heaving waters with bloodshot eyes.  "No use; you
+couldn't, couldn't get her out again.  No, you couldn't."  He repeated
+this several times.  "Is there anything that could?" he added finally.
+
+He looked at his men for the answer, but their eyes were still fastened
+on the wreck with almost hypnotic fascination.
+
+"Her deck-load's beginning to shift.  It'll be clear off soon and
+that'll take the other mast," announced Noonan.
+
+One of the men in the rigging, a giant, tow-headed fellow, suddenly
+went crazy,--at least so it seemed.  For his lips writhed in a haunting
+scream as he whipped out his knife and cut his lashings.  Then he
+turned a bloodless face toward the _Fledgling_, uttered a short,
+rasping shout, and jumped into the sea.  A great wave seized him
+greedily and swirled him high.  Dan caught a fleeting glimpse of that
+face, turned reproachfully, it seemed, toward him.
+
+It set him crazy too.  His mind was working like lightning.
+
+"Mul," he screamed, "launch the lifeboat, with you fellows holding on
+to a line from her bow!  We're to windward, and she'll drift right down
+to the wreck.  Then you can haul us back again.  It's been done before.
+God, why didn't I think of it sooner!"
+
+Mulhatton looked at his Captain closely.
+
+"One chance in a thousand that our boat would live to make the trip,
+Cap'n," he said.
+
+Dan snarled his impatience.
+
+"One chance in ten thousand, one chance in a million, I'll take it!" he
+cried in a sharp, metallic voice.  "I never saw a man die until
+to-day--I'll see no more, God willing."
+
+Without a word Mulhatton turned and rushed for the lifeboat.
+
+"Remember, I go in that boat," yelled Dan as he followed his mate.  But
+Mulhatton only turned back a defiant look.  Together they wrenched the
+boat from its blocks and lowered it to Noonan, standing below on the
+main deck astern.  Crampton, the engineer, was at the wheel, while
+Whitey Welch stood by the engines.  As the lifeboat was straining on
+the top of a swell, Mulhatton attempted to leap in, but was viciously
+punched back by Dan, who then sprang out five feet and sprawled in the
+stern sheets.
+
+"Damn!" cried the disappointed mate as he sprang to Noonan's side and
+seized the line, which was already paying out.
+
+Into the riot went Dan.  There was neither mercy nor tolerance in the
+waters,--the waves ripped all about in wanton fury; the spume cloaked
+the face of them in wet clouds and the sea hollows lay like black pits.
+But merciless and intolerant as were the waters, Dan asked no odds of
+them.  Crouching in the stern with one oar dug deep, he was hurled on
+his errand of mercy.  The _Sovereign_ whistled its commendation, while
+ashore the spectators and life-savers stood breathless.  A stealthy
+wave slashed the oar, almost pulling his shoulder from its socket, but
+he kept the oar.  Aye, he kept it and cursed the wave that sought to
+take it away.  On, on, as determined, as indomitable as the elements.
+A wave cut the boat full.  It skidded on its side and righted.  A
+comber rose green behind, hiding the _Fledgling_.  It caught the
+lifeboat before it broke.  It hoisted it high and then, passing on,
+expended its crushing force against the wreck ahead.  And Dan laughed,
+and the spindrift flying like buckshot beat against his teeth.  On, on,
+until the wreck, boiling in water, loomed ahead.  On past the stern of
+the wreck shot the small boat, until it was just under the lee of it.
+There he signalled to his men to pay out the line no more.
+
+"Jump!" he called to the three men in the rigging.  First jumped Daniel
+James, and Dan caught him out of the waters and hauled him in.  And he
+caught the next, the boat careening, shipping a rush of water.  As
+Captain Ephraim crouched for the leap, the sough of the rotten hull,
+working and heaving like the carcass of a shark, was bursting out in a
+score of places and the lumber deck-load rose and fell and quivered and
+flailed huge planks into the waves.  The end was near.  Dan shouted the
+skipper to hurry.  Ephraim obeyed, and had fought his way through the
+caldron to the boat and was dragged aboard, when suddenly, with a great
+straining sigh, the hull of the wreck parted amidships, both ends
+sinking in the waters.  A comber rushed in between, swelling and
+hissing.  The lumber deck-load rose in the air like a living thing.
+The remaining fastenings holding it to the deck parted, and there was a
+rending and grinding as it slued off into the sea, carrying with it the
+main-mast, which crashed down and impaled the bar on which the wreck
+rested.
+
+The currents had carried the rowboat almost--quite, in fact--in front
+of this terrible heaving mass of wood, one hundred feet long and
+chained together to a height of ten feet--and only the mainmast, which
+seemed to be serving as a sort of anchor, held it.  Dan saw the danger,
+and the shouts of those on the _Fledgling_ told him that they had seen
+it too.  The line leading from the boat to the tug was taut and
+singing, evidence that the men were hauling upon it.  But the pull of
+the shoreward rushing waters was as great as their strength.  The boat
+made no movement out of her dangerous position.  Dan was sculling like
+mad, but his efforts, compared to the might of the sea, were puny.  In
+deep silence the mass of lumber worried at its unforeseen anchor.  It
+ripped free and, rolling and twisting in spineless abandon, bore down
+upon the lifeboat with crushing momentum.  On it came.  They began to
+pay out the line in order that the boat might keep ahead of it for a
+few extra minutes.  But Dan knew there could be no salvation in that.
+He could see every foot of the advancing mass.  He could see the
+hundreds of planks flailing out in the air like arms; he could see the
+thick water spurting through thousands of cracks and crevices; could
+hear the gnashing of plank on plank.  Nearer it came, as powerful, as
+inexorable as the glacial drift.  It rose before him in all its
+crushing might.
+
+Then he felt the boat, as though suddenly endowed with life, start
+forward, and, glancing at the _Fledgling_, saw that she had made a
+tangent course to the wreck in order that the boat could be pulled
+outward from it and away.  Dan knew in an instant that they had lashed
+the line to the stern bitts and had taken the desperate chance, the
+only chance, of making the tug pull her lifeboat from danger.  Could
+the little line stand the strain?  That was the question.  It was so
+tight that it vibrated like thin wire, and it was humming musically,
+monotonously.  It held--the boat was moving!  But the lumber was moving
+too.  On it came.  Ten feet--a plank wrenched clear of the mass and
+shot on ahead, ramming out the lifeboat's stern-board, above the water
+line.  Another plank, as though hurled by some sinister force, sailed
+clear over Dan's head.  Ten feet--the line was fraying out at the ring
+bolts.  Just a second now--five feet.  With one bound the lumber swept
+down, and past the stern of the boat, and Captain Ephraim fell to his
+knees and thanked his God.
+
+
+The fight off Jones Island Inlet came at a time when it meant much to
+Dan.  It was the deep sea, and he had measured his might with it.  And
+as a man is dignified by the prowess of his opponent, so was Dan
+dignified by the prowess of the sea.  Perhaps that was why the sea had
+always called Dan--faintly, dimly; far away sometimes, but always
+unmistakably.  It came in every wind that blew; a voice that involved
+not the sea alone, but the things it stood for--a broader, deeper life
+and bigger things; more to do, a final and definite place to make.  He
+had never met or been influenced by the big men--the men who think and
+teach and sing and do the world's work.  His environment in these, his
+early years of manhood, had been far from them.  He could touch them
+only in books, which were not entirely satisfactory.  And so he learned
+from the sea and it spoke to him of breadth, and power, and
+determination, and majesty of character.  Dan was instinctively seeking
+all these things, and in the work he was now doing he felt that he was
+nearer to them than he had ever been before.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE LOSS OF THE "FLEDGLING"
+
+One Fall afternoon, six months after the rescue of the men of the
+_Zeitgeist_, the _Fledgling_, as though sentient with the instinct of
+self-preservation, was struggling through the riot of wind and waves,
+seeking the security of the Delaware Breakwater, while ten miles back,
+somewhere in the wild half gloom off Hog Island, three loaded coal
+barges which she had been towing from Norfolk were rolling, twisting,
+careening helplessly to destruction--if, indeed, the seas had not
+already taken deadly toll of them.
+
+Dan and two of his men were at the wheel spokes, which had torn the
+palms of their hands until they were raw and bleeding, and the dull
+light flooding in through the windows revealed the indomitable will of
+these men, the death-fight spirit which actuated them.
+
+Dan's face was bloodless and strained, and his hair fell across his
+eyes, while crouching beneath him, with hands on the under spokes, were
+the gigantic shoulders of his mate, the sweaty gray hair and the red,
+thick nape of the neck suggesting the very epitome of muscular effort;
+and on the other side, writhing and quivering, was the deck-hand, a
+study in steel and wire.
+
+The afternoon was still young, but the heavens were darker than
+twilight, and the rocking sea was as black as slate, save where a
+comber, as though gnashing its teeth in fury, flashed a sudden white
+crest, which crumbled immediately into the heaving pall.
+
+"Now, boys, together!  Catch back that last spoke we lost!"
+
+And while Dan's words were being shattered into shreds of sound by the
+shriek of the gale, the three men bent their backs in a fresh effort to
+put the _Fledgling's_ nose a point better into the on-rushing waves.
+
+They did it too.  With a hiss and a crunch the bow swung in square to
+the watery thunderbolts and the stanch craft, survivor of a hundred
+perils, a ten-foot section of her port rail gone, a great dent in the
+steel deck-house forward, began to climb over the water hills with much
+of her usual precision--down on her side, clear to the bottom of a
+hollow, then settling on an even keel with a jerk, climbing the slaty
+incline, stiff as a church, then down, down, half on her side again,
+then up once more.
+
+"She's making good weather of it," and Dan took his hands from the
+wheel, stood erect, and gazed through the after windows, searching a
+horizon which he could see only when the tug climbed to a wave top.  He
+turned to his mate.
+
+"There's no use hunting for those barges," he said tentatively.  "When
+that tow-line broke back there, it seemed as though one of my heart
+strings went too.  But there was nothing to do about it; nothing we
+could do.  It was all we could do to work the _Fledgling_ through."
+
+"Most captains would 'a' cut them barges adrift long before the line
+broke," replied the mate; "no use thinkin' about them now; they've
+gone, long ago."
+
+Dan worked his way along the pitching floor to the side windows.  His
+face was tense and drawn.  He had never lost a tow before--this was a
+part of his reputation.  And now. . . .  He turned slowly to resume his
+place at the wheel, when suddenly, as the tug was sidling down a wave,
+the tail of his eye caught a glimpse of a buff funnel protruding above
+the wave tops a good quarter of a mile away.  His first impression was
+that the water had claimed all but the funnel.  He was not sure.  He
+waited.  It seemed an age while the tug climbed to the top of the next
+comber.  Slowly, slowly the buff funnel again came into view, and then
+as the tug still climbed he saw it all--a white, broad-waisted yacht
+cluttering in the grip of the waters, throwing her stern toward heaven,
+reeling over, taking water on one rail, letting it through the opposite
+scuppers, sticking her bow into the waves and rising, shaking off the
+water like a fat spaniel.  Puffs of steam were escaping jerkily from
+the whistle valve, and, although Dan could not hear, he knew she was
+whistling for assistance.
+
+It was all a quick, pulsating scene, as one views something in a
+kinetoscope, and then it was lost as the waters rose between them.  Dan
+stumbled over to the wheel.  He was not a man of many words.
+
+"Boys, there's work for us to do.  There's a yacht in distress about a
+quarter of a mile off on the port hand.  We'll go over and see."
+
+"It'll mean throwing her head off from seas that we've been bucking
+since morning," said the mate.  And the inflection cast into the words
+suggested no protest, only a reminder that it would be no child's play.
+
+"Yes," said Dan simply, leaning forward to take advantage of the uproll
+of the tug to locate the yacht more exactly.   "There--there--throw her
+off three points----  That's it," he added, as the tug floundered on
+her new course,--a course no longer into, but across, the waves, which
+now began to come from everywhere, buffeting the tug, keel and bow,
+rail and pilot-house--crazy cross-seas, fighting among themselves,
+slashing, crashing, falling over one another.
+
+But on the _Fledgling_ went, climbing the waves insanely now, sometimes
+bow on, sometimes crab-wise--but ever on.  Each wave that was topped
+gave a better view of the yacht, also enabling those on that wallowing
+craft to see the tug, as evidence of which the continuous blasts of the
+whistle were borne to the towmen's ears.
+
+Nearer, until the yacht was never lost to view.  Evidently she was not
+under control; but, even so, it was plain that no high degree of
+intelligence was being exerted in handling her.  She was not steaming
+at all, merely drifting in the trough, and none of the means to bring
+her head into the seas which sailors utilize at a pinch had even been
+attempted.  Whatever was the matter with the yacht, Dan and his men
+were sure that the officers and crew were nothing less than blockheads.
+
+Making a wide detour, they brought the tug around under the lee of the
+craft and about fifty yards away, where Dan, leaving the wheel to his
+men, seized a megaphone and ran on deck.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" he shouted angrily through his megaphone,
+aimed toward a group of men on the shattered bridge.  "Are you trying
+to see how quickly you can sink?  Why don't you put her head up?"
+
+A young officer in a wet and bedraggled uniform crawled along the
+swaying platform to the megaphone rack and, seizing a cone, shouted
+from a kneeling posture:
+
+"Help us, for God's sake!  Our thrust shaft has cracked!"  The words
+came faintly.  "Our Captain was washed from the bridge. . . .  Tried to
+put out sea anchor, but couldn't make it hold without steerage
+way. . . .  It broke adrift. . . .  This . . . the _Veiled Ladye_, with
+Mr. Horace Howland and a party aboard."
+
+The _Veiled Ladye_!  Absorbed as Dan was, he felt a momentary flash of
+surprise that the announcement of that name came to him almost as a
+matter of course.  Through the long course of nearly two years the
+conviction that a time would come when he should once more meet the
+girl who had spoken to him from the _Veiled Ladye's_ deck at Norfolk
+had strengthened inexplicably, until he had come to accept it as an
+assured fact.  Was she aboard that yacht now?  Aboard that laboring
+section of gingerbread, in the hands of incompetents and poltroons?
+Was she?  It could not be otherwise.  And this was the nature of the
+meeting which had colored his dreams and intensified the ambitions of
+his waking moments!
+
+A strange thrill quivered through him, and he glanced dazedly at
+Mulhatton, as a stout man in yachting garb stumbled to the officer's
+side and snatched the megaphone from his hands.
+
+"On board the tug!" he cried.  "I'm Horace Howland of the Coastwise and
+West Indian Shipping Company.  We're helpless; we can't last an hour
+unless you hold our head up.  Engineer making a collar for cracked
+shaft . . . have it made and fitted in twelve hours.  Twelve hours.
+Hold us up that long and we are safe!  Do you hear me . . . twelve
+hours!"
+
+Dan looked at the yacht, rolling to her beam ends almost every minute.
+It would be a bad business fooling with that craft; and with iron will
+he fought back his surging emotions.  He had his tug and his men to
+consider, if not himself.  His tug was weakened by her long struggle,
+and to the best of his judgment he knew it would be wiser for his own
+interests to go his way, leaving the yacht to her life fight, while the
+_Fledgling_ fought hers.  And yet he could not go away.  Aside from the
+wild theory that the girl might be aboard, there were lives to save
+over there.  That was it.  There were lives to save over there.  Duty
+called--a stern, clear call; at least, Dan so heard it, and he was
+willing to answer it with his life, if necessary.  But he did not think
+of that part of it.  It was the lives of those imperilled persons that
+concerned him.  He and his tug were there that they might live.  There
+were women aboard; he had seen their white faces gazing imploringly at
+him through the cabin portholes--bright, beautiful lives--and men in
+the glorious prime of their youth.  His heart went out to them, and as
+Mr. Howland laid aside his megaphone the problem was clear.  He waved
+his megaphone in assent and then, levelling it at the yacht, he cried:
+
+"All right.  Float a hawser down to us; you are pitching too wild-eyed
+to come within heaving-line distance."  Passing the pilot-house on his
+way below, he nodded and smiled at the men inside.  There had been no
+need to question them.  They had been too long with Dan, and too
+faithful, not to catch his drift of mind in all emergencies long before
+he expressed it in words; too brave and hardened to danger, in fact, to
+care what Dan wanted, just so that he was willing to lead them--to
+share with them the work to be done.
+
+In the course of a few minutes a small raft, bearing a heaving-line
+which the yachtsmen had streamed, drifted down upon the tug, clearing
+the bow by a few feet.  Dan leaned out and caught it with his
+boat-hook, bringing the line aboard.  Then he and his fireman tailed on
+to the end of it, bringing in the attached hawser hand over hand.  This
+they hurried to the stern bitts, taking a pass also around the steam
+winch.  Leaving the fireman to watch it, Dan dashed into the
+pilot-house and sounded the jingle-bell in the engine-room.
+
+For a few minutes the churnings of the screw were discounted by the
+bulk of the yacht plus the elemental forces which sought to keep her
+head just where it was--in the trough of the sea.  The tow-line
+vibrated itself into a blur, the tug strained and quivered and groaned.
+
+"Why don't you help us in some way, you fools!" roared Dan, struggling
+at the wheel.  "You can at least steer, or--"
+
+Before he could proceed there was a report like the bark of a cannon
+and a torn and shredded end of hawser came writhing and twisting up out
+of the sea, sluing across the face of the pilot-house as though
+possessed of all the venom of the living thing it resembled--a python.
+
+There was silence on both the tug and the yacht for a full minute.  Dan
+watched the distressed craft as she tossed up her bow and glided
+sternward from his view behind a jet of black wave, while the
+_Fledgling_ seemed to slide from under his feet in the opposite
+direction.  As the yacht came up again he could see that this mishap
+had scattered all semblance of fortitude to the winds.  Except for the
+young second officer, Mr. Howland, and a sailor, all holding their
+places pluckily on the bridge, terror reigned.  Sailors, men in
+yachting costumes, and women with hair flying flashed along the decks
+or in and out of doorways, while forward a group of three young men
+lashed to a big anchor held out their hands toward the tug.
+
+Dan turned to his deck-hand, his face hard and determined.
+
+"Pete," he said, "go down and get out the double cables.  Welch is
+astern and will help you.  I'm going to swerve the tug in close and you
+heave the lines aboard when we re near enough.  We won't trust any more
+to their rotten hemp."
+
+As a knight, with reckless abandon, might have urged his steed into the
+very midst of his foes, so Dan urged the _Fledgling_ up to the wildly
+pitching yacht.  Nearer the tug advanced, so near that the tugmen could
+see the streaks through the red underbody.  Nearer yet, head on, and
+then the wheel was swung broad, while Dan leaned out of the
+pilot-house, looking down at the two men forward, who were whirling
+weighted heaving-lines about their heads like lariats.  "Now, now
+then!" yelled Dan, as the mate in response to a wave of his hand began
+to sheer off from the yacht.  "Aye, aye," came the replies from below,
+and a second later two lines whistled clean over the forward decks of
+the white craft.  Eager hands seized them and hauled in the great
+cables and made them fast.
+
+Just for an instant Dan and the mate peered at the yacht to see if the
+lines had carried, an instant of which the wily sea took full
+advantage.  An oily wave reared the bow of the yacht while the swell of
+its predecessor slued the _Fledgling_ in and around and upward, so that
+the two craft reared, side by side, bows up and not more than five feet
+apart.  A scream fluttered from the bridge; men's voices raised in
+curses at the clumsy yacht were borne from the pilot-house.  Dan,
+however, had not time for words; he stood with hands on the wheel
+watching the red, reeking bow rearing almost in his face; watched it,
+cool, ready to take the first chance of escape, if the present danger
+offered such a chance.  Slowly, easily, the wave passed, and down came
+the two bows with a crash.  The bow of the _Veiled Ladye_ just grazed
+the _Fledgling's_ weather rail, tearing off a fender, while Dan
+signalled full speed astern.  It was fortunate that he had his wits
+about him, for the erratic yacht, instead of falling back as she
+naturally should have done, suddenly moved forward under the impulse of
+a swell, butting the tug, almost gently, about ten feet from the bow.
+Then the tug backed clear, and, breasting the waves, began to take up
+the slack cables.  A hundred yards she went and then stopped headway
+with a jerk as the men slipped the cables over the bitts.
+
+The collision had not hurt the tug apparently, although there was no
+telling whether or not the jolt had weakened her structurally.  But Dan
+was not the man to worry about eventualities.  An hour's straining and
+hauling resulted in bringing the yacht's head full into the seas, and
+then at four o'clock Dan snuggled his craft to, for the long eleven
+hours' fight.
+
+The afternoon waned into twilight, softly, impalpably, and the twilight
+wavered into night.  A few lights quivered from the reeling yacht and
+her mast-head lamps described glimmering arcs against the heavens.
+Silent and grim, the tug took the brunt of all the seas had to
+give--nose piercing the very heart of the waves, splitting them with
+beautiful precision, rising, falling, reeling, pitching, but, through
+all, hanging to the yacht with undying tenacity.  So she fought, as she
+had ever fought.
+
+Contrary to the promise of the afternoon, the gale had not abated; the
+seas, if anything, raced more fiercely, and the wind, which tore the
+dark with a wailing moan, departed with a venomous shriek.  Dan and his
+mate stood hard at the wheel, Noonan, the deck-hand, was stationed
+astern, and Crampton, the stanch old chief, and his fireman were down
+in the heart of things, nursing the engines.
+
+They were well nursed, too.  The steady throb, the clank of the throws,
+and the hum of the eccentrics rose to the pilot-house in cadence as
+regular as the heart-throbs of a healthy ox.  And the while Dan and his
+mate gingerly manipulated the wheel so that the strain on the tow-line
+was constant and even, with no slack or sudden jerks, which were truly
+to be avoided in the face of the mad sea.
+
+The sea grew indefinite in the dark,--as indefinite as the undulations
+of a black shroud.  It was as though the tug were tossing through some
+mysterious agency.  There were times when the tall mast-head lights
+astern showed not a foot above the rim of that more intense darkness
+which marked where the water ended and the horizon began.
+
+Again there were times when the glowing specks seemed to scale the
+heights of a sable vacuum.  Once a section of the rail went ripping
+away in the gloom and once a shredded small boat was torn and hurled
+into the waters.
+
+One hour, two hours, three hours, four hours--and still the wild night
+went on, and still the _Fledgling_ held to her work.  Crampton, the
+chief engineer, struggled up from the engine-room at nine o'clock, his
+swart face lined and creased.
+
+"She's like an old man dyin'," he said, and his voice quivered.  "The
+old injines are drivin' as hard and brave as a man with a club; but a
+lot of the kick has gone out of them.  Nothin' the matter of 'em that I
+can see--but just feel.  My old injines are feelin' about fur an excuse
+to cave in."
+
+"Well, hang on," replied Dan, "and don't tell me what you feel may
+happen; I can think up enough things myself."
+
+"Well," and Crampton hesitated.  "I didn't come up here fur anythin'
+I've said--Cap'n," he added in a low voice; "we're takin' in water."
+
+An imprecation trembled on Dan's lips, and one of his hands left the
+wheel in an involuntary gesture of resignation.  Then he shut his teeth
+tight and talked slowly through them.
+
+"Where the yacht hit us?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, forward; it's opened up a little under the floor plates--about
+twenty strokes a minute I should say; the force-pump's kept it level so
+far."
+
+"Good," said Dan; "there's nothing else to do but keep it going."
+
+"Nothing," said the chief, and he reeled out of the pitching
+pilot-house.
+
+Two, three, four hours more--the water had gained nine inches, so the
+chief reported through the speaking-tube.  But still the _Fledgling_
+held her tow, and Dan and Mulhatton stood silent at the wheel, the rush
+of the wind, which had long torn out the double windows, swirling their
+hair into their eyes and numbing their torn and bleeding hands.  The
+elements, as though divining the weakening of the tug,--a tug which
+often had laughed them to scorn,--were making mad work of it; there
+were strange sounds, unforeseen blows--but still the tug hung on.
+
+There came an hour in which she did not rise to the waves as she had
+been doing,--an hour when the leak gained terribly, and when the
+_Fledgling_, struggling bravely, if wearily, upward to meet a wave,
+would stop half-way with a jerk and a sigh, the wave gouging along the
+deck--breaking over the stern-board.
+
+They could feel her going in the pilot-house.  But she hung on to her
+lines with the grip of death.  Dan stood at his mate's side, his eyes
+fixed straight ahead into the darkness.  He had cast his die; he had
+chosen his lot--now the toll was to be paid.  He thought, too, of the
+men who, without question, had taken their stand with him.  He reached
+out his left hand and placed it gently on his mate's shoulder.
+
+"Good boy, old Mul," he said, in words which, however inadequate,
+revealed all the heart of his meaning.  And Mulhatton simply shifted
+his feet and gazed ahead, his hard, light eyes as expressionless as
+marble disks.
+
+The dawn came filtering across the raven waters as the bloodless hand
+of an old man quivers across a chess-board,--gray dawn, cold dawn, even
+more merciless than the night, in that it heralded the rise of the sun
+to smile over the evil wrought in the darker hours.  Astern, the white
+yacht alternately pierced the sky with her bow and sought the depths.
+
+Suddenly a long, triumphant scream of a whistle rang across the dawn--a
+roll of water parted a retiring wave.  The big white yacht moved of her
+own power.  Again the whistle sounded, as though in joy that the vessel
+had at last found herself.  Once more. . . .  She mounted the waves in
+proud defiance. . . .  The tow-lines slackened.
+
+"Cast off, cast off!" megaphoned an officer, while two of his sailors
+threw the ends of the cables into the sea.  The deck-hand and fireman
+started to bring them in, while Dan gave the signal for Crampton to go
+ahead.
+
+The tug started timidly forward and then hesitated and trembled.  A
+wave hit her, and she rocked like a cork.  The jump had all gone out of
+her.  Another wave struck her and almost hove her down, and then
+another wave snapped her back again, jerking out the funnel, which
+hissed overside into the sea.  Half on her side, she clanked into the
+trough.  She struggled to right herself and had partly succeeded, when
+a mighty wave smote her viciously on her listed side.  She went over to
+her beam ends and lay there a second, while Dan and his men shot
+through the windows, off from the deck, into the sea.  Another instant
+and the _Fledgling_ rolled her keel to the morning light and swiftly
+disappeared.
+
+As Dan rose on a wave he saw her go, saw too, the white face of his
+engineer framed in the engine-room doorway, which a wave filled just as
+she turned, obliterating the face forever.
+
+The next few minutes were nothing but a buffeting, swirling confusion.
+Suddenly a line struck Dan's face . . . his hands closed upon a
+circular life preserver. . . .  The next instant he lay gasping on the
+deck of the _Veiled Ladye_, beside his deck-hand and mate.
+
+Half an hour later, Dan, in warm clothes, sat upon the pitching deck of
+the yacht, at the doorway of the saloon.
+
+The _Fledgling_ gone and Welch and Crampton--that was all he could
+think of as he sat gazing into the gray of the waters, which in closing
+over the black tragedy immediately presented a surface as free from all
+evidence of guilt as the placid surface of a mill-pond.  He had made
+himself in the _Fledgling_,--had rounded to the measure of a man aboard
+of her,--had grown in the plenitude of man's strength and will and
+courage and success.  He felt the loss of his tug; it hit him hard; he
+suffered in every mental corner and cranny.  And when the two men who
+had given their lives for him and for the yacht came to mind in all the
+clearness of their personality and devotion to him, his head sank on
+his hand and he groaned aloud.
+
+A hand was laid gently on his shoulder, and looking up, he saw Mr.
+Howland and a tall, beautiful girl by his side, both gazing at him from
+the doorway with eyes filled with compassion.
+
+"You were the captain of the tug?" asked Mr. Rowland.
+
+"Yes, Captain Merrithew," and Dan ceased speaking and gazed at the deck.
+
+"You owned the tug?"
+
+"No," replied Dan.
+
+"Captain Merrithew, I cannot say anything adequate.  I appreciate what
+you have done--I cannot say how much."
+
+"Oh, father," broke in the girl, "tell him it was noble!"
+
+[Illustration: "Oh, father," broke in the girl, "tell him it was
+noble!"]
+
+"It was noble," resumed Mr. Howland.  "It was big and fine--you saved a
+score of lives, and for them you gave your tug and part of your crew.
+I cannot reward such men as you--I can pay just debts, though.  Your
+men shall not suffer; neither shall the families of those who were
+lost."
+
+Then he paused a minute and reached behind the door jamb, bringing out
+a water-soaked bit of plank.  "One of our best men picked this from the
+water.  You had been clinging to it.  I thought you might like to have
+it in your cabin."
+
+It was the name board of the _Fledgling_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE BRAVE AND THE FAIR
+
+As Dan seized the strip with its gilt letters and was about to reply,
+the yacht slung sideways, and a wave arising amidships smote the
+deck-house a lusty, full-bodied blow.  It suddenly occurred to the
+tugboat captain that the craft, all the time he had been aboard trying
+to collect his bewildered senses, had acted strangely.  He turned to
+Mr. Howland.
+
+"What's the matter with your yacht?"
+
+Howland was a good deal of a thoroughbred, and yet he could not conceal
+his eagerness as he spoke.
+
+"The yacht was just what I wanted to speak to you about, Captain," he
+said.  "I know I have no right to ask anything more of you, but if you
+have pulled together, I think we seem to need your assistance.  Our
+Captain was washed off the bridge, and the first mate is below with a
+broken leg.  The situation, I am afraid, is beyond young Terry, the
+second mate; I--"
+
+As the import of what Mr. Howland was trying to say flashed across
+Dan's mind, he turned abruptly, without waiting for the completion of
+the sentence, and ran for the bridge.
+
+Without a glance at the second officer, who seemed on the verge of a
+complete funk, he shouldered the two sailors from the wheel and hauled
+on the spokes with all the strength of his long arms.  As the yacht
+began to respond he seized the indicator crank and called for full
+speed ahead.  The whistle of the bridge speaking-tube sounded
+viciously, and Dan, placing his ear to the receiver, caught the words
+of the old chief engineer as they flowed up in profane vehemence.
+
+"Say, do you know what you want up there?  If I had a man down here who
+knew an engine from a plate of fruit, I'd 'a' been up there and snaked
+you off the bridge long ago.  I've been on my back under that triply
+damned shaft for twelve hours and now--" the rest of the sentence was
+an assortment of well-chosen oaths.
+
+The outburst greeted Dan's ears sweetly.  Evidently Howland had a man
+down below the water line, anyway.  He grinned as he clapped his lips
+to the tube.
+
+"I've just come aboard to take charge of this craft," he yelled; "now
+you do as I say and do it quick.  See!"
+
+A great relieved, blasphemous roar came up the tube, and the next
+instant the engines were laying down to their work.
+
+The bow began to cut nicely into the waves, and Dan turned to the two
+sailors.
+
+"Here, you boys, tail on here and steer as I tell you."  Whereupon,
+fingering a pocket compass, he called the course, after which he
+fastened the little instrument to the wreck of the binnacle.
+
+"We will pull through," he said, turning to Mr. Howland, who, with his
+daughter, had followed him to the bridge.  "We are somewhere off the
+Winter Quarter Shoals; if I can get the sun at noon I'll know exactly;
+anyway, we will make Norfolk if that shaft holds.  If it doesn't--well,
+banking on that engineer you've got down below, I think it will hold."
+Then inclining his head in the direction of Miss Howland, he added,
+"I'd advise you to go below, Miss Howland."  He thrilled as he uttered
+her name, "You're wet; and then--I may have to swear."
+
+"I should love awfully to hear some one swear to some purpose," she
+replied.  "Oh, I want to stay," she cried, speaking to her father, as
+Dan suddenly turned his back and spoke to the second mate.  "Father, I
+am going to stay.  The rest are seasick or frightened to pieces.  I
+feel braver up here."
+
+She was perfectly candid.  She did feel braver there on the bridge.
+For Dan was the one dominant personality aboard the yacht.  In her eyes
+he typified bravery, skill, strength--safety, in a word, for all.  It
+was as though out of the wrack of despair and the overriding elements
+had arisen the spirit of a man and all that at best he stands for, to
+reclaim the lost honors of the darker hours.  And so she clung to him
+with her eyes and felt she could smile at danger; her soul went out to
+him and enveloped him with gratitude and tenderness.  And she neither
+knew nor cared whether in these emotions was the uprearing of woman's
+submerged, primal nature, giving all to the sheer power of the stronger
+sex, or whether it was the result of a burden of dread suddenly lifted
+from her heart--it made no difference which.  She was living the
+moment--here and now--clear, serene, justified, and ennobled.
+
+And standing thus she watched him as he snapped the yacht slantwise
+from the grip of succeeding sea hollows and guided her over the gray
+hills, panting and straining, with much of pudgy deliberation, but
+surely.
+
+"We will make it easily," said Dan, "if nothing happens."
+
+"Good," cried Mr. Rowland, and, taking his daughter by the arm, he
+added, "come below, Virginia, and give them the good news.  Your friend
+Oddington has forgotten his cigarettes for a full twenty-four hours,
+and the Dale girls are candidates for a sanitarium."  There was a
+chuckle of relief in his voice.
+
+Dan turned to watch the girl as she followed her father from the
+bridge.  He was certain he had never seen anything so inspiring as
+Virginia Howland standing braced square to the wind, her trim blue
+skirt winding and unwinding; her cap in her hand; the wind tossing her
+heavy hair in myriads of glowing pennons, which beat on the
+blush-surged cheeks, alternately hiding and disclosing the sparkle of
+the deep gray eyes or the flash of perfect teeth from between parted
+lips.
+
+It was a picture upon which he permitted himself to ponder but an
+instant, however, for the wind was shifting again from the northeast,
+growling ominously, and the yacht, humping along at a ridiculous speed
+of six knots, made the situation less satisfactory than it had been.
+He spoke to Terry over his shoulder.
+
+"As you see," he said, "we're running into some new sort of hell," and
+he glanced impatiently at the potential riot ahead.  "Have these men
+keep the course and look out for things, will you?  I'm going down to
+the engine-room for a few minutes."
+
+"Very well, sir," said the young officer.
+
+Dan found old Jim Arthur, the chief, swearing softly as he moved about
+his engines with a long-spouted oil can.
+
+"It is beginning to breeze again," said Dan.  "I'm the new Captain and
+I came down to tell you I don't think much of your machinery, and to
+ask if the shaft will hold out."
+
+"The shaft'll hold," said the engineer.  Then he paused and looked at
+Dan in supreme disgust.  "Engines!" he snorted.  "I've been holdin' 'em
+together with my fingers since we left San Domingo.  Cap'n, they'd been
+fine for a Swiss cuckoo clock.  Why, they're only held together by gilt
+paint and polish.  See how old Howland's had 'em painted--like a
+bedizened old maid!  I do believe he's got 'em perfumed.  Well, they
+may hold--"
+
+Dan, who had been glancing about the engine-room, interrupted the
+engineer's pessimistic outburst.
+
+"What are your force pumps going for?" he asked.
+
+"Well, it ain't fur to water no flowers," said Arthur, beckoning Dan to
+the shaft tunnel, where a foot and a half of frothy water was rolling
+to and fro, slushing against the stuffing box, laving the engine-room
+bulkhead.
+
+Leaking!  Dan's first impulse was to drop his hands then and there and
+let the yacht sink or do what she would for all he cared.  He had
+fought out his fight with a better craft than this and had lost her.
+He did not yield to this; in truth, before he could think of yielding
+there came a second impulse--to relieve his mind of several hundred
+accumulated metaphors, to which inclination he surrendered
+unconditionally, while Arthur, in the face of the verbal torrent, gazed
+at the source in humble admiration.
+
+"How--how much is she taking in?" the young man finally gasped.
+
+"About thirty strokes a minute.  I'd 'a' whistled up the tube about it
+before, only I thought you had enough to fill your mind."
+
+"How does it strike you?" asked Dan.
+
+"It's gained only six inches in the past hour.  I will say that much.
+But if you ask me my honest opinion, I'd say this rotten old pleasure
+hull is a-gettin' ready to open up and spread out like a--like
+a--balloon with the epizooetic."
+
+"All right, when she begins, come on up with your men without asking
+leave.  Report every half-hour.  I'll be on the bridge, of course.  If
+I can pick up a steamship I'll call her and desert ship; if not--well,
+we're somewhere outside the Winter Quarter light-ship.  I'll need about
+five hours of the speed we're making to pick up the light vessel and
+beach the yacht in the lee of Assateague; maybe not quite five hours, I
+can't say exactly."
+
+"I think we can keep ahead of the water we're makin' that long,"
+replied Arthur, cheerfully.
+
+As Dan regained the bridge, the bad news he had received below was
+slightly compensated for by the fact that the storm seemed to be taking
+a new kink, swirling away to sea.  The gray combers, however, were
+still disagreeably to be reckoned with.  The second officer had by this
+time pulled himself together, and as he reported to Dan, the young
+Captain was happy to feel that he had at least a lieutenant who could
+be counted on.  Now if Mulhatton were only with him--but "Mul" was
+below, flat on his back, suffering technically from submersion, and so
+were the other men of the _Fledgling_ who had been pulled aboard the
+yacht.
+
+At ten o'clock Arthur reported that the water had gained another six
+inches.
+
+As Dan snapped back the tube a burst of laughter from the saloon
+reached his ears.  Seasickness, fear, everything evil had been
+forgotten in the spirit of confidence and assurance of ultimate safety
+which Dan's skill and personality had infused throughout the wallowing
+craft.  He shrugged his shoulders, staring vacantly into the angry sea.
+
+At length his eyes turned to the distress signals he had ordered
+hoisted; and suddenly the gulf between his lot in life and theirs,
+which the merriment suggested, disappeared, and his emotions thereby
+aroused,--emotions not untinged with self-pity, changed to deepest
+sympathy for those light-hearted ones who might soon be plunged into
+that gloom which heralds death.  Grim, silent, he turned to his work,
+determined that so far as in him lay no shadow of death should invest a
+single one of those persons who must find so much in life to make it
+worth while.  Another hour passed while the yacht stumbled her clumsy
+course to safety.  Arthur reported another half-foot; in all three feet
+six inches of water swishing against the engine-room bulkhead.
+
+"It will keep seepin' through," he said, "and wop!  Suddenly the whole
+bulkhead'll go."
+
+"Don't get caught," replied Dan.  "Give us three more hours, chief.
+Oh, I say, there's not a drop getting into the fire room yet?  Thank
+God for that!"
+
+"For what?"
+
+He faced about quickly and looked into the eyes of Virginia Howland.
+She was pale, but her face was brave.  "I had just come out on deck,"
+she said, "because somehow I was getting nervous--I wanted to be--to be
+near the Captain."  She smiled.   "I heard you talking through the
+speaking-tube; I didn't mean to listen--pardon me; I couldn't help it.
+We're in danger, then, are we?  Don't hesitate to answer truthfully,
+Captain Merrithew."
+
+"Why," replied Dan, "we--steady there, Mr. Terry; you men at the wheel
+attend to your business.  Excuse me," turning to the girl,
+"danger--why, we've been in danger all the time; else I wouldn't be up
+here."
+
+"You are evading," said the girl, slowly.  "But perhaps you are right.
+I can say I trust you, Captain--we all do.  I want to tell you again
+how we all appreciate your--what you have done--putting the yacht
+straight and--"
+
+"I am doing it for myself as much as for you.  More, perhaps; who
+knows?"
+
+The girl gazed intently at his square-cut, bronzed face.  Then she
+looked straight into his steel-gray eyes, peering hard ahead from under
+the flat peak of a cap he had picked up on the bridge.
+
+"Yes," she said, as though speaking to herself, "I think I know."  Then
+she started with an involuntary gesture.
+
+"Haven't I seen you somewhere before, Captain Merrithew?  Yes, yes, I
+have.  Where could it have been?  Do you recall?"
+
+"Yes," was the simple reply.  "I recall.  It was about two years ago,
+at Norfolk, when you were at the coal docks on this yacht."
+
+Virginia flushed eagerly and was about to say something, when some
+flashing thought, perhaps a realizing sense of their relative
+positions, closed her lips.  "I remember very clearly now."  She spoke
+quietly, then she closed her eyes for a second; when she opened them
+they were stern and hard.
+
+"Captain Merrithew," she said, as though to hasten from the subject, "I
+know we are in danger.  Your silence has said as much.  Yet the yacht
+seems to be going finely--"
+
+Dan made no reply.
+
+"Do you think I am a coward?  Is that the reason you are silent?"
+
+Dan made no attempt to conceal his annoyance.
+
+"Well, Miss Howland, if you are not a coward, if you can keep what you
+know to yourself, listen: We're taking in a little water.  It's a race
+between the yacht and the leak; the yacht ought to win out.  Now you
+know as much as I do."
+
+"I am not frightened; my curiosity is natural.  Is there a chance that
+the yacht may not get where you are taking her?"
+
+"To the Assateague beach--no, I don't think there is--if all goes well."
+
+"If all goes well!  Then there is a chance--a chance we may--"
+
+"Oh, we'll be all right."  Dan was temperamentally straightforward and
+honest, and his assertions were uttered with a tentative inflection
+which fell far from carrying conviction to the aroused senses of the
+girl.
+
+She stepped closer to Dan.
+
+"May I say something?  We are in danger.  I have been thinking of
+things since you came aboard--since I have been sitting in the saloon
+with the men who are different--"
+
+Dan could see that the girl, always evidently one of dominant emotions,
+was overwrought, and something told him she had no business to express
+the thoughts which filled her mind, that she would be sorry later that
+she had spoken.  He had interrupted her by a gesture.  Now his voice
+came cool and even.
+
+"Miss Howland, don't.  I've got to take care of this yacht."
+
+A quick sense of just what he meant shot through the girl's mind.  She
+raised her eyes and looked at him straight.  They were blazing, not
+altogether with anger.  She trembled; she flushed and moved
+uncertainly.  Then, without a word, she turned and left him.
+
+"A half-foot more water in the last half-hour," reported Arthur.
+
+As Dan turned to Terry, that officer silently pointed to the northward,
+where a tall column of black smoke seemed to rise from the waters.  A
+steamship!  Yes, but was it coming toward them?  Was it going away?  Or
+would it pass them far out to sea?  For fifteen minutes he watched it
+through his binoculars, and then he glanced down to the deck and called
+to a sailor to send Mr. Howland to the bridge.
+
+"Mr. Howland," said Dan, as the owner approached him, "I suppose Miss
+Howland has told you our fix."
+
+"Yes, but she has told no one else."
+
+"Bully for her!" exclaimed Dan.
+
+"She said you were hopeful."
+
+"More so now than ever before, I was making for the beach, but
+now--there's a steamship coming down on us.  I wasn't sure at first, I
+am now.  That smoke out there is heading dead for us.  I am going to
+slow the boat down to steerage way and wait for her to come up.  It's
+better than trying to make for Assateague; it's better to wait."
+
+"Will the bulkhead hold?"
+
+Mr. Howland asked his question in the even monotone which had
+characterized all his questions.
+
+"I think so; if it doesn't, we'll get everybody off in the rafts and
+the launch; the sea is going down by the minute."
+
+Mr. Howland glanced down at the deck where the crew of Scandinavians,
+inspired by the cool, cheerful commands of their new Captain, were
+working nonchalantly in preparing for eventualities.  From amidships
+came the clatter of men trying to repair the launch, the one boat which
+had not been carried away in the night's storm.  Others were clearing
+the life rafts so they could be launched without delay.  He glanced at
+Dan with admiring eyes.
+
+"I want to compliment you, Captain Merrithew," he said.  "You have your
+crew well in hand."
+
+"Thank you," replied Dan, "if you will keep your party in hand there'll
+be no danger at all.  I don't care what happens, with the sea falling."
+
+Another half-hour.  The steamship, a stout coaster, had now climbed
+over the horizon.  Mr. Howland, through the glasses, had picked out her
+red-and-black funnel and recognized her as one of his own boats.  But
+it had plainly come to a race between the steamship and the straining
+bulkhead.  No need now to tell any one of the situation.  The _Veiled
+Ladye_ was plainly settling astern.  The engine-room bulkhead was
+quivering, ready to break.  Arthur and his men had piled up from the
+engine-room, the engines still pulsing with no one to watch them.  The
+sailors were splendid, going about their work quietly, calmly.  They
+had carried the injured mate, groaning with his broken leg, to the
+deck.  Mrs. Van Vleck, Mr. Rowland's sister, the chaperone, sat with
+her niece's arms about her, passing in and out of successive attacks of
+hysteria.  A sailor had knocked one of the young men of the party down
+to quiet an incipient exhibition of panic.  Ralph Oddington and
+Reginald Wotherspoon stood at the rail, trying with nerveless fingers
+to roll cigarettes.  Two of the girls were weeping in each other's
+arms.  The water bubbled under the turn of the yacht's counters.  Two
+of the sailors were discharging blank shells from the rifle astern in
+hopes of calling attention to the plight of the craft.  The deck was a
+conglomerate, nervous confusion of smart yachting costumes, uniforms,
+and greasy overalls.
+
+Dan, noting the flutter, leaned back from the wheel.
+
+"Don't get excited down there," he roared.  "If the bulkhead holds,
+we're all right.  If it doesn't, there'll be plenty of time for all.
+Do you understand?  We can float for a week on the ocean the way it is
+now."
+
+"It won't hold long, Mr. Howland," he added to the man at his side,
+"but it will hold until that steamship reaches us.  She's seen us and
+is coming like hell."
+
+A few minutes later a joyous shout sounded from the men on the bridge,
+a cry vibrant with electricity, which thrilled through the yacht and
+finally trembled on all tongues.  For the steamship had sized the
+situation and was fairly leaping toward them.  Great clouds of smoke
+were belching from her funnel.  They could see sparks mingling with the
+thunderclouds of sepia, and the _Veiled Ladye_ hobbled woundily to meet
+her.  On came the freighter; her hull was plainly discerned now,
+picking the waves from under her bluff bows and throwing them
+impatiently to either side.
+
+Cries of joy and appeals for the succoring vessel to hurry sounded from
+the yacht's decks.
+
+As the vessel drew nearer.  Miss Howland ran to the bridge and took her
+father by the arm.
+
+"Father!" she cried.  "You must come now.  Isn't there anything in your
+cabin you want to save?"  With a muttered "By George!"  Mr. Howland
+dived below and the girl faced Dan.
+
+"Captain Merrithew--"
+
+Oddington's voice thrilling in joyous, cadence sounded from beneath the
+bridge.
+
+"Virginia, Virginia, where are you?  Oh, up there!  Come down quickly!
+Don't you see we are coming alongside?  And Merrithew, old
+chap--Virginia, will you come!  You are to be put aboard after your
+aunt.  Hurry!"  There was a half-note of proprietorship in his voice.
+
+As the girl turned to leave, Dan gave the wheel to Terry and ran to the
+deck with a speaking-trumpet in his hand.  As he passed Oddington, who
+had assisted Miss Howland from the bridge, he spoke to him quietly.
+
+"The man with the broken leg leaves this ship first."
+
+Below there was a dull crash and clouds of steam burst through the
+ventilators and the engine-room gratings.  The bulkhead had succumbed,
+but no one cared now.  The steamship was turning in about a hundred
+yards away.  Dan directed his trumpet to the bridge.
+
+"Scrape close alongside," he yelled.  "Open one of your cargo ports and
+we'll board you through it."
+
+The freighter's Captain had already anticipated this suggestion, and as
+the vessel slid alongside, Dan ranged the sailors along the deck.
+
+In perfect order the mate with the broken leg was slid into the port as
+though he were merely being passed into another room.  Then went the
+women, then the men of the party, and after them the sailors.  Dan and
+Mr. Howland alone were left now.  As the elder man prepared to enter
+the port he looked at Dan a moment and smiled.
+
+"Some day I hope to cancel this debt."
+
+They were simple words, but potentially they meant much to Dan.  He was
+to find they involved the realization of dreams, ambitions he had long
+held; another rung on the ladder which eventually----  But there was no
+time to think of the future now.  Turning from the porthole he ran
+along the deck, calling to make sure that every one was off.  When he
+returned, Miss Howland and several others were leaning over the rail
+above.
+
+"For heaven's sake, Captain Merrithew, will you please come off that
+yacht!"  The girl's voice rang imperiously.
+
+With a last look at the bridge upon which he had passed the recent
+thrilling hours, he leaped aboard the freighter, and when ten minutes
+later the white _Veiled Ladye_ threw up her bow with a great clanking
+sigh and slid swiftly from view, Dan Merrithew was fast asleep in the
+Captain's cabin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+DAN IS COMMANDED TO A PARTY
+
+A week later, Dan, in accordance with an engagement made with Mr.
+Howland when parting with him at the railroad station at Norfolk,
+whither the rescuing vessel had taken the shipwrecked party, called at
+the office of the Coastwise and West Indian Shipping Company in the
+Bowling Green Building and asked to see the president.
+
+It was a large office, filled with clerks and all of them busy.  The
+young man who received the caller's request looked at him sharply and
+shook his head.
+
+"Mr. Rowland's engaged now," he said, "at a company meeting.  If you'll
+call in an hour or two I'll find out if he will see you."
+
+Dan drew from his pocket a card with a pencilled memorandum and glanced
+at it.
+
+"He made an appointment with me for eleven o'clock to-day.  So I guess
+I'll have to ask you to take in my card."
+
+The clerk shrugged his shoulders and walked away.  When he returned a
+few minutes later all signs of mistrust had vanished.  Opening the gate
+with a sort of flourish he said:
+
+"Mr. Howland says for you to come right in."
+
+As Dan entered the president's office, Mr. Howland arose from a long,
+polished oaken table littered with papers, at which several men were
+seated, and advanced to meet him.
+
+"Captain Merrithew," he said, "I am glad to see you again.  And now,"
+he added, the formalities of introducing Dan to the various officers of
+the company being completed, "I have gone into the matter of the men
+lost when the _Fledgling_ sank and have sent a check for five thousand
+dollars to the wife of your engineer, Crampton, who I understand
+carried some life insurance, and a check for three thousand dollars to
+Welch's mother."  His voice was crisp and business-like, but his manner
+intimated clearly the sympathy and gratitude which had dictated his
+gifts.
+
+"Yes, sir, they are adequate," replied Dan, feelingly.
+
+"I have sent checks to your mate, Mulhatton, who, I am informed, is
+still in the employ of the Phoenix Company, as well as that fellow
+Noonan and the steward; which brings us to you."
+
+"Mr. Howland," said Dan, flushing, "I'm simply not--"
+
+"Just a moment, if you please," interrupted Mr. Howland; "I assume you
+are qualified to navigate the ocean?"
+
+"Yes," replied Dan, trembling slightly; "I've the best of broad ocean
+papers and seven harbor endorsements."
+
+"That ought to be enough," smiled the vice-president, Mr. Horton, who
+seemed perfectly in touch with the trend of the situation.
+
+"Yes," resumed Mr. Howland, "what I am getting at is this, Captain
+Merrithew.  The Coastwise Transportation Company is looking for men
+like you.  We want you with us, in short.  As you probably know, we
+have a fleet consisting of steamers of various sizes, but all pretty
+much the same type; that is to say, seaworthy, comfortable, and well
+engined.  We cannot place you in command of one of our newest vessels,
+of course.  But there is the _Tampico_, the commander of which, Captain
+Harrison, we are to retire for age.  She is a good boat, running to San
+Blanco, and she is fitted for passengers; so you will find opportunity
+to develop your social proclivities, if you have any to develop."
+
+As Mr. Howland was talking the color had slowly departed from Dan's
+face, and now, as the president ceased speaking and regarded the young
+man, he spoke haltingly, with dry lips.
+
+"Do I understand you to mean that you are going to make me Captain of
+the _Tampico_?"
+
+"You are to understand that we have," corrected Mr. Howland.
+
+"Mr. Howland, gentlemen," said Dan, "I--I can't say anything
+except--thank you--I--"  He hesitated, confusedly.
+
+"There's nothing for you to say," interpolated the president, "except
+that you'll go down to the ship, which is loading at Pier 36, East
+River, and assume command.  Captain Harrison will remain aboard for two
+or three trips to break you in to the trade."  There was that in his
+voice which intimated the end of the interview, and Dan with a bow was
+turning to leave, when Mr. Howland uttered an exclamation.
+
+"Oh, by the way," he said, "here is a note my daughter asked me to give
+you.  It will explain itself, I think; and since you are now serving
+under the house flag of this company, I can say only that obedience to
+orders contained therein is imperative.  We all obey orders from that
+source," and with a chuckle Mr. Rowland turned to his confreres and was
+speedily immersed in other important affairs of the company.
+
+Dan did not open the envelope in the office.  First of all he wanted
+fresh air.  The quick, calm, business-like manner in which his
+promotion had taken place; the noiseless, well-ordered, automatic
+opening of another door leading to the future of his ambitions, so
+utterly at variance with preconceived ideas in this regard, had all but
+unnerved him.  He had always held it as assured that some day he should
+walk his own bridge.  But until a half-hour ago, this day seemed still
+to lie far ahead, a day to be attained, well, he could not say exactly
+how--but at least with a sort of metaphorical roaring of guns and
+waving of flags, and great spiritual exaltation.
+
+But now--a few short sentences, a handshake, and presto!  Captain
+Merrithew, of the Coastwise line steamship _Tampico_, by your leave.
+The wonder of it all dazed him; yet withal he knew he had never before
+been so stirred to the very depths of his being.  He was not yet in a
+position to estimate his good fortune in comprehensive terms.  As a
+matter of fact, he did not try.  One thought alone kept flaming through
+his brain--his age.  Twenty-six, twenty-six; the numerals flew through
+his mind as though the years of his life were the most important
+elements in the situation.
+
+By the time he reached the Battery sea-wall, he had somewhat adjusted
+his mental attitude, and, gazing with a degree of calmness over the
+waters of the bay toward the hills of Staten Island, he recalled the
+note from Miss Howland.
+
+All along it had lain a pleasant substratum in his mind, and now as he
+tore open the envelope and read the contents, a peculiar, grim smile
+lighted his eyes for a second.
+
+
+"DEAR CAPTAIN MERRITHEW:--Next Thursday we are going to have a reunion
+of the castaways at our house.  It will be for dinner, and we have all
+agreed it will not be complete without the man who made this gathering
+possible.
+
+"I am not going to let you make any excuse, for my dinner-party will
+have an empty space without you.  It will be very informal.  Father for
+several years has refused to wear evening dress at dinner, so none of
+the other men will.  Now remember, I shall expect you on Thursday
+evening, at seven; you need not bother sending an acceptance.
+
+"Very sincerely yours,
+
+"VIRGINIA WALTON ROWLAND."
+
+
+Virginia met her aunt at the foot of the stairs, and, slipping an arm
+about her waist, laughed nervously.
+
+"Well, my dear, to-night we entertain the tug-boat hero.  It's horrid
+to feel so, but do you know I wish I had suggested to father that we
+have the dinner on one of his vessels.  Do you remember last Fall, what
+fun it was?  I have the impression, don't you know, that things would
+be less strained than here.  He would find the atmosphere more
+adaptable."
+
+"He?  Oh, the tugman," laughed her aunt.  "I shouldn't worry if I were
+you."
+
+"I'm not worrying about that," protested the girl; "but oh, I don't
+know--I hate to have the success of a dinner in the air, especially
+when you have a sort of reputation in that way, don't you know."
+
+"Nonsense," replied the older woman, glancing admiringly at the tall,
+lithe girl in her white evening gown as she moved through the
+drawing-room to the dining-room, where the butler was adding the final
+deft fillips to a centrepiece of roses, in which a candy yacht was
+sinking.
+
+"You see," said the girl, pointing to a dinner card bearing Merrithew's
+name, "I am going to place him between you and me.  Will you--won't you
+arrange things so he'll take you in.  No; never mind!  I'll arrange
+that--you're always such a dear about such things, and you won't mind,
+will you?"
+
+"Certainly not," smiled her aunt, "I shall ask him to tow me in."
+
+They both laughed.  Their understanding was perfect.  Ever since the
+older woman had entered her brother's house, years before, to care for
+a motherless child, the bond of sympathy between the two had been of
+the strongest, and throughout she had remained the best friend and
+counsellor, if only because she was the wisest.
+
+When Dan entered the Howlands' drawing-room all the guests had arrived.
+He accomplished this difficult feat, which is considered an art in
+fashionable schools, with easy grace and unconsciousness and received
+Virginia's welcome courteously.
+
+He wore a well-fitting blue suit of conventional cut and neither his
+hands nor his feet seemed to bother him a bit.  And yet among the men
+of the company he stood out in sharp contrast.  Miss Howland marked
+this particularly when Oddington presented himself with an air of
+good-humored camaraderie,--he, the successful young lawyer, with a
+growing reputation as a man about town and the glamour which surrounds
+the most popular all-around man at his university still about him; a
+man who did well everything he tried to do, and able to give the
+impression that the things he could not do were not worth the attempt;
+whose every action, every word, every expression was marked with the
+undefinable stamp of the metropolis, and the various lessons it
+teaches.  Merrithew, on the other hand, standing tall and
+broad-shouldered, looking about him as he talked, with quick, observant
+glances; a face weather-beaten, but not rough, a typical Anglo-Saxon
+fighting face, but kindly withal; certainly not truculent.  Miss
+Howland had met young army and navy officers who had aroused in her
+similar impressions; she had, in fact, no difficulty in defining
+Merrithew's type.  He was of the class which does strong things out of
+the beaten track; men who in the process of civilization have retained
+some of the wandering or combative or predatory instincts of earlier
+ages and have been set apart in the scheme of natural selection to
+fight battles, explore countries, kill wild beasts, navigate waters, to
+the end that a greater proportion of their fellow men may peaceably
+advance the interests of commerce, science, the arts, and, other
+affairs of a humdrum world.
+
+Oddington took Miss Howland in.  At the last moment her father had
+telephoned from the office he would be late and not to wait for him.
+This necessitated a hasty rearrangement of the dinner cards; and Mrs.
+Van Vleck was further disturbed by the butler, who was batting his eyes
+fiercely at the cringing second man, token that something had occurred,
+or more probably had been about to occur, to mar that service which was
+his pride.
+
+Dan, therefore, who sat at her right, finding relief from the
+rapid-fire conversation which she had directed at him, obviously with
+intention to put him at his ease, found time to glance up and down the
+table.  There were perhaps a dozen persons, and he recognized most of
+them as members of the _Veiled Ladye's_ party.  Reginald Wotherspoon,
+upon dry land once more, out of danger, sure of himself, was bantering
+one of the girls across the table, in the dry, masterful tone of one
+who fancies he understands women; and the rest were laughing at the
+confused indignation which marked her replies.
+
+Dan recalled this girl.  She had been especially cool aboard the yacht;
+and certain pictures of Wotherspoon flashing through his mind, an
+amused smile lighted his eyes for an instant.  Miss Howland, who at the
+moment had turned from Oddington, caught the smile, and following his
+gaze, instinctively divined the cause.  She was not annoyed.  On the
+contrary, she was pleased, for it indicated to her that Dan was
+perfectly at ease, and she noted, moreover, that he was dealing with
+the various courses with a greater degree of _savoir faire_, so to
+speak, than she had thought probable.  She dismissed forthwith all
+fears she had entertained regarding Wotherspoon's prediction that
+"among the features of the dinner would be a lifelike imitation of a
+towboat skipper swallowing his knife."
+
+He followed Mrs. Van Vleck's leads in conversation, and once responded
+with crisp cleverness to a gay remark addressed to him by a girl across
+the table.  But he seemed to take it for granted that Miss Howland
+would be occupied with Oddington; and in fact he had spoken to her but
+once, and then to thank her when she pushed a dish of almonds toward
+him.
+
+The girl had noted a similar tendency of late on the part of other men,
+but had thought of it only in as far as it had impressed upon her the
+fact that she and Ralph had grown to understand each other rather well
+and were very good friends.  She had arrived at that age where she had
+begun to feel that perhaps, after all, this might be what the world
+called love and that women who attributed to the word emotions deeper,
+more absorbing, more thrilling, were mere sentimentalists, who derived
+their plans and ideas from a world of dreams or from fiction both
+classical and popular; or else they were women of deeper feeling than
+she knew herself to be.
+
+It was all a problem.  She had reason to feel that a time was
+approaching when Oddington might reasonably expect a clearer,
+better-defined relation.  Whether she would be willing to grant this
+was another matter.  It was possible she might; it was possible she
+might not.  She did not know.  It was a situation which perplexed if it
+did not inspire her, which interested if it did not thrill.
+
+And yet now Dan's tacit aloofness piqued her.  She admitted she did not
+understand him at all.  Here was a man, a tugboat captain, of course a
+product of the water front; primarily, no doubt, a dock-rat, and yet a
+man who had not tangled himself in the use of his forks, who spoke in
+even, well-modulated tones, and looked like a gentleman.  Miss Howland
+was not snobbish in these thoughts.  She had never been a snob; she was
+simply considering facts.  And she did not want him to be aloof.
+
+"Captain Merrithew," she said in a tone designed to draw him and the
+others into general conversation, "Ralph--Mr. Oddington, has been
+saying things again about my favorite cousin Percy Walton."
+
+Ignoring the polite chorus of mild expostulation, Miss Howland turned
+to Dan, speaking with great vivacity.
+
+"Percy, you know, was educated to win football games for Yale, and at
+the last moment went to Princeton.  But he did not play there, because
+Uncle Horace, his father, in a fit of disgust, made him go to work."
+She glanced smilingly at Oddington.  "Mr. Oddington and Mr. Wotherspoon
+say he was proselyted by Princeton.  We've had more fights about it--"
+
+"Well, he was proselyted," laughed Oddington, "stolen from us bodily."
+
+"Wasn't it some time ago?" asked Dan.
+
+"Why, that's just the point," said Mrs. Van Vleck.  "It was at least
+five or six years ago.  I am afraid Ralph and Reggie will never be able
+to realize they are not undergraduates."
+
+Oddington smiled.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," he said.  "At all events, it keeps us young.  As
+for Walton, I'd be ashamed to own him for a cousin," winking at Dan.
+"Why, Merrithew, all his family had been Yale from great-grandfather
+down."
+
+"There; you hear him, Captain Merrithew," cried Miss Howland; "don't
+you think that's a horrid way to talk?"
+
+Dan smiled, tapping lightly on the table with his fingers.
+
+"I don't believe he was stolen," he said slowly, as though not quite
+certain whether he ought to venture an opinion.  "Whether he was or
+not, I don't believe he'd ever have made the Yale team or the Princeton
+eleven either."
+
+Virginia started in her chair and glanced at him swiftly.
+
+"Indeed!" she said, flushing.  "You don't mean to say--what do you know
+about Percy Walton?"
+
+"Now you're in for it, Merrithew," grinned Oddington.  "What do you
+know about Walton?"
+
+Dan picked up his dinner card and spun it between his thumb and
+forefinger for a few seconds, and then with a slight smile replied:
+
+"Why, not a great deal.  Next to nothing, personally."  He paused a
+moment, and then glancing down at the table added, "I was captain of
+the eleven on which Walton played at Exeter."
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+After the guests had gone, Virginia, her father, and Mrs. Van Vleck sat
+for a few minutes in a small apartment between the drawing and dining
+rooms.  The girl's eyes were bright.
+
+"Well, father, I actually believe you could have knocked me down with a
+feather to-night."
+
+Mr. Howland drew his cigar-cutter from his pocket and slowly inserted
+the end of a perfecto.
+
+"I suppose you refer to Merrithew."
+
+"Certainly," said Mrs. Van Vleck; "why in the world didn't you tell us,
+Horace?"
+
+"Yes, why didn't you?" The girl had arisen and approached her father's
+chair.  "You might have known, father dear, that both Aunt Helen and I
+lay awake nights wondering whether he would bring a boat-hook or a
+sou'wester to the dinner, and do--oh, all sorts of outlandish things,
+making us the joke of the season.  And to think--a football captain in
+Percy's class at prep school, quiet, easy-mannered--"
+
+Mr. Howland snapped the end from his cigar and placed the cutter in his
+pocket.
+
+"Are you quite through, Virginia?" he said.
+
+"Quite," replied the girl, who thereupon disproved her assertion by
+beginning where she had left off.  "And I do believe you knew all the
+time and were simply teasing us."
+
+"That is not exactly true," smiled her father.  "Of course I looked him
+up a bit before offering him the command of the _Tampico_.  He comes
+from near New Bedford.  You know my mother's family lived there."
+
+The girl nodded.  "Yes?  Go on."
+
+Mr. Howland lighted a match and held it burning for a while before
+applying it to his cigar.
+
+"You know," he said, "there are no better people in the world than some
+of those New England seafaring families.  The Merrithews, I believe,
+were very substantial. . . .  So you see where your supposed wharf-rat
+acquired the manner which you marked in him, and his good English,
+and--and well, whatever else you marked."
+
+"What is he going to do now?" asked Mrs. Van Vleck.  "Oh, of course,
+the _Tampico_.  Is he qualified to be a captain?"
+
+"Why, naturally; I haven't the slightest doubt of it.  But Harrison
+will stay with the ship for two or three more trips to break him in
+thoroughly.  Both companies by whom he was employed while in tugboat
+work speak of him in the highest terms.  It's all rather a departure.
+But I feel I owe it to Merrithew; and besides, I have an idea he is the
+sort of man we want.  This West Indian trade is not all beer and
+skittles."
+
+"It is very interesting," said Virginia, stifling a yawn.  "I hope to
+see something more of him; he's a new sort and worth studying.
+And--oh, father, is there any chance that we'll have that house-party
+at our San Blanco estate next Spring?  I mean--of course you've
+promised that.  What I meant was, will we go on the _Tampico_?  Now
+don't smile, father; you have said a dozen times you were through with
+steam yachts."
+
+"I'm not smiling," said Mr. Howland.  "It is quite possible we'll go
+down on the _Tampico_--unless Merrithew manages to sink her in the
+meantime."
+
+"Bully," cried the girl.  "Good-night. . . .  I think," she said,
+speaking slowly over her shoulder--"I think we had a very successful
+partee."  She paused and looked doubtfully at her father.  "The only
+difficulty is that, now we know he is not hopelessly impossible in one
+way, we have to face the fact that he is all the more impossible in
+others."
+
+"Yes," said her aunt, laughing, "as an interesting social freak we
+might have used him; but as an ordinary, well-behaved steamship
+captain--"  Mrs. Van Vleck shrugged her shoulders expressively and
+raised her eyebrows.
+
+"Well," said the girl, "he'll be eminently eligible for the Captain's
+table of the _Tampico_.  Somehow I wish he had done something unusual
+to-night.  I had developed all sorts of strange fancies concerning him."
+
+Now, as a matter of fact, she did not wish that at all.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WITS VERSUS MACHINE GUNS
+
+Dan brought to his new duties a well-grounded knowledge of the
+fundamentals of his calling, and his deficiencies, such as they were,
+were skilfully eliminated by his white-haired mentor, Captain Harrison.
+Among other things, this prince of ancient mariners, who had taken a
+great fancy to Dan, was at infinite pains to impress upon him the fact
+that in the duties of captain of a vessel calling regularly at the
+ports of small Latin republics many requirements aside from mere
+ability to navigate a ship are involved.  Seductive arts, such as
+verbal or financial propitiation; knowledge when to give a dinner and
+when to threaten to invoke the "big stick"; when to hold to a position
+and when to recede from it;--all these attributes of diplomacy were
+acquired by Dan under Harrison's tutelage, so that when the old Captain
+finally retired to his well-earned rest on a Long Island farm, he
+"allowed" that young Merrithew had the stuff in him of which smart
+officers are made.
+
+On his own account, Dan, by keeping his mouth shut and his eyes open,
+learned not a little of the methods which characterized the relations
+of his company with various Governments; and while not all that he
+learned could in the widest implication of the phrase he designated as
+morally--or, say, rather, ethically--elevating, it afforded an
+interesting side-light upon the business character of Horace Howland.
+
+In this connection it is well to state that the ultra clamorous days in
+San Blanco had long ceased, and that the new _Presidente_, Rodriguez,
+who had arisen to his honors out of the midst of the travail of fire,
+powder, and a modicum of bloodshed, was conducting affairs of state
+much to the liking of the San Blanco Trading and Investment Company, of
+which company Mr. Howland was the brains and guiding spirit.  Need it
+be suggested that this amounts to saying that Mr. Howland was the
+brains and guiding spirit of the San Blanco Republic as then
+constituted?
+
+At all events, with peace smiling over troublous San Blanco, Mr.
+Howland sent word to Dan that early in April he, his daughter, Mrs. Van
+Vleck, and a party of ten, would sail on the _Tampico_ for Belle View,
+the Howland estate, just outside of San Blanco City.
+
+Dan was not altogether surprised at this message.  The passenger
+accommodations of the _Tampico_ were elaborate, and hints of Mr.
+Howland's intention had reached him in one way or another.  But now
+with definite assurances in hand life took on added zest.  He had not
+seen Miss Howland since the dinner; but it would have been futile for
+him to attempt to convince himself that she had not formed a more or
+less vague background for many of his thoughts and moods since that
+epochal event.  Occasionally he saw her name in the newspapers, and one
+of them once printed a picture purporting to be her photograph.  But it
+was not.  Otherwise he might have been tempted to cut it out.
+
+Now, with her presence aboard the _Tampico_ assured, the steamship
+became involved with a new significance.  He pictured her on the bridge
+with him.  He selected her place at the table in the saloon, and
+dreamed of all the life and laughter and grace and beauty she would
+bring to it.
+
+As for himself, he had the proud realization that in measuring his
+opportunities on the broadest possible gauge, he had lived up to them
+sincerely, and he knew the results to be good.  On his own bridge he
+had faced the blind fog with the lives of passengers hanging upon his
+judgment; he had met the elements at their work, and out of the ordeal
+he had come with greater self-reliance, broader, kindlier, better.  For
+the first time in his life he was looking beyond his dreams, although
+the work in hand was all-absorbing; there would be more for him to do.
+He felt it, he knew it, for such is youth.
+
+One beautiful April morning, a company, wonderfully well selected
+according to the view-point of Virginia and her aunt, boarded the
+_Tampico_ and merrily set sail.  Not the least of that company was
+Howland himself, who, standing upon the bridge beside Dan, smiled as he
+thought of the dozen Hotchkiss guns and the two very grim eight-inch
+rifles resting in the darkness of the forward hold, and then spoke
+almost in parables.
+
+"It is always well, Captain, to divine the trend of the wind before
+weather vanes give information to all who care to look for it."
+
+"Yes?" replied Dan, not comprehending.
+
+"Yes.  Those playthings, strategically placed at the capital, will
+insure an era of Government integrity for some time to come; and that
+will be very good; for the kind of integrity existing there is much to
+my liking.  Vasquez is restless; Sanches is uneasy; but there will be
+no radical action for some time to come.  When it does--well, Captain,
+I have taken the liberty to store some pieces of ordnance below--they
+appear as household furniture in the manifest of cargo.  I consider
+them qualified to maintain all sorts of Government integrity."
+
+"No doubt," smiled Dan; "if you have any one down there to handle them."
+
+"I have a very large office staff in Domingo City, unusually large.  I
+did not hire the men for their penmanship, nor for their ability as
+clerks, either."  Here Mr. Howland raised his eyebrows slightly, and
+Dan, taking his cue, raised his eyebrows too.
+
+And so the _Tampico_ sailed peacefully south-ward.  The April sun
+softened the air, the sea was like glass, and by the time the steamship
+had picked up the Southern Cross, the little company had been tried in
+the balance of propinquity and found not wanting.
+
+It was brilliant moonlight, and eight bells chimed sweetly over the
+silvery waters from the forecastle head, as Dan, with a cheery good
+evening, followed the first mate to the bridge.  The second mate smiled
+genially, gave the course as south half east, and, with his dog-watch
+ended, went to bed.  A gruff voice rolled along the deck.
+
+"The watch is aft, sir!"
+
+Dan's voice hurled astern before the echoes died.
+
+"All right.  Relieve the wheel--and the lookout!"
+
+Virginia, addressing a merry group on the hurricane deck, just below
+and aft the bridge, paused in the middle of a sentence and listened to
+the sharp, crisp words.  Then she smiled slightly and resumed her
+discourse.
+
+Dan paced up and down with the mate, taking up the thread of the talk
+where it had been left the previous watch; but neither was in a talking
+mood, and they soon fell silent.  Presently a girl's rich voice rose to
+the accompaniment of Oddington's banjo, an instrument but poorly
+adapted to the motif of the music, which was plaintive, yearning.  The
+deep contralto notes brought full meed of meaning, although the words
+were German; low, deep, uncertain at first--the ponderings of love, of
+devotion, of doubt--then swelling loud and full and free at the end;
+love justified, undying, triumphant, overpowering.
+
+  "Koennt' fuehlen je das Glueck das ich wuerd nennen mein
+  Haett' ich nur Dich allein!  Haett' ich nur Dich, nur Dich allein!"
+
+Then suddenly in wild rapture she broke from the German, repeating the
+refrain in English--
+
+  ". . .  The rapture that would be my own
+  If I had you . . . if I had you . . . you."
+
+Piercing sweet it ended, filled with tenderness.  Just you, you, you,
+going on far across the moon-lit waters into infinity.  Dan walked to
+the lee of the bridge and with hands on the dodger's ridge, leaned
+forward, peering bard and straight to the rim of the sea.
+
+For every heart there is a song, and for every song a heart; for this
+earth is not so big that the dreams, the passion of some song-maker,
+humble or not, may not strike a responsive chord, at the other end of
+the world, it may be.  And this for Dan; this simple love song with its
+swelling iterations.  It awakened sleeping poetry in the heart of the
+young commander, awakened a tenderness long hidden under the rough
+exterior of a tumultuous life.
+
+There was no mistaking the identity of the singer, no mistaking those
+deep, full notes, vibrant, rounded, and so melodious.  To whom was she
+singing?  Could a woman sing like that, sing as Miss Howland sang, to
+no one?  Impersonally?  Dan turned his face down at the group.  The
+women were muffled in greatcoats, for the soft evening, which had
+tempted them to the deck, was growing chill, and he could see the dark
+forms of the men and the red lights of their cigars.  Wotherspoon had
+just finished a comic song, and they were all laughing and applauding.
+
+Somehow it all emphasized in Dan his aloofness.  He heard Oddington
+address some jocular remark presumably to Miss Howland, for he caught
+her laughing reply.  And the thought came, how eminently eligible
+Oddington was to sit at her side; how fitting that he should be
+there--wealthy, distinctly of her set, a good fellow at the university,
+and now a law partner in the practice which his hard-working father had
+prepared for him.  For the first time, perhaps, in his life Dan felt
+himself humbled, and a great wave of bitterness flooded his mind. . . .
+And yet Miss Howland had been very kind to him.  Ah, but that was not
+the point.  He did not want persons to be kind; that suggested charity,
+or pity.  No; he wanted exactly what he earned--what he could take with
+his bare hands and his bare soul.  He wanted equality--or nothing; and
+if at the end of his struggle it had to be nothing, all right--but the
+end was not yet.
+
+Toward nine o'clock the deck party began to break up.  Some one had
+suggested bridge, and some opposed the suggestion.  At the end of a
+laughing discussion Oddington and three others went to the
+smoking-room, while the rest dispersed in various directions.  Dan,
+filled with his thoughts, was in the act of lighting his pipe, when the
+clicking of footfalls and the rustling of skirts sounded on the bridge
+steps.  The next instant Virginia stood before him.  The moonlight fell
+upon her, outlining the girl distinctly in her long, blue,
+double-breasted coat and the wealth of rippling dark hair flowing from
+under an English yachting cap.  She was smiling.
+
+"Do I intrude upon your sacred precincts?" she asked, "or am I welcome?
+I want to talk to you."
+
+"You are welcome, Miss Howland," said Dan, knocking the fire from his
+pipe and stuffing the briar-wood into his pocket, at the same time
+glancing quickly toward the wheel where the mate and the quartermaster
+were busy over a slight alteration in course.
+
+"I feared that incident at the table--Reggie Wotherspoon's behavior, I
+mean, might have upset you.  Of course you know he meant nothing by it.
+We all understand how he hates to be beaten in an argument.  Really he
+admires you--which is well for him, I can assure you."
+
+Dan, deeply embarrassed, muttered something about understanding
+perfectly about Wotherspoon, and that he knew him to be a decent enough
+sort of chap.
+
+"Do you know," went on the girl, "I myself was rather startled at first
+when you said that no man--that you could not tell whether you would
+flunk in time of danger.  I was so glad when you made your reservation
+that in the past, at least, you had not shown the white feather.  'What
+the past has shown,'" she quoted, "'who can gainsay the future?'  Oh,
+it was glorious," she exclaimed impulsively, "the night you stuck to
+our yacht until your own tug was battered to pieces!  I suppose I have
+said that a hundred times; but it grows more thrilling every time I
+think of it."
+
+She looked at him with open interest.  His uniform became him well; the
+trim sack coat fitted his great, deep chest and almost abnormal
+shoulders snugly; and above were the square, smooth face, the steady
+gray eyes, and the red-gold hair; and the long, straight limbs
+supported a lithe, almost aggressive poise.
+
+She started slightly forward.
+
+"Have you ever thought how much we owe you?  Oh, I have so often wished
+I could show you how much we appreciate all you did, in some way!"
+
+"You must not think of it in that way."
+
+"Why not, please?"  Miss Howland was a straightforward girl who faced a
+situation squarely.
+
+"Why, because the debt is all on my side.  Your father has given me my
+first command; and you--you have been fine to me.  I have had more than
+an ordinary sailor deserves."
+
+"But you are not an _ordinary_ sailor," said the girl quickly.  "Father
+knows of your people--"  She paused.  "Oh, I beg your pardon," she
+cried.
+
+"Listen," said Dan, quietly.  "When I was younger, about to enter
+college, a careless, happy life ended.  I began all over again then.  I
+date everything from that beginning--from the time I went aboard a
+tug-boat--the Lord knows why--and tried to do something.  What I have
+done, what I shall do, dating from that time, I stand on.  Before that
+my battles were fought for me.  After that the fight was my own.  And I
+have never regretted one bit of it; nor am I ashamed of one single
+minute from the time I slung hawsers on the _Hydrographer_ until I
+commanded the _Fledgling_.  And I shall always rejoice, and my friends
+must rejoice, in that part of the fight, and never seek to hide a
+single incident.  It's all behind now, but it was worth while.  And a
+man must go on--"
+
+"Yes, I know," replied the girl, softly.  She turned her face from the
+silvery path on the water.
+
+"And you are not going to stop fighting.  Oh, you will not stop!  You
+will go on and on.  Men like you never stand still.  I know it is the
+truth.  What difference can your past life make to your friends?  It is
+never what a man was or might have been that counts, or what he may be;
+it is what he is."
+
+And then she turned and left him.
+
+One evening as the dark came creeping over the purple waters, the
+_Tampico_ cluttered up to the mouth of the harbor of San Blanco City.
+Captain Merrithew and Mr. Howland stood on the bridge, while Virginia
+and most of her guests were assembled at the rail, all eyes straining
+shoreward.  A rattle of musketry tore through the evening air--a
+muzzle-loading cannon spoke grouchily; then all was still.  A sailboat
+was drifting out to sea and the fishermen, being hailed, informed those
+on the steamship that revolutionists were pounding at the city walls
+and pounding hard, but thus far without avail.  The uprising, as usual,
+they said, had its inception in the fastnesses of Monte-Cristi and,
+spreading through the country, had brought up with a bang against the
+walls of the city itself.
+
+Mr. Howland was seriously perturbed.
+
+"We must get in quickly and land our guns, Captain," he said.  "It's
+too bad we have this party with us.  However, you must not consider
+their comfort.  If you land this cargo of ordnance, we can break the
+revolution easily and pleasantly."
+
+He glanced at the Blancan navy--two gunboats, formerly pleasure yachts,
+and a "battleship," once a steam-lighter--which lay at strategic
+intervals across the harbor mouth and moved impatiently.
+
+"The scoundrels!" he ejaculated.  "Why don't they shell those
+insurgents?  They could end this promptly if they wished to.  I shall
+have something pleasant to say to them and to Senor Gaspard of the
+Marine when I see him.  Still, perhaps they are waiting for me.
+President Rodriguez expects us."
+
+Mollified at this thought, Mr. Howland straightened to a dignified and
+commanding posture.  The honors accorded an arriving Howland vessel
+were the honors accorded a United States warship, and he scanned the
+fleet eagerly for the first sign of the invariable welcome.  He turned
+to Dan.
+
+"Better dive into your cabin, Captain, and get on your double-breasted
+regalia," he said.  "There will be a round of diplomatic calls and
+felicitations generally--and of course they will ask for wine; for of
+all half-starved, thirsty natives, give me those of this bob-tailed
+republic."
+
+The fighting had evidently stopped for the night, and Mr. Howland waved
+his hand at the flag-ship.  He dearly loved all the punctilio of
+international etiquette and the deference that had ever been his
+portion in San Blanco.
+
+And so this captain of industry smiled and hearkened for the first gun
+of the expected salute.  But it did not come.  There was silence
+somewhat grim and certainly sullen.  He ground his teeth impatiently,
+angry disappointment growing as they drew near the fleet.  "What is the
+matter with those rascals?" he growled, turning to Dan, who,
+resplendent in blue and gold, had just joined him on the bridge.
+
+"They don't seem to be happy to see us," replied the Captain, shortly.
+
+"Not happy!" exclaimed Mr. Howland, who began to feel that the
+situation approximated _lese-majeste_.  "Not happy?  Confound them!
+When we're bringing guns to support their mangy and tottering
+Government!"
+
+"Well," replied the young commander, who scented trouble and thought of
+the party on board, "they don't seem to be, anyway."
+
+A sharp hail rang out from the nearest gun-boat, the flag-ship.
+
+"What vessel is that, and whither bound?"
+
+Mr. Howland tore at his collar and stuttered in purple fury.
+
+"Impudence!  Impertinence!  Lunacy!  Here, Captain, tell them they know
+very well what ship this is--and--and--wait!" as Dan raised the
+megaphone to his lips.  "Don't waste time talking to the villains.
+Tell them--tell them to go--well, you know what to tell them."
+
+And Dan demonstrated that he did--so vigorously, so eloquently that the
+answer came in the shape of a blank shot across the _Tampico's_ bows.
+
+Dan looked gravely at the owner.
+
+"The thing is pretty plain, Mr. Howland," he said; "the navy has
+evidently joined the insurrection.  Why they have not bombarded the
+city I don't know; but you can be sure they are going to.  We will have
+to stop," and without waiting for a reply he jerked the signal
+indicator, to cease headway.  Mr. Howland was at no pains to conceal
+his chagrin.
+
+"A mighty bad stumbling-block; a mighty bad stumbling-block if the navy
+has revolted, Captain Merrithew.  If this Government falls, it means a
+great deal to me; means the loss of considerable money--and prestige.
+I must look to you to land those guns, Captain."
+
+Dan did not reply, but gazed earnestly toward the city as though
+meditating a dash.  But that was out of the question, considering those
+aboard.  As the chug of the engines died out and the cough of the
+exhaust hit the glooming air and the clumsy black hull slid to a
+gurgling standstill, a gig was lowered from the _El Toro_, the
+flag-ship, and the officer, Admiral Congosto, was soon stumbling up the
+gangway of the freighter.  Mr. Howland was inclined to have him thrown
+overboard at once, but the better counsel of the Captain prevailed.
+
+"Very well," growled the ruffled owner, "have your fling."
+
+Admiral Congosto was a pompous Spaniard, obese, with bristling brows
+and moustaches, who wrinkled his forehead and winked his eyes
+constantly.
+
+"So," he said, with unctuous dignity, as Dan met him at the rail, "the
+Capitan?"
+
+"Yes; the Capitan," and Dan bowed courteously.
+
+"You are for San Blanco with supplies?--and--and--ah!"  The Admiral
+completed his sentence with a significant shrug of the shoulder.  Dan
+was equally cautious.
+
+"We were putting in for water, for fresh water," he said.  "Our
+condenser's filled with bread crumbs or something, and we can't make
+enough for our boilers, let alone drinking."
+
+With an ample shrug of his shoulders, the Spaniard suggested that the
+Captain might obtain all the water he wished if he would go in, leaving
+his cargo outside.  And then, as though weary of the subject, he turned
+to more congenial topics.  He thirsted for good wine; that fact was
+early elucidated, after which he rambled along indefinitely, allowing
+Dan to gather that all the officers of the fleet were also thirsting
+for wine.  At last he came straight to the point.
+
+"A case--a dozen bottles--it would suffice--it would be
+appreciated--ah!"
+
+Dan had an idea, and began to build upon it forthwith.
+
+"Admiral," he said, "there is much of what you seek aboard.  As you
+well know, Senor Howland never travels with empty lockers--there is
+much of a certain wine that sparkles--see?"
+
+"I see, but I do not hear what I mean," replied the perplexed Admiral,
+indulging nevertheless in anticipatory internal gratulations.
+
+"Why, hang it, man, champagne!"  The Admiral's beady eyes danced.  "Mr.
+Howland desires me to say that it is his wish that the friendly
+relations between his officers and those of the navy of San Blanco
+shall never wane.  There will, in short, be a dinner in half an hour to
+the officers of the fleet."
+
+"A dinnaire!"  Congosto sprang forward and embraced his prospective
+host, and five minutes later was speeding to his ship, the bearer of
+glad news.  For, behold, where he thought to meet an enemy, devious and
+tricky, he had encountered instead, a friend, generous, hospitable!
+
+"I fail to see your play, quite, Captain Merrithew," grumbled Mr.
+Howland.
+
+"Well," interpolated Virginia, "it was a very interesting play.
+Captain, I had no idea you could be so eloquent."
+
+"Thank you," laughed Dan.  "Mr. Howland," he added, "I shall make my
+play plain very shortly.  All I ask now is that you have your party
+assemble at the rail when the officers arrive and receive them as
+though they were representatives of the British Navy.  They will be
+conducted to the saloon.  Let no one of the party follow them in.
+Please make that clear."
+
+The guests came--in gigs, in launches, dinghies, and longboats--came
+with laughter, came with rejoicing, for they were to dine with the
+senor of the open hand, Senor Howland, who always opened wine as they
+would open tins of beef.  The gods never repaired more blithely to a
+Bacchanalian revel on Parnassus.  Two by two, in rigid order of rank
+they were escorted into the saloon, and the eloquent popping of corks
+was as music in their ears.  The Admiral took his place at the head of
+the table; the rest disposed themselves suitably.
+
+With a muttered excuse, Dan slipped out of a near-by door; the stewards
+disappeared; every one on the _Tampico_ stole quietly away.
+
+Admiral Congosto had no sooner raised his glass for the first toast
+than the two iron bulkhead doors slid together with a clang, followed
+by the rasp of bolts flying home.  The Admiral of the fleet and his
+lords commanders were hopelessly imprisoned amid the luxury of saloon
+surroundings, as hopelessly imprisoned as though they had been shut
+into the darkness of the lower hold.
+
+In the meantime, the _Tampico_, from hold to masthead, was blazing like
+a tall Sound steamboat.  Dan gained the bridge and gazed at the
+illumination with a smile; for all this splendor of electrical display
+was for a purpose.
+
+"You've locked them in, eh?" said Mr. Howland, abruptly.  He had been
+pacing the bridge, the victim of many doubts.
+
+"Yes," replied Dan; and there was a sharp inflection in the
+monosyllable which precluded further questioning.  The owner had
+instructed his Captain to land the guns which were lying in the hold of
+the steamship, and the young Captain was intent on the matter in hand.
+
+He pulled a certain crank, upon which the steam winches began to
+revolve with ghostly creakings, bringing the anchor up out of the mud.
+Then he signalled for full speed ahead.  There was a creaking, a sound
+of roiling water, and then, still blazing with light, the steamship
+made out for the open sea.
+
+They had gone but a quarter of a mile when those who were left on the
+fleet suddenly came to a realizing sense of the diabolical plot hatched
+under their very noses.  A gun boomed, a six-pounder shell squealed
+past the bridge, but the _Tampico_ slipped on her way seaward, while
+the funnels of the fleet belched clouds of smoke blacker than the
+velvet skies.  From the saloon came muffled shouts and ineffectual
+poundings on the bulkhead doors.
+
+"The walls are good and thick," said Dan, grimly.  "I doubt they will
+be heard--unless some one of the craft gets within a hundred yards of
+us.  They ought to have full steam up by this time.  I might as well
+stop her right here; this is about right."
+
+As the steamship swung heavily on the tide, the Captain shouted an
+order, which was taken up on deck and carried down a hatchway.  The
+next instant the lights in the lower part of the hull went out.  A few
+minutes later, another stratum of lights disappeared, and still later
+the deck lights.  Then out went the port and starboard lamps.  Then
+there was a ten-minute wait, while Mr. Howland, Virginia, and the rest
+of the party who had ventured on deck, thrilled and delighted with the
+situation, held their breath.  Dan pulled another switch and the
+masthead lights went out.  The _Tampico_ was now a part of the night.
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Virginia, "I see.  You have given them an imitation of
+a vessel disappearing hull down in the darkness.  How clever!"
+
+An exclamation from Mr. Howland broke the silence.  "Oh!" he cried.  "I
+see."  And he placed his hand on Dan's shoulder.
+
+The stillness was intense.  The water swept softly past the hull; the
+extremities of the vessel were lost in a blur of black.  Mr. Howland
+became impatient.
+
+"What can be the matter with those fellows?  Why don't they chase us
+and be done with it?"
+
+Dan touched him on the shoulder.  From the outer darkness floated a
+mysterious bourdon, which rapidly outgrew that definition and became a
+veritable commotion.  One light twinkled, then another, and still
+another.  Finally the swift pulsation of engines at high pressure rived
+the night.
+
+"They are coming."  The Captain turned to those who had gathered on the
+bridge, adding, "Now I want this place cleared, please.  If this scheme
+falls through, we shall have our perch raked with machine guns.  Go
+down on deck and either keep below, or to the side of the forward steel
+deck-house, which is away from the warships--and no noise.  Not a
+sound!  Understand?"
+
+Virginia, Mrs. Van Vleck, Oddington, and two others of the party
+decided to take their position in the shelter of the deck-house, where
+they could see and yet be protected if the vessel were fired upon.  All
+amusement had gone from the situation for Virginia.  She knew that her
+father, who insisted upon remaining on the bridge, might at any moment
+be placed in jeopardy.  And there was another emotion, which she sought
+not to deny--the Captain, what if he should fall?  Ah, she did not want
+that--particularly now he was risking himself, not for honor, not for
+any interest of his own, but because he was her father's employee.
+Then, too, she wished to study, to know him better; yes, that was what
+she wanted, and she had been conscious of it all along, to see, to
+learn, to know more of him.  She could distinguish his tall, straight
+figure against the darkness, moving swiftly.
+
+She had forgotten about the pursuing warships and what might follow,
+until her aunt tugged at her sleeve.
+
+"They are coming, Virginia," she said.
+
+They were indeed, and angry craft they were, a spectacle to marvel at,
+viewed from the shrouded _Tampico_, lying black and motionless, with
+every light out, with tarpaulins over the engine-room hatches and
+gratings; with even the ventilator hoods blanketed.
+
+"There they are!"  The whisper shot through the _Tampico_ like a draft
+of cold air.  Virginia was quivering with excitement.  She could see
+the leading boat as it passed not three hundred yards away, and the
+next, both spouting flames from their funnels, throwing up water, which
+fell in silvery, phosphorescent spray--racketing, clawing the restless
+sea, chugging, hissing with shouts of vengeance hurtling from their
+decks, First ploughed the flag-ship _El Toro_, next _El Teuera_, and
+last the "battleship" _El Manuel_, sitting almost on her stern,
+plugging along doggedly in a Herculean effort to be first in at the
+death of the presumptuous kidnappers.
+
+It was alarming, too, and the young people, trembling behind their
+shelter, gave a great sigh of relief as the last avenger passed, and
+the head of the _Tampico_ swung slowly around in the direction of the
+harbor.  Virginia again turned her eyes to the bridge.  The young
+Captain was standing like a statue, with his hands on the engine-room
+indicator, jumping the _Tampico_ across the waves under full headway.
+He was looking back over his shoulder, and the girl, following his
+gaze, saw to her great trepidation that the flag-ship, _El Toro_, had
+ceased headway and was lying motionless, as if those aboard her had
+divined the trick and were pausing a moment for fresh bearings.
+
+Suddenly came a crash of heavy glass; a girl screamed.  One of the
+saloon dead-lights had crashed out, the thick glass rattling down the
+steel hull to the sea.  There was another crash and a yellow glow
+flared into a bright blaze, illuminating the hull of the shrouded
+vessel.
+
+"Now they've done it!" cried Oddington.  "They have soaked a
+table-cloth with kerosene; it's all off now!  So much for Captain
+Merrithew's scheme.  I--"  A voice rang from the bridge.
+
+"Everybody down, quick!"  The warning was none too soon, for a second
+later a rain of lead from the _El Toro_ swept through the top of the
+funnel.  Then with straining engines the gunboat made a swinging
+detour, with the intention, plain to every one, of heading off the
+freighter.
+
+The firing was incessant now, and every one of the Howland party, as
+well as the crew, grovelled flat on the deck and heard lead whistling
+above.  Virginia, glancing at the bridge in an agony of terror, saw the
+Captain crouching just a trifle, but still at his post.  One man, a
+quarter-master, knelt at the wheel.  But she missed her father, and a
+great dread filled her mind.  It was but momentary, however, for Mr.
+Howland joined the party behind the deck-house.
+
+"Oh father!" cried the girl, "I feared you were hurt.  Why doesn't
+Captain Merrithew stop the boat and leave the bridge?  Surely his life
+and those of his men there are of more value than your interests in
+Blanco!"
+
+"I told him to stop, to throw ourselves upon the protection of our
+flag," and Mr. Howland laughed nervously.  "But it was no use.  I
+believe I reared a Frankenstein monster when I selected him as the man
+to land our guns.  Frankly he as much as told me to mind my business.
+He's in a fighting mood now; his jaws are set like steel-traps--I know
+his kind.  And do you know, Virginia, he will land us and the guns,
+too.  You wait!"
+
+The _El Toro_ had stopped firing, and was bending all energies to
+heading off the freighter; it looked as though she would do it, too,
+for she had once been a private yacht and had evidently lost none of
+her speed.  It was a mighty race.  The _Tampico_ was by no means a
+slouchy craft, and she ripped her way through the waters, clawing for
+the harbor mouth and San Blanco City like a thing possessed.  Swinging
+on a tactical semi-circle, the trim little flag-ship flew like a white
+ghost, tearing the waters, curling them up on deck until they ran out
+of the scuppers.  She unlimbered another gun and the leaden hail swept
+away the _Tampico's_ port lifeboat, crumpling the stanchions and davits
+like thin wire.
+
+"Their marksmanship is bad, as usual," said Mr. Howland, trembling
+nevertheless, in suppressed excitement.
+
+But if their marksmanship was bad their speed was not.  The _El Toro_
+was, in fact, shooting up rapidly; and as she began to circle in on the
+freighter it was plain to every one that her path would cross that of
+the fugitive.  There seemed nothing to mar the success of the gun-boat
+in her efforts to prevent the steamship entering the harbor.  Dan could
+judge of this better than any one else.  And yet he kept on.  His
+spirit dominated the entire vessel.  Virginia, as she watched him, with
+all that anger that a loser must feel, knew that she was brave, too,
+felt that to be otherwise would be a sacrilege.  Suddenly her eyes were
+riveted on the Captain; she saw him run to the megaphone rack and take
+up a cone.  Then she saw him dash it to the deck and turn and speak a
+few words to the man still kneeling at the wheel.  The man nodded and
+moved aside, and Dan took his place, erect, immovable.
+
+As he did so, the pursuing gun-boat, not more than four hundred yards
+away, let fly another rain of lead, and a few minutes later she slowed
+down, swinging broadside across the course of the _Tampico_, firing a
+six-pounder shell over the bow of the advancing steamship.
+
+"Too late, too late!" exclaimed Mr. Howland.  "All this trouble and
+danger for nothing!  Now we are caught!  But some one will pay--"
+
+His daughter seized his arm.
+
+"Father!  Oh, father!  We are not stopping.  Look!"
+
+It was true.  The _Tampico_ was not stopping; she swept on as if
+endowed throughout all her length of great black hull with her master's
+burning energy and fierce resolve to succeed.  A sharp cry came from
+the gun-boat, a cry sharply in contrast with its crew's former yells of
+triumph.  There came another six-pounder shell, this time cutting
+cleanly through the Tampico's bow.  But that was the last.  On, on like
+an avenging sea-monster swept the _Tampico_, sullen, silent, with the
+potential energy of dynamite lurking in the force of her momentum.  And
+straight, inexorable, Captain Merrithew stood on the bridge with his
+hands on the wheel spokes.  No longer was he young in the eyes of
+Virginia Howland.  No, he was old, old as the avenging ages and as
+cruel, as cold as the march of time.  Straight he made for the pretty
+white side of the gun-boat, as some grim executioner might measure for
+the blow of the sword which was to sever the white neck of some captive
+maid, some Joan of Arc.  And the girl caught his spirit and became
+cruel too.  She laughed at the gun-boat, as she fired again; she
+laughed as the _Tampico_ quivered and went to the heart of the quarry;
+she laughed as Dan, with another twist of the wheel, made more sure of
+his victim.
+
+The screw of the gun-boat revolved desperately.  She was backing; but
+it was too late.  Another sound now!  A heaving swell rose in between
+and threw the bow of the steamship slightly off.  With an angry cry Dan
+jerked at the wheel.  But the lost point could not be regained, and the
+_Tampico_, instead of hitting the gun-boat amidships and cutting her in
+two as intended, struck the quarter obliquely, slicing off a triangle
+of the hull and stern as a big knife cuts a cheese.
+
+There was a terrible crash and grinding, shrill screams, with the
+sharp, taunting laughter of Dan ringing clear, as his vessel swept
+clear of the wreckage, flashing by the crowded small boats which had
+been lowered a few seconds before the crash came.  Hardly knowing what
+she was doing, utterly beside herself, Virginia turned to her friends,
+her lips parted, her eyes flashing.
+
+"There!" she cried, "did you ever see a man?  I recommend you to look
+at Captain Merrithew--"
+
+"Yes, Virginia, it was bully."  Oddington's cool, thoroughbred manner
+chilled her ardor like a cold blast.  "It was mighty fine.  You are
+excited, girl."  And the young man removed the cigarette which had been
+between his lips.  Virginia regarded him steadily.
+
+"You are right, Ralph," she said at length; "I was excited."
+
+In the meantime, the _Tampico_ was dashing into the harbor at full
+speed, her whistle blowing like mad, bringing all officialdom,
+including the _Presidente_, to the water front; for, as Mr. Howland had
+said, they were expected.  Soldiers from the guard-boats swarmed aboard
+and took the rebel admiral and his fellow-officers ashore, and a few
+hours later well set-up mercenaries were dragging Mr. Howland's machine
+guns and eight-inch rifles from the quay to strategic points, where in
+the morning the insurrection would be broken as a strong man breaks a
+rattan cane.
+
+Later, at the end of a sunrise collation, _Presidente_ Rodriguez rose
+and, with one hand on his heart and the other clutching the stem of a
+wine glass, metaphorically presented the keys of San Blanco to the
+"Saviour of his country," and intimated not only a permanent suspension
+of tariff regulations in his favor, but a future statue of heroic size
+in the palace plaza.  Whereat Mr. Howland turned swiftly to Dan at his
+side, and from behind his napkin momentarily altered an expression of
+beatific if humble gratitude, and winked almost grotesquely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+AN ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION
+
+The next morning Dan stood at the rail of the _Tampico_, gazing out
+over the quay to the distant walls of the city, over which hung a heavy
+saffron pall.  The faint pat-a-pat-pat-pat of machine guns and the roar
+of heavier ordnance was incessant.  At first he had been disposed to go
+out and participate in the fighting.
+
+But second thought had altered his inclination.  He had come to know
+something of the business methods of Mr. Howland and men like him; and
+while he had no doubt that his employer considered them legitimate, and
+could, if he had to, submit many strong reasons for various measures
+which capital seems to find it necessary to employ in its relations
+with Latin-American Governments, yet he decided that the wholesale
+slaughter then in progress had far better be left to those who were
+employed for that purpose.
+
+How did he know but the men who had been fighting to capture the city
+and were now being shot down like sheep were not the real patriots,
+anxious to govern their own country in their way and not in the
+interests of foreign corporations?  As for Rodriguez, he knew enough of
+him to--
+
+Virginia Howland, coming up from behind, touched him on the arm, while
+her father, who followed her, placed his hand on Dan's shoulder.
+
+"Captain," said the girl, "I am disappointed.  I wagered a box of candy
+with father that you were already out fighting."
+
+Dan, unable to suppress the thoughts which had filled his mind, smiled
+grimly.
+
+"I don't think I have any desire to turn butcher," he said, with just a
+tinge of bitterness.
+
+The girl flushed and regarded Dan for a moment with a curious
+expression, and then glanced at her father.
+
+"Is it really--that?" she said.
+
+Mr. Howland smiled easily.
+
+"Butchery?  It seems to amount to about that.  Poor beggars!  But war
+is war," Mr. Howland tapped the rail with his finger by way of
+emphasis, "and those who attempt to overthrow governments generally do
+either one of two things: they succeed, or they pay the penalty of
+failure."
+
+"In this case," said Dan, coolly, "they seem to be paying the penalty."
+
+"Yes, thanks to you," replied Mr. Howland, "which is what I wish to
+speak to you about."
+
+He paused, and as Dan made no reply he continued:
+
+"You did a mighty fine piece of work for us in landing those guns--you
+have placed my company considerably in debt to you; but of that more
+later.  At the present time I want to tell you that these infernal
+revolutionists have burned Belle View--which," turning to his daughter,
+"may alter your sympathies a trifle, Virginia--and therefore
+necessitates more or less of a change of programme--"
+
+"Belle View burned!" interpolated Virginia.  "Why, father, what--"
+
+"As I was saying," resumed Mr. Howland, "we've got to shift things
+about.  In the first place, if Belle View were not burned, I should
+hardly feel safe in having the crowd there with conditions as they
+are--and things are not especially pleasant in this city.
+However,--how long will it take to get away from here, Captain?"
+
+"We must take on some coal, and Hendrickson has drawn the fires and is
+reaming in some new boiler-tubes.  We could get away inside of
+forty-eight hours, I think."
+
+"Good; let's do it, then.  We'll call at San Domingo, Hayti, Jamaica,
+and other places to make up for spoiling your house-party, Virginia.
+In the meantime I have secured good quarters for our guests at the
+Hotel Garcia, where to-night I give the Government a dinner.  I shall
+expect to see you there, Captain."
+
+Dan would have preferred to stay away from that dinner.  The thought of
+his practical connivance at the day's slaughter, so obviously suggested
+by Mr. Howland, grated on him, and the implied command in the
+invitation to the dinner bothered him too.  The day was to be filled
+with duties about ship, and he wanted the evening to himself, to sit in
+his cabin with his pipe and his books and mull over these and other
+things.
+
+Of course he might have known what would follow the landing of the guns
+from the _Tampico_.  He did know, as a matter of fact, but orders are
+orders, and duty is duty; and when you are employed by a man you accept
+your salary and any other accruing benefits solely upon the
+understanding that you shall serve his interests to the best of your
+ability.
+
+Yes, Dan could see that perfectly, and he could also see the bad taste
+that lay in intimating dissatisfaction with his employer's methods
+while wearing the uniform of Mr. Howland's company and receiving good
+pay therefor.  And anyway, Mr. Howland had not asked him to cut Blancan
+warships in two and endanger the lives of the entire ship's company and
+guests.  No, that was on his own head, his own hot head.
+
+In the days of the present voyage he had felt a strong tendency to look
+beyond the bridge of the _Tampico_ into the future.  Of course he liked
+adventure, but of late he had begun to feel that perhaps he had had
+enough of the strenuous life to last him the remainder of his years.
+He certainly did not intend to grow gray on coastwise lines.  Bluff,
+gnarled old Harrison, his predecessor on this vessel, had served as a
+striking object lesson.  He could spin yarns of his adventures by the
+hour, but at best no one would call him anything but an interesting old
+character, a retired shell-back on half pay.  Dan found no pleasure in
+looking forward to anything of the sort.
+
+Since he had gained a command in the famous Coastwise and West Indian
+Shipping Company, he had begun to commend himself to persons who never
+before had played a part in his life, principally a cousin of his
+father's, a wealthy merchant of Boston, who had written him a long
+letter, received just before the _Tampico_ sailed on her present
+voyage, expressing a desire to meet him.
+
+"It is not possible," the letter read, "you will want to follow the sea
+all your life.  There must be plenty of opportunities ashore for men of
+your evident executive ability and initiative.  I want you to come to
+Boston at your first opportunity.  I know I can give you good advice,
+and it may be I can prove of material assistance to you."
+
+When he first read the letter, Dan smiled to himself, not failing to
+note the interest taken in him by relatives, now he seemed to be
+proving his ability, who, heretofore, had known little about him and
+cared less.  But that is life, and he had a great deal rather be
+accepted for what he had done than because of mere ties of blood.  Thus
+thinking, he came to attach greater significance to the letter.  He
+would go on to Boston when the _Tampico_ returned to the United States.
+In the meantime he was Captain of a Howland boat, and he would obey
+orders, he smiled grimly, and go to the dinner.
+
+The dinner was a memorable one in San Blanco City.  The revolution had
+been shattered.  The Rodriguez Government was supreme.  The
+_Presidente's_ palace was a blaze of lights.  Conspirators were being
+arrested and cast into prison.  Vehicles of all sorts were bearing
+dinner guests to the Hotel Garcia and dashing away.  There were foreign
+consuls in uniforms, and their wives; there was Rodriguez and his
+cabinet, and officers of the army in resplendent garb, and women who,
+when they threw their mantillas aside, revealed tawny necks and
+shoulders.
+
+The _Presidente_, Mr. Howland, and high officers of the Government sat
+on a long dais at the head of the room; the other guests, including the
+_Tampico's_ party, were at round tables with red-shaded lamps.  It was
+a pleasing picture, and Dan, for the first few courses, was glad he had
+come.  However, when he found that those with whom he was seated could
+not speak English, while he could understand little of Spanish, the
+evening began to wear.  At length, with the long post-prandials at
+hand, he arose.
+
+Flanking one side of the room, which was large, were windows reaching
+from the floor almost to the ceiling, which, when the weather was fair,
+were opened, giving access to a garden of small, twisted trees and
+tropical plants with small tables beneath, to which the pleasure-loving
+population came at night, to sip iced drinks and listen to the music of
+the orchestra as it flowed out of the dining-room.
+
+Here Dan made his way and, stepping out of one of the windows, paused
+on the garden's edge.  The cool air was grateful, and with a sigh of
+relief he drew a cigar from his pocket and lighted it slowly, From
+beneath the trees came little patters of conversation, and the red
+lights of cigarettes and the glint of white gowns enlivened the
+darkness.
+
+As he stood there, Virginia Howland and Oddington came out of one of
+the windows.  The girl was talking vivaciously, familiarly, and
+Oddington was laughing.  She was in what she would have termed one of
+her "Oddington moods," when his personality appealed to her most, when
+the congenial bond seemed closest.  To-night the lights, the music, the
+soft air rustling the lampshades, after all the long days on shipboard,
+exalted her.  She looked at her companion with kindling eyes.
+
+It seemed hardly the moment to run full upon the Captain of the
+_Tampico_, who had just thrown his cigar away with the intention of
+returning to the dining-hall.
+
+Dan realized this instinctively.  He smiled at the two in an abstracted
+manner, as though his mind were occupied with thoughts which he did not
+care to interrupt, and turned toward the window, when Virginia, who had
+greeted him simultaneously with a smile obviously designed to convey a
+similar impression, and, piqued to perversity by the fact that Dan had
+so readily interpreted her wishes, paused in the middle of a sentence
+and looked back over her shoulder.
+
+"Captain," she said, "is it possible you prefer speeches in Spanish to
+our company?"
+
+Dan paused.  Oddington was smiling in an exceedingly perfunctory
+manner, and the young Captain was about to make some laughing
+acknowledgment when the girl, still looking at him, said:
+
+"Mr. Oddington and I were just arguing about the night air of San
+Blanco.  He says it is filled with malaria.  Is it?"
+
+Dan walked slowly toward them.
+
+"Not any more than the day air," he replied, declining Oddington's
+proffered cigarette case and drawing his pipe and pouch from his
+pocket.  "I should say that San Blancan air is filled with malaria at
+all times--and with other bad things."
+
+Oddington laughed.
+
+"It is like most of these cities," he said; "things get pretty messy
+here, I imagine.  I could not exactly commend its sanitary--"
+
+A voice calling him from the window broke the sentence.  It was Reggie
+Wotherspoon.
+
+"Yes," said Oddington.
+
+"That you, Ralph?  Oh, I see you.  Say, come in here like a good chap,
+will you?  I've run across a sort of an anarchist circular about
+Rodriguez.  I want you to come up with me while I put it up to him."
+
+"All right," replied Oddington.  "Will you go in, Virginia?"
+
+"Thank you, I'll wait here for you.  I've had enough of that dreary old
+dinner; at least until father speaks.  And now," said the girl, smiling
+at Dan, "what have you to tell me that is thrilling?"
+
+Dan looked at her as she stood framed against the light of the window,
+tall, straight, in the full glow of youth and health and animal
+spirits.  One bare arm was stretched down, clutching the train of her
+dress.  With the other hand she was idly lashing her gloves against her
+skirt.  As she spoke she reached out a gleaming slipper, extremely
+small for a girl of her height, to push an overturned flower-pot away,
+and Dan caught the flash of the silk ankle and a foam of lace.
+
+He felt he was viewing the girl in a new way.  Hitherto he had regarded
+her as something almost intangible, an essence of elusive femininity,
+radiant, overpowering, and in nowise to be considered as a material
+embodiment of young womanhood.
+
+But now, while the old spell was still potent, with the moods of the
+day still strong, he found new viewpoints struggling for mastery.
+Clearly the girl had shown a deep interest in him, and entirely on her
+own initiative.  If it was to be in the future an interest born of
+friendship, why, it should be, he told himself, an engaging future for
+him.  But he did not desire that her interest in him from now on should
+be offered as a sort of largess, or that he should be placed in the
+position of posing as an object of merely charitable attention from
+her.  As these thoughts formulated themselves flashingly in his mind,
+he could not but marvel at the sudden transition in his attitude
+concerning her.  But nevertheless, the transition had taken place, as
+well defined as though it had come of weeks of pondering--and
+unchangeable.
+
+"I can't think of anything thrilling to talk about--unless I select you
+as a subject."
+
+The girl glanced at him swiftly and then turned her face toward the
+harbor, where a few lights quivered on a velvet floor.  She caught the
+new note perfectly and her bosom rose in a quick breath.
+
+"I am sure we might select a more interesting topic.  I detest
+personalities.  Tell me how you have enjoyed your first dip into
+Blancan society."
+
+"But that would be personal," smiled Dan.
+
+The girl laughed.
+
+"The women here to-night are a great deal less dowdy than one would
+imagine, don't you think?"
+
+"I wonder if you realize your responsibility?" said Dan.
+
+Virginia did not reply for a moment.  She had not considered this
+outgrowing phase of her unreserved interest in the young Captain.  So
+long as he had remained a sort of quiescent _protege_, there could be
+no possible harm in her attitude toward him.  Evidently he did not
+intend so to remain.  There was of course, therefore, nothing to do but
+reestablish their relations.
+
+"I am afraid my responsibilities are too varied and serious for
+discussion with--with any one," she said at length.
+
+"But where they concern me?"
+
+The girl stepped back slightly, drawing her skirts about her as though
+recoiling, or, rather, withdrawing from the question.  Yet despite her
+desire to end the conversation, she really was curious as to his drift;
+and, besides, he made the most romantic sort of picture as he stood at
+her side, clean cut, bareheaded, and as self-assured evidently as any
+man she had ever talked with.  Her wish was to dismiss him with
+admonition, gently, if plainly to be understood.  But this she could
+not do just then, and the realization of the fact irritated her.
+
+"I suppose," she said slowly, "at least I have read that our
+responsibilities do not cease with one's friends, but extend,
+sometimes, even to--to acquaintances, or to persons, perhaps, whom one
+does not know.  What have I done or not done that suggested in your
+mind ideas of my responsibility to you?"
+
+Dan shook the fire from his pipe and smiled.  "Why, you haven't done a
+thing or left a thing undone," he said.  "I thought the humor of my
+suggestion would strike you as funny, make you laugh.  But it didn't,
+so I'll be serious.  You were decent to me on the _Tampico_ and before;
+and to-night, I don't know, but the lights and the music and the night
+and all seemed to have gone into me, and I wanted to talk to a
+woman--to you--out here in the moonlight, not as we've talked before,
+but as a man and woman who feel pretty much the same way about many
+things might talk.  This was what I had in mind when I spoke of
+responsibility.  Not an alarming one, would you say?"
+
+The girl gazing out into the darkness did not speak.
+
+"I wanted you to look down at the harbor there and exclaim over the
+path the moon is cutting from the horizon to that queer little
+lighthouse on the point; and I wanted you to talk enthusiastic nonsense
+about the big, soft stars and the cigarette lights under the trees; and
+I--I just wanted to listen and, of course, agree with all you said."
+
+Dan was smiling as he spoke; but the girl, whose eyes had fallen
+beneath his steady gaze, was aware that no jest underlay his light
+words.  By no means could she construe what he had said into
+impertinence, but she did feel he was presuming upon the kindly
+attention she had paid him.
+
+"Captain Merrithew," she said at length, "I have been thinking.  I have
+been wondering whether I do not think you more inspiring on the bridge
+of the _Tampico_, cutting warships in two, or fighting a storm than--"
+
+"Than talking with you in the moonlight?" interpolated Dan.
+
+"_About_ the moonlight," corrected the girl. . . .  "If we are to be
+friends you must not devise responsibilities--unadvisably."
+
+Dan made a slight gesture, as though to assure her she had made her
+meaning quite clear.
+
+"If we are to be friends, Miss Howland, you must not devise
+restrictions unadvisably."
+
+Dan was still smiling, and he was speaking easily.  But no man had ever
+spoken to her in that way before.  She flushed, and her eyes sparkled
+angrily as he ceased.  Her glance did not disconcert him.  He stood
+looking at her--not masterfully, but with the quiet dignity of
+conviction.  It was plain that if their association were to continue,
+it must be at the price of something more than the scientific, aloof,
+touch-and-go interest which had hitherto characterized her attitude
+toward him.
+
+She must be his friend in all that the term implies.  Until to-night,
+had the alternative been proposed, she would have had no hesitation in
+deciding, if only because she had no viewpoint other than their
+relative positions in the past year.
+
+But his words had opened a new perspective.  She could see that he
+might be regarded in a different light, that he already so regarded
+her.  The transformation bewildered her, and when the heated reply died
+behind her lips and she smiled quiveringly instead, she felt for the
+first time in her life the thrill which all women, however strong, have
+when they yield to the dominant personality of a man.  She tried to
+fight back the overpowering, undefinable surge; she succeeded
+partially.  All she could now ask was time to think to recover her
+equilibrium.  She put out her hand involuntarily and touched Dan
+lightly on the arm.
+
+"Let us not say anything more about it," she said.  "Tell me--tell me
+something about San Blanco."
+
+As she ceased speaking, she turned slowly toward the banquet hall.
+Dan, following her, complied with what he knew to be a purely
+perfunctory request, talking in an easy conversational tone.
+
+"I have looked into the history of the country a good bit," said he.
+"It is quite interesting.  They have had just twenty-three
+_presidentes_ and four dictators, and there have been twelve
+assassinations.  I believe candidates for the office are liable to
+arrest for attempted suicide--"
+
+The girl paused at the window.  She had not been listening.  Her eyes,
+were fastened upon the figure of a man whose skulking form she had made
+out where the glow of the window almost opposite the speakers' table
+fell upon the garden.  Now she saw him again.  He had a gun in his
+hands and was beginning to kneel.
+
+Breathless and rigid the girl slowly stretched out her hand and touched
+Dan on the shoulder; with the other she pointed silently at the
+crouching figure.  The gun was now being raised to aim, probably at the
+_Presidente_, who was speaking, possibly at Mr. Howland.  Dan
+apprehended the situation at once.  In the flash of an eye he was
+making for the assassin like an antelope.  Hearing the approaching
+footfalls, the man turned his head, and then, with a cry, Virginia saw
+him arise and shift his weapon toward Dan.
+
+[Illustration: In the flash of an eye, Dan was making for the assassin.]
+
+But he was too late.  At least ten feet away Dan left his feet and
+launched himself into one of those old-time tackles which even in
+Exeter had attracted the eyes of the football authorities of three
+universities.  Hard and straight he went, head to one side, jaws shut
+tight.  Then he struck, one brawny shoulder snapping full into the
+man's midriff.  You have to know how to fall when tackled by a good
+man.  This San Blancan did not.  He went down like a falling tower.
+The gun was discharged in the air with a resounding report and flew
+into the bushes.  The man lay still, gasping.  The dinner ended
+abruptly and in great confusion.  Guests poured out of the windows,
+tables were overturned.
+
+Dan quickly dragged the prostrate man into a clump of mesquite.  His
+first impulse had been to turn him over to the soldiers.  But the
+defiant, if faint murmurs of the patriot, "Long live San Blanco; death
+to Rodriguez!" bringing back to him his emotions of the morning, caused
+him to decide differently.  He seized the man by the collar.
+
+"Stand up," he said, "you are not hurt; only a bit winded.  I guess
+Rodriguez has had enough heads without yours.  You thought you were
+acting for your country's good; I guess you were, from all I hear."
+
+The man had been looking at the speaker wonderingly, not understanding
+a word.  Dan turned to him impatiently.
+
+"Get out!" he said.  He pushed the man, searching his brain for the
+Spanish equivalent.  "What the mischief--oh," he glared at the
+trembling prisoner.  "_Vayase Vd!  Largo de aqui!_"
+
+The poor wretch needed no more.  With a quick, smiling gleam of white
+teeth he bowed, and the next instant was loping through the garden.
+Dan sauntered slowly toward the hotel.  Soldiers acting upon
+information given by Miss Howland were beating the grounds, and there
+was much shouting and occasionally a pistol shot.
+
+But the hotel was deserted of the brilliant guests who had filled it
+but a quarter of an hour before.  The spell of darkness lay upon the
+banquet hall.  A few men and women were loitering in the court,
+awaiting developments.  Oddington was there, and another man of the
+party, but the rest, including the Howlands, had evidently gone to
+their rooms.
+
+"Miss Howland told us you made rather an interesting tackle,
+Merrithew," said Oddington as Dan nodded to him.  "I am sorry I missed
+it.  Where is your prisoner?"
+
+Dan smiled.  "The tackle was so artistic," he said, "that I jarred most
+of my senses out of me.  He got away.  Here's his gun," and Dan held up
+an old-fashioned carbine.
+
+Oddington glanced at the weapon.
+
+"Howland will be sorry you let your man escape, if only because he
+prevented the carefully prepared speech he had been laboring over.  It
+was pretty nervy of you, although Howland tells me they are all the
+time potting at Rodriguez and missing him.  Still, I should think they
+would give you the Order of San Blanco."
+
+"I think I can struggle along without it," said Dan.  "Good-night."
+
+He turned toward the harbor and the _Tampico_.  The moon had now broken
+from the clouds which had partially hidden it all evening, and the
+hotel grounds and the slope leading to the water front were bathed in
+light.  Dan's mood was rather bitter.  They might have waited for him,
+he thought.  At least, Miss Howland and her father might have, in view
+of what had happened.  But still, why should they?  The old feeling of
+aloofness filled him, and all the self-assurance which had
+characterized his attitude with Miss Howland a half-hour before
+vanished.  He was angry with himself for having dared to maintain such
+an attitude.
+
+He turned to look at the hotel and bowed gravely.
+
+"It seems that one Daniel Merrithew has been forgetting he is a mere
+steamship captain.  He will remember it in future--at all times."
+
+And then he walked slowly to his ship.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE WRAITH IN THE MOONLIGHT
+
+Twenty-four hours later the _Tampico_ was at sea.  The itinerary proposed
+by Mr. Howland had been altered for the reason that cable despatches from
+New York had contained financial tidings that made it incumbent upon him
+to return to the United States without more delay than was necessary; and
+Ralph Oddington's firm had been retained by a corporation seeking
+protection against assaults of the Attorney-General's office, and he was
+wanted in the city at his "earliest convenience," which he had
+interpreted as meaning "right away."
+
+And so there was to be no stopping at various ports, but a quick run to
+the States.  Mr. Howland imparted this information to Dan as the two sat
+at table in the saloon over cigars and coffee the evening after the
+departure from San Blanco.  The other members of the party had gone on
+deck.
+
+"They can do their sightseeing at Galveston and Savannah, where you can
+call for your cotton and naval stores as usual."  As Dan raised his
+eyebrows, Mr. Howland shook his head emphatically.  "Can't help it," he
+said.  "You see by this despatch," pointing to a pile of papers on the
+table, "that the _Tybee's_ out of commission for a month; and business is
+business, party or no party.  And now, Merrithew," stuffing the papers
+into his pocket as though all matters concerning them were finally
+settled, "I want to ask you about something else.  Of course you're in
+this Central American service here and will be for a time.  I've been
+thinking what you said about the fighting the other morning." He lit a
+cigar and pushed his case toward Dan.  "I gathered you did not exactly
+approve of it.  Didn't you?"
+
+"Mr. Howland," replied Dan, "it was not the fighting that bothered me, it
+was the idea I had landed guns which your men were using to shoot down
+other men like sheep.  It was a new sensation, and it got into me, I'll
+say that.  Still it was none of my business; I was carrying out your
+instructions.  I am sorry I was so unwise as to give you the impression I
+did."
+
+"Not at all."  Mr. Howland gazed at his cigar a moment, flicking the
+ashes off with his little finger.  "Is that why you let the assassin go?"
+
+Dan rose to the situation without hesitating.
+
+"Mr. Howland, you were fishing when you asked that question.  You don't
+have to do that.  I did let that chap go.  I believed he had attempted a
+good job.  I saved Rodriguez's worthless life and took a risk in doing
+it.  I would not have done so, but I thought the man was aiming at you;
+but since I did, the only reward I was entitled to, or wanted, was to do
+as I pleased with the man."
+
+"Undoubtedly," said Mr. Howland.  "Of course it occurred to you that
+Rodriguez's life, however worthless you hold it in other ways, might be
+extremely valuable to the San Blanco Trading and Investment Company,
+which is myself?"
+
+"Yes, I did think of that," replied Dan, "although I am employed by the
+Coastwise Company, I know you practically own both.  I realize, too, your
+kindness to me in the past; but I did look on the fellow as a man
+honestly trying to serve his country; and when it came to deliver him up
+to be hanged--why I simply could not do it."  Dan rose slowly.  "I showed
+myself ungrateful to your interests.  As I say, I appreciate what you
+have done.  I am going to show that I do by asking you to consider my
+resignation in your hands to act upon as soon--whenever you please."
+
+"Sit down, Captain Merrithew," said Mr. Howland, as though he had not
+heard the last words.  "In the first place, you recognize that where
+there is no law and order legitimate business cannot be carried on.
+Where a country is governed in a haphazard manner, while it may be easy
+to secure contracts, it is impossible to collect on them.  Business
+interests having connections with such countries find conditions
+intolerable, and where we can we rectify them.  If you have studied San
+Blancan affairs you know that under Rodriguez (who, despite his cruelty,
+is honest) business here, whether controlled by myself or any one else,
+may for the first time in history be conducted on an honest and reliable
+basis.  That is all I ask or have asked.  I have no benefit of
+discriminating duties.  I am largely interested in the business affairs
+of this country; but I obtained those interests fairly, and it is my duty
+to myself and my daughter and my business associates to maintain and
+develop them.
+
+"I talk to you this way, Merrithew, because I have felt you were going
+wrong, and I wanted to set you right.  I'll say frankly I know I'll not
+lose anything in so doing.  I owe you a great deal.  I am glad I do; for
+I like your sort.  I wish I had a boy growing up as you have grown.  You
+have a future before you--if you will only watch that damned hot head of
+yours."
+
+Much that Mr. Howland had said in regard to the disinterested nature of
+his business activities was true; some things involved tactical evasion.
+In expressing his attitude toward Dan he was sincere.  The Captain did
+not attempt to analyze.  He was completely won, just as Mr. Howland
+wanted him to be.  As he essayed to speak, Mr. Howland placed his hand on
+Dan's shoulder.
+
+"Now, not a word, Merrithew.  We'll forget it all and start fresh."
+
+In the days of the voyage that followed, while it might not have been
+said that Virginia Howland snubbed Dan, neither could it have been said
+she was not at pains to see that she was never alone with him.
+
+In fact, the attitude of either in relation to the other might in no way
+have been termed receptive.  So far as Dan was concerned, he felt that,
+whether unwisely or not, he had made quite clear to her the terms upon
+which their friendship could continue; she had expressed her views no
+less clearly.  The stand of both was irrevocable.
+
+The second day out, feeling it to be his duty, he made tentative advances
+which, if not directly declined, at least left him the impression he had
+been gently and skilfully rebuffed.  Since then he had been careful not
+to place himself again in a similar position.
+
+At the table she would address him in the line of general conversation,
+and was at pains to greet him cordially whenever they met about the ship.
+But otherwise she left no doubt as to her wishes concerning him.  Once
+she came into the saloon for breakfast before the rest of the party had
+taken their places.  Dan was in his accustomed seat at the head of the
+table; he arose and wished her good-morning.  She replied faintly, and
+then she sat toying idly with her rusk, her eyes for the most part
+fastened upon Dan, who had resumed his breakfast as though oblivious of
+her presence.  She seemed trying to make up her mind to speak; but she
+failed.  When Dan arose, bowed slightly, and left the saloon, she was
+still sitting silent with her breakfast untasted.
+
+At Galveston Oddington left for New York by train, but Mr. Howland,
+receiving more assuring despatches, decided to remain with the party.
+They crammed cotton into the _Tampico's_ holds, and later at Savannah
+they put pine-tar and pitch and other naval supplies aboard; thereby
+increasing Dan's responsibilities a hundredfold.  But business was
+business, as Mr. Howland had said; and Dan had but to accept his worries
+and keep them from the party, which had fared well at the hands of
+friends in the two ports.
+
+The _Tampico_ left Savannah one afternoon about an hour after a trim
+Savannah liner had dropped down the river.  At dinner that night the
+merriment was supreme, for in four days the _Tampico_ would be in New
+York, and the Howlands' guests had had about all the excitement and salt
+air they wanted.  The air was soft; there was brilliant starlight.
+
+Dan had spent most of the evening on the bridge, Mr. Howland having
+requested him to make up the coast well out to sea in order to give the
+party a "final soaking" of real ocean air.  He had not complied
+absolutely.  Still, the Tampico was a good ninety miles off shore, well
+outside the track of south-bound vessels.
+
+Shortly after nine o'clock he left the bridge and walked along the deck.
+The party was breaking up.  Miss Howland had sauntered away from the
+group, and was leaning over the rail with her chin resting on her hands.
+
+"Good-evening, Miss Howland," said Dan, pausing.
+
+Virginia looked up quickly, and then resumed her former position.
+
+"I don't know whether I ought to be nice to you or not, Captain
+Merrithew," she said.
+
+Something in her voice gave Dan encouragement to make his reply.
+
+"Won't you please try to be?  In less than four days now you will be
+ashore--and then you'll probably never have any more opportunities."
+
+The girl settled her chin more deeply into her palms.
+
+"But _you_ have not been nice.  You have been horrid, ever since we left
+San Blanco."
+
+Here was a phase of feminine character which Dan, not knowing, had not
+reckoned upon.  However, he instinctively said the tactful thing.
+
+"I--I am sorry.  I thought I was pleasing you."
+
+The girl slowly dragged her chin sidewise along her palms until she faced
+the Captain.
+
+"Oh, you did!  Has your experience with women taught you that is the best
+way to please them?"
+
+Dan, now completely at sea, simply regarded her in silence.  Virginia,
+inwardly triumphant, smiled.
+
+"Now what can you do in four days to atone?"
+
+"I might jump overboard."
+
+"That would be romantic, but hardly--"
+
+As the girl was speaking she turned her eyes to the water rushing past
+the hull, just as a dull, wallowing shape flashed by the bow, assuming
+form right under her eyes--a dark, soughing, coughing derelict, moving in
+the waves spinelessly, like a serpent; black, slimy, repulsive, with
+broken, hemp-littered masts and rusty chains clanking over the bow.
+
+"Oh!"  Virginia jumped back with a startled cry and looked fearfully at
+her companion.  He was smiling, and intuitively she recognized that it
+was not a smile of amusement, but of sympathy, reassurance.
+
+"Oh, wasn't it horrid!"
+
+"Yes, it was not a pretty sight," replied Dan.  "Derelicts never are.
+There are lots of them around here; they travel in currents, sometimes in
+short orbits, sometimes hundreds of miles in a straight line."
+
+The terror had not left her eyes, and she glanced astern to where the
+ugly shape was burying itself in the gloom.  She was an impressionable
+girl, and that loathsome object, rising as it were out of the bottom of
+the deep, clanking, sighing, brought to her an epitome of all the fear
+and mystery of the great, dark, silent waste.  And she looked at the
+Captain with new interest.  Here was one of the men who brave these
+things, who brave great big problems, who face the unknown and a future
+as full of mystery, as fraught with evil possibilities as when the first
+mariner put out to the Beyond in a boat hollowed from a tree.  In a flash
+that derelict taught her to read Dan better; gave her a better insight
+into the look that she sometimes caught in his steely, inscrutable eyes,
+and the grave lines in his sun-bronzed face.  And in the light of this
+knowledge her soul went out to this man, this type of man, so strange, so
+utterly foreign to a girl brought up in an environment where such types
+do not exist.
+
+She held out her hand.
+
+"I am going to my stateroom now, Captain.  Good-night.  We are going to
+be better friends, aren't we?"
+
+"Thank you," said Dan; and he watched her tall, white form as it
+disappeared down the deck.  He gazed moodily out at the dark horizon.
+Friends!  He searched himself thoroughly, and he could not deny the truth
+as formulated in his mind.  Friends!  How hollow the word sounded!  He
+knew how hollow it would seem all through his life.
+
+Better it should be nothing.  Yes, far better, instinct told him that.
+Miss Howland had come into his existence, radiant, pure, beautiful, and
+so utterly feminine; as a meteor flashing across the night pauses for a
+brief instant in the sky before shivering to nothingness.  This simile
+occurred to Dan, who, though no poet, was at least a sailor and as such a
+student of the heavenly bodies.  Yes, a meteor which had illumined his
+life.
+
+He had never permitted himself to think in this way before.  It is
+doubtful if before to-night he could have felt as he now did.  It had all
+come over him suddenly with a rush.  When he talked with her at the hotel
+in San Blanco he was filled with thoughts of his future, and assumed as
+granted his footing upon her plane.  How absurd, how ridiculous this
+seemed now!
+
+Why, why was it, he asked himself, that society or convention or whatever
+it was had drawn the grim _chevaux de frise_ between those who had
+accomplished, or whose forebears had accomplished for them, and those who
+were yet to accomplish; with hosts eager to applaud the achievements of
+finality, but who had no adequate encouragement for those who had yet to
+achieve their mission, who fought their battles in the dark and won them
+in the glorious light, or losing, sank back into that oblivion out of
+which they had striven to emerge?
+
+If fate had been different--yet if fate had been different he would never
+have seen her, perhaps.  Yes, he should be satisfied; he had seen his
+star.  And when it faded, as fade it must, in the vastness of the
+dark--why, what then?  Well, at least he had seen his star; even this
+much is denied many.  So, he would live it out and be thankful he had
+been permitted to feel the great thrill--to know that at least he had the
+heart for the greatest passion the world knows.  Poor consolation, he
+told himself with a grim smile.  And yet he who hitches his chariot to a
+star might well be content with less.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE BURNING OF THE "TAMPICO"
+
+Just an hour later the _Tampico_ lay burning at a point in the Atlantic
+where if the white lights of Cape Fear and Cape Lookout had converged
+ninety-two miles farther out to sea they would have rested full on the
+reeking hull.
+
+Dan had been fearful of the results of Mr. Howland's policy in loading
+the _Tampico_ with inflammable cargo.  He had been reared with the fear
+of fire in his heart.  From one of his voyages his grandfather, Daniel
+Merrithew, had never returned.  A charred name board had told the grim
+tale, and so Dan had gone out into the world with a long, red, flaming
+line across his fate, as in knightly days a man might have included the
+bar sinister or some other portentous device among his symbols of
+heraldry.
+
+Pacing the forward deck with his pipe, thinking deeply of his talk with
+Virginia, Dan had seen pitch bubbling out of the deck seams and
+spilling into rich black pools.  And thus the fire was discovered--some
+fifteen minutes too late, however, to effect the rescue of several of
+the crew, who shrieked and pounded at the bulkhead door, warped and
+welded tight by the heat; shrieked and pounded, until the throttling
+smoke bade them hold their peace.
+
+First, Dan had the vessel swung about with her stern to the wind, the
+fire being forward; and the crew had piled up on deck and rushed
+without confusion or undue noise to their various stations.  Some
+unscrewed deck valves over the burning hold, fastening thereto the ends
+of seven-inch rubber hose; while below, the engine-room staff, with
+soldierly precision, attached the other ends to the boilers and stood
+like statues until a signal gong sounded through the black depth.
+Whereupon they handled certain valves, and with a hissing scream great
+volumes of hot vapor poured into the blazing compartment.  On deck
+other seamen dragged lengths of hose forward, forced the nozzles
+through narrow deck-vents, and held them there while the force pump
+sent up thousands of gallons of brine.
+
+Dan, ubiquitous, cheerful, commanding, lending a hand to one set of
+men, directing another, came upon a station two short of its quota.
+
+"Where are Phillips and Fagan?" asked Dan, sharply.
+
+"They bunked in the steerage," replied a sailor, choking in the smoke
+weltering up through the hose vent.
+
+The young Captain's breath caught; but there was no time for sentiment.
+He inspected the vessel, bow and stern, marshalled the members of the
+Howland party into the saloon and bade them stay there until otherwise
+ordered, and then went up to his men and fought with them.  An hour
+passed, and twenty more minutes.  The lurid tinge to the smoke,
+bellying up through the deck-vents, gave sharp hint of the undiminished
+fury of the flames raging below.
+
+"It's like pouring in oil," muttered Dan to himself; and then he added
+aloud, "Keep right to it, men, you're holding it," and thus saying he
+left them and ran aft to where the second mate and the reserve section
+of eight men were growling impatiently.
+
+"Take up your hose, men, and come with me down into hold No. 2.  The
+fire's going to clean out No. 1 to the skin, sure.  We'll have to keep
+it from breaking through to the other holds.  Come on!  Hurry!"
+
+Without a word the men picked up the three lengths of emergency hose
+and followed their Captain.  As Dan ran along the deck, leading the way
+to the hatch, he heard his name called, and looking up quickly, saw Mr.
+Howland and Virginia approaching.  The girl's hair was flying loose and
+she had a long blue coat thrown over her shoulders.  The deck was
+filled with heavy smoke.
+
+"Captain," said the shipping magnate, "how are we now?"
+
+Dan paused just an instant.
+
+"Fighting hard," he replied, and then he added quickly, "Mr. Howland,
+we need men.  Two of the crew are gone.  Ask some of the men of your
+party, please, to go forward and report to Mr. Jackson.  And you, Miss
+Howland, go into the saloon right away--and stay there.  Tell the
+others that if they appear on deck before I give the word I shall have
+them locked in."
+
+The girl obeyed silently, but Mr. Howland paused irresolutely a second,
+in which time Dan had turned and was hastening after his men.
+
+"I will do as you say," Mr. Howland called after the retreating form of
+the Captain, "but I want to talk to you first."
+
+"All right, sir, come on then.  You'll have to talk to me down in the
+hold, I'm afraid."
+
+The second mate and his men had in the meantime pried the battens from
+the hatch and thrown it open.  The hold was about half full of cotton
+bales, railroad ties, oakum, resin, and the like, and they descended to
+them by means of a scaling ladder, clambering thence toward the forward
+bulkhead.  One of the men had a lantern which cast a pallid glow about
+the immediate vicinity, bringing into vague relief the well-ordered
+masses of cargo, and ending suddenly against a hard wall of dark as
+palpable as a barrier of stone.  The air was heavy with musty sweetness
+and with yellow smoke which streaked lazily past the lantern globe--and
+with silence, save for the dull roar in the adjoining hold.
+
+"Make a stand right here," and Dan's voice sounded hollow through the
+gloom.  "Stand right here.  You've got water in your hose; I want that
+bulkhead kept soaked.  Let her go."
+
+As the streams of water plunged against the steel wall Dan turned to
+his employer.
+
+"You wanted to speak to me, Mr. Howland?"
+
+"Yes, I want to compliment you on your discipline and--and what is the
+exact situation?"
+
+"Not so good; but a working chance.  It will be a short and sharp go;
+for the hold's lined with tar and sugar reek--otherwise the cotton
+might go for days.  It won't in that hold, though.  The fight'll be
+right here.  If it breaks through into this we've got to run; if not,
+it will burn out where it is."
+
+"What are the chances that it won't?"
+
+"Why, you know more about the structural strength of this boat than I
+do.  To be honest, I never liked your bulkheads, else I would have
+opened a stop-cock and flooded the hold long ago.  Still, what water
+would burst through, fire might not."
+
+Horace Howland, who had paid his own price for the _Tampico_, and who
+by the same token had his own opinion of her, said nothing.
+
+"I have arranged about the boats," resumed Dan.  "If the worst comes,
+my men know what to do and they are the men to do it.  It's not too
+rough to launch safely.  Now, Mr. Howland, I've wasted too much time
+talking.  Don't forget to send two men to Mr. Jackson," and he sprang
+up the ladder and hurried forward.
+
+The feet of the men at work over the burning hold were blistering.  Dan
+yanked out an inch hose and set a cabin boy to sluicing the deck where
+they stood, sending up dense clouds of enveloping steam.  A broad
+tongue of blue flame curled out of the port hawse-hole, licked along
+the half-protruding anchor, rose above the rail, and then burst into a
+puff of red fire which floated away in the wind.  A cargo port door
+warped in the heat, buckled outward, tearing plates and rivets with a
+rasping screech, and dropped hissing into the black waters; and the
+wind, blowing from astern, was sucked into the opening, fanning the
+flames to screaming ferocity.
+
+The tale was plain for every one, and Dan read it to the last word.
+Water would be of more service elsewhere, that was certain.  So he
+withdrew the four crews from their hose vents, ordered two of them to
+take their lines into the second hold, and set the others flooding the
+deck.  He shifted two of his seven-inch steam lines to the midship
+plugs, and then followed the hose men, who had joined their comrades in
+the darkness of the second hold.  Streams of water were hissing against
+the steel barrier and flying back at the faces of the nozzle men in hot
+spray.
+
+"There's a bulge in the centre," reported the second officer.
+
+"Yes," said Dan, who seized a lantern and held it above his head,
+pointing out new objective marks for the water.  The smoke had grown
+thicker.  One man gagged at a nozzle; but drinking from the pipe the
+air which the water brought, he lowered his head and fought on.
+
+They fought as men should fight, in the pungent half-gloom, colliding
+or falling prone as the vessel pitched, eyes fixed straight ahead,
+following the powerful silver lines of water which ribbed the dark and
+splashed against the steaming steel; white-yellow smoke spirals writhed
+about their heads like some grotesque saraband; coatless, shirtless,
+their streaked, sweating bodies gleamed dull and ghastly.
+
+One of them straightened from the nozzle and glared at his side
+partner; and Dan, whose eyes were everywhere, saw him and moved close
+to him, where his fist could do best work if necessary.  Any sign of
+mutiny now called for decided measures.
+
+"Say, Mike," said the man in a rich brogue, "give us a hunk o' yer
+'bacca--this makes the mout' dry"; and Dan chuckled his admiration for
+the fighting spirit of the Irish.
+
+Once a tiny lance of flame leaped out through some hidden
+crevice--leaped far out at the men as a rifle spits its deadly fire,
+and then, curling about a sugar sack like a serpent's tongue, withdrew
+so suddenly, so silently, that it seemed to those who saw it as
+something which had flashed through their imaginations.  A stream of
+water sought the outlet and the flame came no more then.
+
+Suddenly a cry came from one of the men, and all eyes turned to a point
+in the bulkhead where a hectic flush glowed like a death's head.  Four
+streams struck it simultaneously.  It went out, but reappeared in
+another place.  The water quenched this also, but it came back again
+and widened, and the plunging water was dried to mist at the instant of
+contact.  The glow grew brighter, then dim, and then brighter, rising
+and falling as life pulses in a fevered body.  A flood of smoke choked
+in from a viewless breach.  Two of the men cried out, gurgled, fell on
+their faces, and turned over on their backs, struggling; then they lay
+still.  Dan carried them to the deck, and returned with a sailor.  The
+two had just gained the sugar sacks when the centre bulkhead quivered.
+A cross section collapsed into a V.  A score of rivet holes yawned wide
+and red-hot bolts fell on the sacks and set them on fire.  A line of
+plating, separating from its fellows, sagged open in a red grin and
+gave view of the raging hell within.
+
+"Now, into it, boys!" yelled Dan, and the men, bowing their heads,
+advanced five feet, directing the streams into the fiery pit.  For a
+minute the flames were driven back by the concentrated rush of water;
+two minutes, and then a gush of fire flared through the break.  It
+broke as a stream hit it, but its ghost, in the guise of hot gases,
+choked the men.
+
+A great roar of flame almost enveloped them, and the heat crisped their
+hair and seared their bodies, and they dropped their hose and raced for
+the ladder.
+
+"Go on, men!" shouted Dan as they struggled out of the hold.  "You've
+done all I can ask.  Hurry!  Get out!" and they got out and then turned
+to batten the hatch cover down.  But the rush of fire was too swift to
+be denied.  A thick-bodied pillar choked through the opening and
+spouted to the top of the funnel--great gouts of the devouring element
+pulsed softly, but with lightning swiftness, down the deck, and
+shrivelled a life raft.  Long tongues and jets of fire were bursting
+everywhere out of the forward deck.
+
+It had come at last, just as Dan had seen it coming all through the
+night--all through the years.  His voice roared from the bridge:
+
+"To the boats--every man to his station!"
+
+The command was taken up and carried along, and noiseless shapes limned
+briefly in the fire glow, scuttled quickly to their appointed places.
+Mr. Howland and his party stumbled out of the saloon with blanched
+faces and parted lips, but quietly.
+
+"Women to the rail!"  The cry echoed out over the sea,--over the sea,
+which has heard these chivalrous words so often.
+
+"Women first--women to the rail!"  Dan's cry was taken up by the
+officers.  Silent figures in trailing garments moved as they were bid.
+
+From the port quarter a gruff voice sounded.
+
+"Ready, men--ease away."  Came the creak of tackle, the thud of iron
+upon steel--then a silence--then a rattle of oars in thole-pins--then a
+clear hail from the darkness: "All's well, Captain Merrithew!"
+
+Another boat clattered down the steel sides and cleared safely, and
+still another.  The last boat was filling with the last of the crew.
+
+"Everybody accounted for?" Dan's shout as he rushed down from the
+curling bridge brought Mr. Howland up with a sudden fear.  He had taken
+his daughter to the starboard boat only to find it full, and had sent
+her across to the third boat, while he superintended the adjustment of
+a wedged block.  This done, he had hurried to the starboard, only to
+find the third boat overboard and well away.  He had assumed that she
+was all right.  But a cold rush of doubt assailed him.
+
+"Virginia, Virginia--are you all right?" he called in tones of agony.
+
+"I saw her at the third boat," said the first officer.  "You must look
+alive, Mr. Howland--we'll have to lower directly the Captain comes.
+The deck's going now."
+
+The ship-owner heard these words with a sigh of relief and stepped into
+the boat without further ado.
+
+"Every one accounted for?" repeated Dan as he dashed along deck to the
+boat.
+
+Something, a faint suggestion of sound rather than sound itself caused
+him to pause.  He heard nothing more, though he listened for a full
+minute.  Instinctively he turned to a stateroom in the midship
+deck-house.
+
+"Captain Merrithew--are--you--coming?" The first officer's voice arose
+in impatient cadence.
+
+"Yes--hold there a minute!" replied Dan, twisting the knob of the door.
+It was locked.  He ran back a few paces and sprang at it with his
+shoulder.  It trembled and gave.  He rushed again and the door crashed
+inward.  The room was filling with smoke.
+
+And on the bunk sat Virginia, her hands on her knees, her head hanging
+low and swaying dazedly from side to side.  She was on the verge of
+collapse; but she looked up and smiled faintly as Dan burst in.  Then
+her head fell again.
+
+"I knew you would come," she muttered.
+
+Without a word Dan seized her by the arm and led her swiftly to the
+shattered door.  As they reached the threshold there came a dull boom
+from below--the vessel shivered.  A sheet of flame swept the entire
+forward deck, and Dan looked out into a red, pulsing wall.
+
+In terror the men in the fourth and last boat, the fire licking their
+faces, let go the falls, and the little craft struck the water with a
+crash, but on an even keel.
+
+Knowing he could not reach the boat even were it still on the davits,
+Dan left the stateroom and half led, half carried the girl toward the
+stern.
+
+The forward deck was now a seething inferno.  The foremast, a pillar of
+thin name, flickered like a pennon of gold until it broke in the middle
+and sent up a shower of sparks.  The shrouds and ratlines which went
+with it had barred the black heavens with ruddy lines.  From all the
+openings dull red clouds rolled and bellied skyward, cloud upon cloud;
+the funnel spouted like a blast furnace.
+
+But the vessel slowly, but very surely, was falling off the wind; it
+would soon blow astern.  The shelter of the after deck-house would
+serve for a while, perhaps until some vessel, attracted by the terrible
+light, would bring them succor.  Dan placed the girl behind this steel
+structure and then, running to the taffrail, leaned far out and called
+to the boats.  But the roar of the flames drowned his cries, and the
+boats, which had moved out to windward, could not see him.  Foot by
+foot crept the fire; but the stiff wind which finally came over the
+stern did its work well, and the red avalanche began to slant toward
+the bow.  This meant respite.  But he knew that at the very best it
+could be only a respite, and short at that.
+
+Again and again and again he called for the boats, until his voice grew
+husky and faint.  Then, hopeless of aid from his men, he returned to
+the girl.  She was exactly where he had left her, slightly crouching as
+though to shut from her eyes the fearful red light.
+
+The wind rush had revived her smoke-dimmed senses.  When she was
+approaching the star-board boat to which her father had directed her
+she had lost her head, as persons will do in time of fire, and had
+wandered mechanically, unconsciously, to her cabin and locked herself
+in.  But she was not frightened now.  There was that in Dan which she
+trusted.  She looked at him strangely and smiled.  She caressed him
+with her eyes, trusting in, hanging upon, the strength of a man who
+possessed in divine measure all of man's strength.
+
+A half-hour they crouched together, until the steel walls of their
+shelter burned to the touch, until the flames licked up over the
+forward end, ran over the roof, and looked down upon them.  But still
+they remained as they were, while the _Tampico_ circled again and
+brought the wind in their faces, which they drank greedily.
+
+There came a time when the fire hissed constantly on the
+deck-house--when, indeed, flames plunged around it and touched the two
+figures.  Swiftly Dan reached out his arm and encircled the waist of
+his companion and drew her to the taffrail.
+
+Four feet below the gilded name on the stern was a six-inch ledge.  He
+lifted the girl as he would a child and placed her on this ledge,
+bidding her hold to the rail.  Then he passed a section of small chain
+about a stanchion, allowing the end to hang over.  If the rail became
+too hot for their hands they could hold by the chain.
+
+As Dan joined Virginia on the ledge the vessel slued around, bringing
+the wind full over the bow.  With a roaring shout of exultation the
+fire bridged the last gap, bursting clear over the stern.  It bit at
+their hands; they withdrew them, supporting themselves by the swinging
+chain.
+
+The girl moaned.  Nearer drew the hot breath.  She felt Dan's arm
+tighten about her waist.  It was like a curved bar of steel.  Looking
+down, she saw the water racing below--she saw a wave leap up--she felt
+it touch her foot with its feathery head, gently, beneficently, and yet
+traitorously; for how quickly would it quench the lives that it seemed
+to tempt from the flames!
+
+"Put your face tight against my chest--put your hands over your nose
+and mouth--quick!"
+
+She obeyed upon the word and a thrill, not of pain, shot to Dan's
+brain.  He could feel her, soft and trembling, against him, and her
+warm hair brushed his cheek.  With an effort he choked back the
+flooding emotion.  Was it fair, was it right to her--now?  But his arm
+unconsciously tightened about her.
+
+The red glow shone through the girl's closed eyelids--a great heat
+scorched the back of her neck, and she felt a quiver in the body
+shielding her; but the grip of the arm remained.  There came a blast of
+God's merciful salt cold air, and she opened her eyes.  He was looking
+down at her--and he saw what he saw.  For they were two souls hanging
+together on the verge of eternity--alone; two souls with death all
+about fusing them until they were as one.  She looked at him long.
+
+"Are you hurt?" she asked.  The words sounded thick.
+
+"No--a little.  It got my neck and ears.  The ship was yawing, though,
+and that saved us.  It was like snapping your hand through a gas flame."
+
+"I'm afraid," said the girl with a sob catching her voice.
+
+"No--don't be afraid!  I'll save you--some way."
+
+She opened her eyes and looked in his face again.
+
+"My nobleman! my--"
+
+"Don't!" cried Dan, interrupting her.  "You don't know what you are
+saying.  It's so different now."  He well knew that impulses which
+might move a woman in the arms of a man, no matter who, battling for
+her life, might be for the moment only and lead to nothing but regret
+and alarm afterwards.  How could it be otherwise with Virginia Howland?
+The girl, as though she had not heard him, as though she had forgotten
+the emotions which had swayed her, closed her eyes wearily and turned
+her face away.
+
+The ship was yawing again.  Tongues of flame reached hungrily for them,
+licking above Dan's red-gold hair and his back, but never touching the
+girl.  Then the swing of the vessel and the wind again; then the fire
+and the torturing heat.  Once Dan saw his grandfather's vessel burning
+as he had often pictured it in boyhood, and he trembled horribly for a
+second, but only for a second; then he became rigid and smiled at the
+apparition.  The girl had evidently fainted; she hung a dead weight
+upon his arm.  Again the wind drove the flames far out over the stern.
+
+There came a time when the fight for life was waged mechanically, when
+all sense of thought vanished, and the carrying on of the struggle came
+down to mere animal instinct.  At such times a brave man need not be
+ashamed to die--the time has long elapsed when cravens perish.  But the
+very brave, the physically as well as mentally brave, fight on to the
+end, instinctively.  And so Dan fought.  He knew that Virginia Howland
+hung on his arm--but the fire had gone from his ken; he was fighting
+something, that was all he knew, or cared, since it was for her.  Once
+the red sheet enveloped them for a flashing second, but the merciful
+wind came to save.  It could not last long, though.  Dan's arm weakened
+about the limp form of the girl.  He closed his eyes and ground his
+teeth and brought new force to the encircling arm.  He glared down at
+the mass of soft hair scattering over his breast; he thought of that
+beautiful life and quite impersonally asked himself if all this beauty
+must die.  Where would all the beauty of the world be then?  This
+question ran deliriously through his mind.  Eh! where would it all be?
+If they died together, would they wake together?  And the flames came
+again.
+
+But as they swooped down with redoubled fury he saw almost
+subconsciously a great tangled litter of wreckage passing beneath him.
+He uttered a little cry, and with the girl still in his arm he dropped
+from the ledge.  With a sigh of relief he felt the cooling, revivifying
+water, and the sharp, cold taste of brine in his mouth was like the
+touch of a new life.
+
+Instinctively he had put his free arm around a section of cargo boom,
+with a grating caught in the twisted gear.  Upon this he pushed and
+lifted the half-unconscious girl.  Then he clambered astride the boom.
+Thus they drifted, while Dan, his mind slowly clearing, struggled
+pitifully for full possession of his faculties.  He had a dull sense of
+pain, but the one dominant idea was the girl.  Leaning slightly over,
+he twisted his hand in the folds of her dress lest she slip into the
+waters.  The stars were paling; on the horizon were the first vague
+hints of dawn.  He gazed at the faint gray curtain with interest.  It
+was a dawn he had not expected to see, he told himself.
+
+Then, as he looked, a shape arose before his eye out of the gloom.  Dan
+watched it with dumb fascination.  Suddenly a realizing sense of the
+nature of the apparition shot through his mind.  A vessel--God!  Dan's
+voice raised in a long, hoarse cry for assistance.  But there was no
+answer.  Yet the craft was bearing toward them, not a hundred yards
+away, silently as a ship of the dead.  Dan cried again, rising on his
+rolling perch.  But the hail died on his lips.  He could see now.  It
+_was_ a ship of the dead.  It was the derelict they had viewed from the
+fancied security of the _Tampico's_ deck, a few short hours before.  An
+imprecation trembled upon Dan's lips.  For the last half-hour Virginia,
+who had crawled to a kneeling posture, had been watching Dan with
+unlighted eyes.  Now as he turned to her and pointed at the slowly
+advancing vessel, she nodded slowly, as though comprehending his
+meaning, and stretched out her arms to him.
+
+Softly, quietly the bow of the hulk slid up and nuzzled gently among
+the wreckage.  Quickly Dan secured the litter to the bow by twisting a
+length of wire cable through the rusty green fore-chains of the
+derelict.  Then gaining a footing in the mess of gear, he assisted the
+girl to her feet on the tottering grating, and placed her hand on the
+chains.
+
+"Hold here tight," he said.  She nodded, and Dan looked about for the
+easiest way to the deck.  It was not difficult to find.  The end of the
+jib-boom had dropped into the water, making an easy incline, and the
+foremast had also fallen over the bow and was directly alongside.  Both
+were covered with sections of canvas and a maze of gear and rigging.
+
+Dan clambered up, and then, lying flat across the bowsprit and the
+mast, he put his arms under the girl's shoulders and literally pulled
+her to his side.  Hand in hand they slowly worked their way up among
+the wreckage to the deck.
+
+And there with the dawn beginning to glow rosily far on the eastern rim
+of the slaty waste the girl sighed and sank to her knees; and Dan, his
+head reeling with sleep and exhaustion, sank also.  When the darkness
+had all gone and the sun had cleared the horizon, the first level rays
+flooded the sullen deck of a gray-green hulk, sodden, desolate, and
+fell upon the faces of a man and woman sleeping, her head resting on
+his shoulder, strands of her dark hair lying across his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+ALONE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE
+
+As the sun rose higher still they slept.  The genial rays flowed over
+them, drying their wet, clinging garments, filling their stiffened
+frames with languorous warmth.
+
+Finally the girl sighed and smiled.  Half waking now, she thought she
+was at home in her own bed.  The sunlight always awakened her there.
+She wondered if it was time for her maid to enter.  She hoped not; it
+was so comfortable, and she was, oh, so sleepy!  She turned on her
+side.  Then suddenly she started.  Certainly she was lying on nothing
+that would remotely suggest a bed.  Sleepily she tried to open her
+eyes, but the long lashes were glued together by the heavy salt water.
+
+Arousing still further, she rubbed them open.  And then as a heaving,
+littered deck, with patches of blue sea showing through the shattered
+rail bore upon her vision, a realizing sense of the situation and the
+tragic events leading to it came to her.
+
+For a moment she lay still, shuddering.  Her head still rested upon
+Dan's arm.  She knew it, but she was afraid to arise.  Somehow that arm
+seemed the only thing which assured her she was in a living world.
+Even in the brilliant morning sunlight the vessel, soughing, creaking,
+groaning, as it moved slouchily over the waters impressed her as the
+shape of terror.  From the deck little mist spirals arose like spirits
+of the men who had deserted the ship.  And hovering all about was the
+gray, sordid reek of desolation, eerie, awe-inspiring.
+
+And yet the Captain must not find her thus.  Slowly she withdrew her
+head.  She hated to awaken him.  Yet she felt she must hear his voice,
+for the all-pervading loneliness was unbearable.  She sat up and shook
+him gently by the shoulder.  It was as though she had applied an
+electric shock.  With a muffled exclamation he lifted himself by his
+elbow, and the next instant he was on his feet.
+
+"Miss Howland!" he exclaimed.  The sound of his voice echoed hollow
+along the deck, but it was the most joyous sound Virginia had ever
+heard.  Leaning down, he assisted her to her feet.  Their eyes met, and
+they gazed at each other, wondering, uncertain.  Alone of all the
+world, these two, in the midst of a vast, lonely domain where hidden
+terrors lurk, where elements unharness their might and work their harm
+unchecked, where wind and wave whisper of murderous deeds, where the
+rime of dead ages is still fresh.  It was all too big for minds to
+encompass, for their senses to grasp.
+
+A great sob shook the girl.
+
+"Will--will you please go away--a moment?  I think I am going to cry,"
+she stammered.  She turned from him hurriedly and walked toward the
+rail.  She tottered as though about to fall.  Dan sprang to her side
+and placed his hand lightly on her arm.  The touch seemed to strengthen
+her.  With a convulsive effort she gained control of herself, and as
+Dan's hand dropped to his side she looked at him with a quivering smile.
+
+"I am going to be brave.  I am not going to cry.  Captain, tell me, is
+my father safe, and my aunt--and the rest?"
+
+"There is not the slightest question about that," replied Dan.  "They
+got overboard smartly.  The lifeboats were steel, well manned and
+supplied with provisions for a week.  If they weren't picked up last
+night by some steamship attracted by the fire, they will be within a
+short time."  The girl regarded him closely, as though trying to
+determine whether he was speaking from conviction or merely to
+dissipate her fears.  Interpreting her expression, Dan shook his head
+impatiently.
+
+"I am sincere, Miss Howland.  I have no more doubt of the safety of
+your father and the others than I have that I am alive.  The sea has
+been comparatively smooth, the weather clear.  Our situation is the one
+to bother about."
+
+"But some steamship will surely see us."
+
+"I hope so, but remember we are on a derelict.  Where we are, or where
+we are going heaven only knows.  Sometimes--there is no sense in trying
+to avoid the truth--derelicts go for weeks and even months without
+being sighted.  Still, I don't think we shall.  At night we'll have our
+distress lights.  We shall come out all right.  In the meantime we may
+not even have to be uncomfortable.  Usually when men desert these
+schooners they go in a hurry, leaving almost everything behind.  I am
+going to investigate affairs.  Will you come?  You may never have
+another opportunity of this sort."
+
+Dan's voice, at first grave, had gradually assumed a lighter tone, and
+at the humorous allusion in the last sentence she smiled.  Virginia was
+a sensible girl, but it must be confessed that her position alone with
+a man on a derelict in the middle of nowhere would have dazed a woman
+who held even broader views of the ordinary conventions than she did.
+
+As for the Captain, he evidently intended to accept the inevitable in a
+matter-of-fact, common-sense way.  There was nothing for her but to do
+likewise.  That he would be tactful and considerate in every way she
+knew.  And he would save her too, in the end.  Something seemed to tell
+her that.  She smiled at him bravely.
+
+"I think it will be fun, Captain!  Lead on."
+
+Their course aft was attended with difficulty.  All along the deck was
+a thick mass of wreckage, broken casks, boxes, sections of spars,
+tattered canvas, and enough wire rope and other gear, it seemed, to
+encircle the world.  Amidships the hull sagged so that the deck was not
+three feet above the water.
+
+Ascending the slight incline, Dan led the way to the entrance to the
+after cabin, containing four rooms--two on either side of a corridor.
+The cabins were just below the level of the deck but were not flooded.
+
+"Now," said Dan with his hand on the knob of the door at his right, "we
+will pay the Captain a visit."
+
+The bunk was mussed as though the skipper had left it hastily, but
+otherwise the apartment was in good order.  There was a little oaken
+desk containing a dictionary, several books on navigation, and writing
+appurtenances.  In the middle, on a piece of blotting-paper, was an
+overturned inkstand with a pen still in it.  Along the top were several
+photographs of home scenes, probably New England, and a picture of a
+rather comely young woman.
+
+"And here's a woman's hat," cried Virginia, picking from a corner a
+rather garishly trimmed creation.
+
+Dan paused and looked at it.
+
+"That's good," he said.  "His wife was evidently aboard."  He opened a
+door leading into the next cabin.  "This was her room undoubtedly," he
+said.
+
+The girl peered in with a delighted expression.
+
+"Why, of course."  Her eyes took a quick inventory.  An ornate if cheap
+dressing-table!  Four waists on coat hangers!  Four skirts, beautifully
+hung!  And what a litter of brushes and things on the floor!  She
+turned to Dan, who had not entered, but was standing in the doorway,
+smiling.  "It must have been perfectly maddening for the good lady of
+the ship to leave all this behind."  She walked to the dressing-table
+and peered into the mirror.  It must be said she saw a girl whom under
+other circumstances she would hardly have recognized.  Her heavy hair
+was dishevelled.  Her long, blue broadcloth ulster was stained with
+salt water and altogether out of shape.  A great black smudge ran along
+her cheek, and on her chin was a deep red scratch.
+
+She looked at Dan from out the mirror, blushing.
+
+"I am afraid I should compare rather unfavorably with the Captain's
+lady.  I think, first of all, I shall sit right down and do my hair.
+But no--of course not now."  She opened her eyes wide.
+
+"Oh, yes, you can," laughed Dan.  "I am going to leave you now and look
+about the ship."
+
+"Oh, no, you're not," exclaimed the girl; "you're not to leave me alone
+on this horrid ship just yet.  The hair can wait.  I'll go with you.
+If everything is as nice as this cabin I shall feel quite at home."
+
+The cabin opposite the Captain's had been the mate's, and behind it was
+the mess cabin.  Here the greater part of crockery and glass was
+shattered on the floor.  An overturned bird-cage with a dead canary in
+it lay under the table.
+
+"Well," said Dan, "we ought to be comfortable.  Now, Miss Howland, I
+think you ought to go to your cabin and get off those damp skirts.  I
+have got to take a look at the cargo, see what plans I can make to
+render us something else than a log on the sea, and nose about in the
+galley."  He started.  "By George!  I had forgotten about food.  That's
+rather important."  He hastily left the cabin and started down the
+corridor, with the girl's warning not to be long following him.
+
+First he stopped in the carpenter's room and secured the very thing he
+was looking for,--an axe.  With this he broke down the door of the
+storeroom, which, as he had expected, was locked.  There were a barrel
+of flour, tins of beef and of soups and vegetables, condensed milk, and
+a number of preserve jars filled with coffee.
+
+Taking one of the jars in which he saw the coffee was ground he poured
+out a cupful and drew some water from a cask.  Then going into the
+galley, he dug up a coffee-pot from the mass of cooking utensils which
+covered the floor, and proceeded to light a fire in the range.  It was
+soon roaring, and Dan had just mixed the coffee and water when Virginia
+appeared at the door.
+
+For an instant Dan hardly recognized the girl in her trim blue skirt,
+white sailor waist, open at the throat, and a red leather belt with a
+great brass buckle.
+
+"You have done well," he said at length.  "I had no idea you would be
+so fortunate."
+
+"Yes, everything fits pretty well," laughed the girl, "except that the
+skirt is a trifle short, but of course that doesn't matter here.
+That's not the point, though."  She gazed at him sternly.  "Who gave
+you permission to come in here and cook?"
+
+As Dan looked at her in amazement she continued:
+
+"Now see here, Captain Merrithew, we might just as well face our
+situation.  This is no time for observance of the minor conventions or
+gallantry.  We are shipwrecked.  We are nothing more nor less than two
+human beings cast away on a derelict.  You are to regard me, not as
+Virginia Howland, helpless, dependent, to be waited upon and watched
+over, but as you would Ralph Oddington or any one else were he in my
+place--as an assistant in the common cause of safety.  I am going to
+help you in every way I can, and I am going to begin by establishing
+myself as cook of this party from now on.  Please don't imagine I can't
+cook.  I attended a French culinary school for two seasons.  And now--"
+she stepped into the galley and seized Dan by the sleeve, drawing him
+gently toward the door--"won't you please go so that I shall have elbow
+room--this is such a tiny box of a place.  Please!"
+
+Dan hesitated no longer.  Seizing his axe he left the galley and went
+forward.  The mainmast had snapped about six feet below the truck; of
+the other two masts nothing was left but the stumps.  He chopped away
+the wreckage hanging over the bow, including the bowsprit and
+foretopmast, and had made good progress in clearing away the forward
+deck when Virginia, standing in the doorway of the after cabin, called
+him.
+
+"Breakfast, Captain," she cried.  "Breakfast is served."
+
+The girl was laughing excitedly as she led the way to the dining-cabin
+and seated herself in front of a great, steaming nickel coffee-pot.
+Blushing radiantly she pointed to the other chair.
+
+"Sit down, Captain Merrithew."  But Dan protested.
+
+"Now, really, Miss Howland," he laughed, "I can just as--"
+
+"Captain," interrupted Virginia, sharply, "don't be a goose.  There--"
+She began to pour the coffee.  "It isn't really much of a breakfast,"
+she added; "I shall do much better for luncheon.  But, as it is--" she
+inclined her head with mock unction as she handed him his cup.
+
+Dan never forgot that breakfast.  It was one of those events which
+linger in memory, every detail indelibly stamped, long after more
+important pictures of the past have lost even a semblance of outline.
+
+Sunlight flowed in through the portholes and rested on the red
+tablecloth and the glittering steel cutlery.  For a centrepiece she had
+a half shattered clay flower-pot containing a geranium plant which she
+had picked up from the deck outside the woman's cabin.  It was droopy
+and generally woebegone, but it served its purpose.  In front of Dan
+was a heaping dish of toast artistically browned, and a generous glass
+jar of marmalade.
+
+And opposite, smiling at him, talking to him as though they had
+breakfasted together for a number of years, was the most radiant girl
+he had ever looked upon.  The simple costume was wonderfully effective.
+The white, full throat and the curves of the neck running to the
+shoulders were revealed by the low rolling collar, and the hair coiled
+low shone with lustrous sheen.
+
+[Illustration: Opposite, smiling at him, as though they had breakfasted
+together for years, was the radiant girl.]
+
+Despite Dan's fears as to the manner in which their tenancy of the
+derelict might terminate, he abandoned himself to the sheer charm of it
+all.  When he finally arose, ending a light, laughing conversation, the
+girl regarded him seriously.
+
+"Now, Captain," she said, "I want to ask you something, and you must
+tell me truthfully.  You have examined this vessel, and you have
+doubtless some idea as to what we are to do.  Tell me the exact
+situation."
+
+Dan looked her straight in the eye a moment, and the girl returned his
+gaze unflinchingly.
+
+"I am perfectly honest," she said; "I want you to be."
+
+"Well," said Dan, "first of all I'll tell you what I am going to try to
+do: I am going to try to sail this derelict into some port.  There is
+enough of the mainmast standing to allow some sort of a sail, and we
+can't be so terribly far from land.  Besides, this hold is filled with
+logwood and mahogany.  Now this is a valuable cargo, worth at least
+fifty thousand dollars.  The vessel herself isn't worth a great deal,
+but still something.  Here is the point: if we take this vessel into
+port alone we can claim fifty per cent salvage, and we'll get it, too.
+That means that we shall net, through our little experience, some
+twenty-five thousand dollars between us."
+
+Virginia stepped toward him with a delighted exclamation.  Dan raised
+his hand admonishingly.
+
+"But," he continued, "we must first get the vessel into port.  Several
+things may prevent this.  The chief preventive will be a storm.  If God
+gives us good weather for three or four days that is all I ask.  If He
+doesn't, then we--"
+
+"Go on," said the girl.
+
+"Then we must simply pray for small favors."
+
+Virginia nodded gravely.
+
+"I understand," she said.  "I trust you, Captain."  She looked at him
+fixedly.  "Can you imagine how much I trust you?  I shall be strong and
+brave and do exactly as you tell me."  She started forward suddenly.
+"What have you under your coat sleeves?  Are your arms bandaged?" she
+cried.  "And your neck, too?"
+
+Dan laughed.
+
+"It's nothing," he said.  "My hands and arms and the back of my neck
+were pretty well scorched.  I dug some picric acid out of the Captain's
+medicine chest and tied myself up a bit.  I am all right now.  The pain
+has all disappeared."
+
+The girl flushed.
+
+"And you didn't ask me to help you?"
+
+"There was absolutely no need.  Honestly, if I had needed to bother you
+I should not have hesitated.  The flames did not touch me, you know,
+just their hot breath; the bandages do not amount to anything."
+
+"Well," replied Virginia, shaking her head, "I don't like it one bit.
+If I can do anything to repay you, however slightly, for all you have
+done for me, please give me the opportunity."
+
+"I shall remember that," said Dan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+NIGHT ON THE DERELICT
+
+When the sun that evening sank like a red ball behind the purple
+horizon, Dan laid aside various implements and went aft with the
+realization of a day well spent.  He had cleared the deck.  Using the
+mainboom and a goodly section of the tattered canvas he had improvised
+a capacious leg-of-mutton sail which flapped idly in the almost
+motionless air.
+
+He found Virginia seated in a camp lounging-chair, with a paper-covered
+novel lying open face downward in her lap, gazing thoughtfully at the
+dusk which seemed rolling toward them over the sea like a fog.
+
+"It was a beautiful sunset," she said; "but now it has gone, the ocean
+seems to have such a cruel, cold look.  And there are whispering voices
+on the water."
+
+She shivered slightly and looked at him half humorously.
+
+"I know," said Dan.  "But the stars will be out to-night, and, later,
+the moon."
+
+"It will be dreary at best," replied Virginia.  "I think it would be
+nice if there weren't going to be any night until we--until we--" she
+paused.  "Oh, Captain, you think we--"  She stopped short and frowned.
+"There," she said reproachfully, "I told you I was going to be brave.
+I'm succeeding admirably!"
+
+"You _are_ succeeding admirably," said Dan.  "Yes, I think we are going
+to get out of this.  Of course we are.  In the meantime, pending
+dinner, or supper, rather, I am going into my cabin to see if I can't
+confiscate some of the Captain's clothes.  I feel as if I had been in
+these for years.  And--" he hesitated.
+
+"And what?" she asked.
+
+"And if the Captain has left a razor, I am going to shave."
+
+"Are you really?" laughed the girl.  "And while you are about it, won't
+you please telephone for my hairdresser?"
+
+With the dark came a light breeze--and the stars, which Dan hailed with
+delight as giving him something to go by.  The breeze came over the
+starboard beam, the sail filling nicely, and Dan, taking a stand by the
+wheel, directed the derelict toward land.  He had lighted the red
+starboard lamp--the port lamp was missing--and hung a lantern at the
+head of the foremast.  Virginia sat beside him.
+
+For an hour Dan had been absorbed in the business of manoeuvring his
+sodden charge.  Waterlogged as she was it was no easy matter to swing
+her out of the current and head her upon a course.  But at last he had
+succeeded.  Having but one sail it could not have been better placed
+than amidships.  Placed in the mainmast it was easier to maintain
+steerage way and at the same time it served to push the derelict
+forward.  Turning to the girl, he laughed triumphantly; and she, who
+had begun to be almost jealous of the derelict, inasmuch as it had
+taken so much of his attention, smiled politely, if faintly.
+
+"And now," said Dan, sitting beside her, with his hands on the lower
+spokes of the battered wheel, "we are homeward bound.  The stars have
+told me a great deal.  See them all.  Over there are Regulus and his
+sickle, and in the northwest you see Queen Vega.  There is Ursa Major
+up there, nearly overhead.  There's the Little Bear north of it; and
+still north is the good old North Star.  We are going straight for
+land, Miss Howland."
+
+"You are awfully clever, Captain Merrithew."
+
+Dan looked at her quickly.  She was smiling mockingly.
+
+"Yes," she continued, as though communing with herself, "I really
+believe he would rather talk about his old stars than bother coming
+down to the level of a girl who is dying to bring him to earth.  I
+cannot imagine a more disagreeable man to be shipwrecked with."
+
+"Nor I a more agreeable--"  He checked himself.  "I am entirely at your
+service, Miss Howland," he added; "which is to say, I have alighted."
+
+She did not answer at once.  Instead she leaned forward with her hands
+supporting her chin, her elbows in her lap, gazing solemnly at the
+western stars.
+
+"It is nearly eight o'clock, isn't it?" she asked, without moving her
+head.
+
+"Yes," replied Dan, "about that.  Why?"
+
+"Just now in New York," said Virginia in her low, full tones, "they
+have finished dining on Broadway.  All the lights are, oh, so bright!
+and women in the most gorgeous spring gowns and men in evening dress
+are pouring out of the Astor, the Waldorf, the Knickerbocker,--every
+place,--and stepping into red and green taxi-cabs, or strolling
+leisurely to see the latest play.  And on Fifth Avenue, in the club
+opposite our house, the same five stout men are just about to occupy
+the same five stout chairs in the big windows.  I have watched them for
+years, and--"  The girl paused.  "Our house!  Do you suppose my father
+is there now?"  She closed her eyes.  "I can almost see him.  Of course
+he is mourning me for lost; and Aunt Helen is trying to comfort him and
+other persons.  But there, I must not think of that, must I?"  She
+turned to Dan and smiled bravely.
+
+"No, you must not," he said gravely.  "He is a man; he will bear his
+grief like a man.  And when you return--"
+
+"When I return?" interpolated the girl, quickly.  "Have you thought
+about that, Daniel Merrithew?"
+
+"Not a great deal, except to resolve that if I ever get ashore I shall
+never again go to sea as a sailor."
+
+"Oh, I don't mean that," said Virginia.  "Ever since the night when you
+were shielding me from the fire--"
+
+Dan raised his hand.
+
+"Anything you said that night, Miss Howland, need cause you no regret,
+no misgiving.  As well judge the words, the actions, of a man who knows
+he has but an hour to live."
+
+Virginia looked at him puzzled.  She started to speak, but closed her
+lips tight upon the words.  She was vividly flushed.
+
+"Did I say anything so terrible then?" she asked at length.  "I am sure
+I can remember nothing I regret.  Of course I don't remember much; I
+suppose I was awfully flighty, then.  But you were fine and brave and
+noble; and, whatever I said, I stand pat, as father says," the girl
+laughed.  "This is such a conventional age that when a knight of modern
+times revives the daring and chivalry of older ages, we women have no
+adequate way in which to requite it, you know."
+
+"You must not think about it at all," replied Dan.
+
+"And why not?  That night I hung at the mercy of your strength and
+endurance to pain, when you could easily have saved yourself by letting
+me go.  Ah, don't deny it," as Dan made a gesture.  "I know!  My life
+was in your keeping, to save it or let it go, as you willed.  Daniel
+Merrithew, do you ever feel that now you have the right to be
+interested in that life that you alone saved?"
+
+"What do you mean?" Dan was looking at her curiously.
+
+The girl laughed excitedly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know exactly what I do mean--except, except that I have
+simply felt, well, as though I have no right to be altogether my own
+selfish self--in the way I used to be, I mean; that I have no longer an
+absolute right----  Oh, how can I explain it clearly?  Let us say that
+I have a conviction that any serious change I might wish to make in my
+life should not be done without--well, not consent, exactly, but good
+wishes--no, I mean consent.  There, that may be putting it clumsily,
+but don't you understand?"
+
+Dan flushed.  "I have saved lives before," he said; "and twice men have
+saved my life, and I never felt,--felt the way you say toward my
+rescuers."
+
+"But that is different; it is impossible to compare man's attitude
+toward man as you would a woman's."
+
+"Yes, that's so."
+
+"Then you, too, have felt as I feel?"
+
+"No, I never thought of it in that way."
+
+She was silent a moment, but she regarded him searchingly.  His face
+was upturned, gazing at the flapping sail on the mainmast.  She caught
+the strong, classic profile in the starlight, and over her flooded the
+deep sense of her utter dependence upon him, upon his skill, his
+strength, his resource, and the deeper sense of her implicit trust in
+him as the embodiment of all these qualities.
+
+She yearned now to express to him her emotions; she almost felt she
+must.  And yet she hardly knew how.  She had tried to do so, but how
+inadequate her words had seemed!  Bearing in upon her mood, Dan's cool,
+even voice sounded miles away.
+
+"Miss Howland, had you thought--"
+
+She interrupted him.
+
+"See here, Daniel Merrithew, I said before that ceremony had no part on
+this boat.  Hereafter, if you won't call me by my first name you must
+address me by my last.  It must be either one or the other."
+
+Dan made no comment.  He hesitated just a moment, then he said:
+
+"I was going to ask you, Virginia, if you had thought of going to your
+cabin yet."
+
+She smiled and blushed.
+
+"I--I wanted to speak to you about that," she said, speaking rapidly.
+"I saw you this evening taking things from the Captain's room into the
+mate's cabin.  Now, if you have any idea that I am going to sleep on
+this horrid, grisly boat, so far away from you, you are mistaken.  You
+must sleep in the Captain's room--and the door leading into mine must
+be ajar, too.  Oh, I am terribly unmaidenly!  I cannot help it; I shall
+be horribly forlorn and frightened, and shall hear all sorts of sounds;
+I can hear them now, and so can you--"
+
+"But," interrupted Dan, "I cannot go to sleep, Miss--Virginia.  This
+boat must be sailed to land.  There is a breeze.  She cannot be left
+alone; she would go a hundred miles out of her course; and, besides, we
+might meet a vessel."
+
+For a moment the girl gazed at him uncomprehendingly.
+
+"Do you mean to say you are going to stay up all night and sail?  But
+you have not had a wink of sleep and I shall certainly not go into
+that--" she suddenly arose.  "How stupid of me!  Of course both of us
+must stand watch in turn.  While you are steering I shall sleep at the
+wheel.  While I am steering you shall sleep there.  How simple!  Then
+we need not be alone at all.  Here, I'll hold the wheel first and you
+go to sleep.  I shall wake you at midnight, perhaps before if I get
+frightened.  Then I shall be asleep through those creepy morning hours."
+
+Dan demurred vigorously, but she was steadfast.  So he went to the
+after cabin and brought out several blankets and a pillow, which she
+arranged deftly.
+
+As he prepared to lie down, he looked at the girl.
+
+"See that star up there?" he said.  "Well, just keep the vessel going
+the way she is, with that star over your shoulder.  Don't let it get
+anywhere else.  If it does, wake me quickly.  If you become afraid, or
+see anything, let me know at once."
+
+"Yes," said the girl, "I understand.  Good-night, Daniel."
+
+"Good-night, Virginia."
+
+In a few minutes Dan was fast asleep.  Through the night sailed the
+girl, alone, sore afraid, but comforted with the assurance that a touch
+of her hand would bring to her the powerful man who slept at her feet.
+
+Straight she stood at the wheel, and tall, like some figure of a
+goddess of antiquity.  The moon rose, and its light glorified her.  It
+fell upon the shattered deck, defining every dreary detail.  The waves
+rose and fell with the lilt of music.  The tinkling breeze was cool and
+fresh and invigorating.  Fear vanished from her.  She felt herself a
+part of the elements, a part of the night, the lone representative of
+life and consciousness, and God amid the waste of primeval desolation.
+
+So she sailed, exalted, ennobled, until long after midnight.  When her
+thoughts turned to the man sleeping at her feet, she leaned down,
+gazing long and earnestly upon his face.  Then, as he stirred, she let
+her hand rest on his forehead a moment.
+
+"It is time to awaken, Daniel," she said.
+
+He was upon his feet in an instant.  There was a strange expression
+upon his face.
+
+"I was far away from here," he said.  "I was dreaming, the bulliest
+sort of a dream."
+
+"Dreaming?  And what about, pray?"
+
+"You."
+
+"You were!  Tell me the dream."
+
+"They say dreams that are told never come true," replied Dan, slowly.
+
+Their eyes met.  Both were smiling.  Then her eyes fell; but she still
+smiled.
+
+"Then," she said, "I guess you had better not tell me--unless--"
+
+"Unless?" asked Dan, as she paused.
+
+Slowly she arranged the blankets, while Dan waited for the completion
+of the sentence.  Then she lay down.
+
+"Good-night," she said.
+
+When she awoke, the sun was rising high.  The breeze had died away.
+The wheel was deserted.  She looked down the stretch of deck, but Dan
+was nowhere to be seen.  With a fluttering heart she arose and shook
+out her skirts, hardly daring to peer into the cabin for fear her
+dreadful intimations might prove true.
+
+He was not in the cabin.  She called his name in a low voice, but only
+the hollow echo resounded from the corridor.  In agonized suspense now
+she ran out on the deck.
+
+"Dan!" she called with all the power of her lungs, not expecting that
+he would hear her now.  "Dan Merrithew, have you left me?"
+
+There came an answering hail, and looking toward the bow she saw Dan
+clambering out of the forward hatch.  His shoes and trousers were
+dripping wet.  As he ran to her she waited, weeping.  He caught her
+hands and held them.
+
+"Oh, Dan, Dan!" she cried, "you frightened me so!  I thought you had
+gone.  I thought you were dead.  You are not going to leave me again,
+are you?"
+
+"Never," said Dan.
+
+Then both started as though the underlying significance of the question
+and answer had suddenly dawned upon them.  Gently she withdrew her
+hands, which Dan did not seek to retain.  In conversational tone, he
+said:
+
+"I am awfully sorry, Virginia.  While you were sleeping, the wind fell,
+an hour or two after dawn, and the blue of the water struck me.  I
+found the Captain's thermometer and lowered it overboard.  My best
+hopes were realized.  We are in the Gulf Stream, Virginia, and moving
+northward at about four miles an hour.  We are all right now if all
+goes well."
+
+"But why were you hiding?" asked the girl.
+
+"I wasn't.  I wanted to see if the water had hurt the logwood, so as to
+impair its value, and to learn the condition of the hull.  You know the
+cargo is all that is keeping us afloat.  Everything is pretty soggy
+down there, but we'll hold together, I guess; and I don't believe the
+logwood will suffer a bit.  Of course the mahogany is all right.  We're
+lucky.  One schooner in a million has mahogany these days."
+
+She had been gazing at him almost vacantly while he was talking.  Now
+she smiled beautifully.
+
+"Oh, I am so glad to see you again," she said.  "It seems almost as if
+you had been away a thousand years."
+
+"That," said Dan, "almost pays me for frightening you.  Are you ready
+for breakfast?  I knocked it together a while ago."
+
+"For which you shall be punished--when we get ashore."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+DAN AND VIRGINIA
+
+After breakfast they drew chairs to the wheel and sat out on deck.  It
+was a wonderful May morning.  Thin clouds hung in the blue, like little
+yachts; and the cool, balmy air and the sparkling sunlight brought the
+clear, steady call of work to be done, of life to be lived beautifully
+and nobly, and strong things to overcome, or to accomplish--the call of
+youth.
+
+And they heard the call, these two, and responded to it with the
+joyousness of youth, wherein a phrase is a lifetime, and a word,
+volumes.  They talked of themselves, regarding each other wonderingly
+as hidden depths of character were revealed, or a word, or a sentence,
+or a sympathetic silence threw light upon a new element of personality.
+
+He spoke of the _Fledgling_.  He used to see her through a golden haze.
+She was his first command.  Yet each day came the old question, What
+next?  And the answer.  Why, everything.  A future--bigger things and
+better, broader work, not on the sea at the last.  No; landward,
+somewhere, anywhere.  But onward, onward!
+
+"Something is linked with every one's destiny, Virginia.  Fate fires no
+salutes; every shot is solid and aimed at something.  And the thing
+that is hit you have to step over and go on; if you stop to look at it
+and think over it and try to look for something else for Fate to knock
+down for you, something easier to step over and get away from, you
+find, perhaps, years later, that just there you missed your chance."
+
+She regarded him with kindling eyes.
+
+"And so that has been your philosophy."
+
+"For want of a better, yes."
+
+"I think it is a splendid one, and it has stood its highest test--it
+has served you well.  Do you know, the first time I had any idea you
+were interested in the higher things was that day we were in your cabin
+on the _Tampico_.  Do you remember my looking at your books and
+exclaiming over the selection?  I don't know, but somehow the Bible
+impressed me most."
+
+"I had a pretty good English foundation at Exeter," replied Dan, "and I
+kept it up after I left there.  That Bible--I think I did grow and
+broaden after leaving school, but I never grew beyond Psalms and St.
+Paul; which proves that a little knowledge is not dangerous."
+
+The girl smiled.
+
+"Most men would be ashamed to say that," she said.  "Most of the men I
+have known," she added.
+
+"I never would have said it to any one but you."  He said this with
+quiet conviction, and the girl inclined her head slightly.
+
+"I thank you. . . .  Do you remember that night at the dinner when I
+told you that if our friendship was to continue it was to be one of
+limitations?  How long ago that seems now--and how absurd!"
+
+"Does it seem absurd?"
+
+"Doesn't it?"  She laughed.  "It seems to me you were inclined to
+regard it so that night."
+
+"Much to your indignation."
+
+"Is it so?  If you had asked me, I might have admitted that the fact I
+ever could be indignant with you was the principal reason why that
+night of the dinner seemed so long ago."  She hastened to qualify.
+"For, you see, I count you now among my very closest friends."
+
+"That is saying a great deal," smiled Dan.  "When we get ashore and you
+are comfortably installed as queen of your father's drawing-room and
+Dan Merrithew is--"
+
+An exclamation from the girl interrupted him.
+
+"Dan Merrithew, don't you dare!"
+
+"And Dan Merrithew is just a--"  She had risen, and before he could
+complete the sentence her hands were pressed tightly over his mouth.
+
+"Will you be good?" she cried.  She released her hands and regarded him
+with mock severity.
+
+"But--" laughed Dan.
+
+Again the hands flew to his face.
+
+"Will you?"
+
+"I will," said Dan.
+
+"And you'll promise not to say or think such nonsense again?"
+
+"I promise," said Dan.
+
+And then for a while both fell silent, thinking of the future which lay
+before them.  The girl smiled as her day-dreams opened and expanded.
+Dan frowned, and the fingers of his well-shaped hands locked and
+unlocked across his knees.
+
+Suddenly Virginia sprang to her feet with an exclamation.
+
+"Oh, I forgot," she said, and ran, laughing, to the galley, whence she
+returned with a large plate of fudge.  At Dan's look of surprise she
+tossed her head in mock disdain of what he might say or think.
+
+"I unearthed two great cakes of chocolate last night," she said, "and
+as I was simply dying for some candy I made fudge while preparing
+breakfast.  I had to use condensed milk, watered; and as there was no
+marble slab I had to stir it in the pan.  I don't know how good it is;
+it's awfully grainy"; and thus, rattling on, she took a square of the
+confection and placed it gingerly between her lips.
+
+"Why, it's not so bad," she said.  "Here!  Open your mouth and shut
+your eyes!"  Which Dan did, declaring that he had never eaten anything
+half so delicious.
+
+"Really!" she exclaimed, with falling inflection.  "Then I must say I
+feel sorry for you. . . .  Now, why have you that little amused twinkle
+in your eyes?  I used to see it sometimes at the table on the _Tampico_
+when Reggie was boasting, and--and sometimes when I was trying to be
+very brilliant.  Do you know, sometimes I felt like boxing your ears,
+you seemed so superior."
+
+"It was not superiority in your case," laughed Dan, "it was
+appreciation."
+
+"Thank you," said Virginia; "and now?"
+
+"Oh," smiled Dan, "the thought of fudge on a derelict was and is
+responsible for this twinkle."
+
+"I don't care," she frowned.  "It is the person that rises superior to
+conditions who triumphs in this world.  Anyway, you seem to be
+disposing of your share, despite your notions of incongruity."
+
+"Have you thought," said Dan, "that it might pay to be very economical
+with your chocolate?  If we stay here two or three months and all our
+food runs out we can live on ever so little chocolate each day."
+
+"Two or three months!" echoed Virginia.  "Now, you are tactful, aren't
+you?  And just as I was sitting here chattering away, with no thought
+that we were not on a yacht ready to turn home the minute I wished to!"
+
+Dan smiled.
+
+"If we were on a yacht, how soon would you--wish to?" he said.
+
+The girl met his eyes undauntedly.
+
+"If I answered you in one way I should not be at all polite," she said;
+"and if in another, I should not be--be--"
+
+"Honest?" suggested Dan.
+
+"That would depend upon what I said," she answered with a non-committal
+shrug.  "Now I am going.  I've a lot to do in my cabin, and a luncheon
+menu to make out.  _Au revoir_!"  She paused at the entrance to the
+cabins, smiled brightly at Dan, and then disappeared.
+
+Long he sat, gazing out over the serene waters, filled with a great
+inward thrill.  The wonder of all the fast-crowding events of the past
+fortnight was asserting itself potently in his mind, and it was
+difficult to realize he was not now living some wild, improbable dream.
+But, after all, he found the sense of responsibility dominant.  To his
+care was committed a beautiful life,--a life that must be saved,
+cherished, and ultimately restored to its proper environment.  Of late,
+it seemed, an evil star had pursued him; everything he had commanded or
+had anything to do with had either sunk or burned--an extraordinary
+train of misfortune not lacking in the lives of many able masters of
+craft.  What next?  He passed over that thought with a frown.  He was
+living in a beautiful present; the future would be met as the past had
+been, bravely and with no cry for quarter.
+
+The present!  He was immediately to learn how dearly he prized it; for
+as he gazed seaward, the smoke of a steamship, below the horizon,
+appeared.  He sprang to his feet and watched it eagerly; and yet when
+that faint column grew more dim and finally faded, he sat back
+constrained to confess that he was almost glad the course of the
+steamship was as it was.  He fought against it, thinking of the girl in
+the cabin and her interests.  And yet--and yet?  He shrugged his
+shoulders and walked toward the door, lured by the song which he
+remembered so clearly.
+
+  "If I had you!  If I had you!  You!"
+
+"Will _I_ do?" he laughed, peering in at her open door.
+
+"For the present, yes," she bowed, "because I want you to admire.  See,
+I have been decorating my room with unbleached muslin.  Aren't those
+curtains dear?  And those silesia bunk tapestries, aren't they
+fascinating?"
+
+"They are, indeed.  How much would you charge to beautify my cabin?"
+
+Virginia blushed.
+
+"You had better ask how much you owe me," she said.  Then, "You haven't
+looked in your cabin!  And after all my labor, too!"
+
+With an exclamation Dan darted across the corridor and beheld, with
+kindling eyes, many evidences of that feminine touch without which
+hardened bachelors may fancy their quarters complete.  She had followed
+him to the door and was gazing over his shoulder.  Something caught in
+Dan's throat.  Always a man's man, as the saying is, the full force of
+the realization of his strange situation seemed rushing from the
+interior of that cabin to overpower him.  A girl, a beautiful girl, one
+whom he had looked upon as he had looked upon the beautiful
+unattainable things of this life, planning and executing for his
+pleasure, and blushing joyously to find that which she had done for him
+pleasing in his sight, left him bereft of words.
+
+He turned to her and strove to speak, and then suddenly he faced about
+and walked hurriedly to the deck.  She came up behind him and placed
+her hand upon his shoulder and smiled, understanding.  His eyes met
+hers, and then, with an involuntary movement, his arm was about her
+waist.  For a full minute they stood thus, neither moving, she
+regarding him with wondering eyes, but still smiling slightly.
+
+Suddenly he started; his arm swiftly dropped, and he glanced with a
+jerk of his head towards the sail.
+
+"Are we getting out of our course?" she asked.
+
+"I was," he said, scowling, "but I won't again.  Can you forgive one
+who is no better than a--than a blamed pirate?"
+
+"I can forgive you everything but calling yourself names," she said
+gently.
+
+Before another hour had passed, clouds began to rise from out the sea.
+There came a fitful breeze, with a little hum to it.  To the
+southeast-ward the horizon assumed a grayish-white tinge.
+
+Dan watched it anxiously, and the girl followed his gaze and then
+glanced at him inquiringly.
+
+"It's going to cloud over," he said.  "There may be some deviltry
+before we make shore."
+
+He moistened his fingers, moving them to and fro in the air.
+
+"It isn't a storm," he said; "it is fog."
+
+"Fog!"  The girl was trembling.  "What does that mean?"
+
+"It means that for a while old ocean is going to destroy all our pretty
+scenery, and that it is going to be cold and nasty and disagreeable."
+
+Already, in fact, the ocean had lost its color.  Heavy blue-white
+clouds with shredded, filmy foundations, which seemed almost to sweep
+the waters, moved swiftly to the westward, while in the background the
+wall of mist advanced silently to encompass them.  They could feel its
+breath, heavy, clammy, chilling.
+
+Presently a mass of vapor, like a detached squadron of cavalry, swept
+about the derelict and then moved on, leaving little shredded patches
+hanging about the foremast.
+
+Quite unknown to the girl, Dan, the preceding day, had constructed a
+raft, which he regarded as being quite as safe for ocean travelling, if
+not quite so comfortable, as the derelict.  He had lashed supplies, a
+small cask of water, and the like thereon, and now, with the fog-pall
+gathering about, he went amidships, examined it carefully, and made
+sure that nothing would prevent a hasty launching in event of disaster.
+
+When he returned the murk had closed in thickly.  It was as though the
+vessel were immured from the world.  Virginia was standing at the
+wheel, and with the pall throwing the derelict into more sombre relief,
+Dan caught more strongly than ever the utter contrast which her
+presence brought to this abandoned hulk.  Whenever she had walked along
+the deck it had seemed a profanation to him that the uneven planking
+should know her tread; that she should be on the derelict at all was,
+he felt, a working of Fate against everything that was beautiful and
+graceful.
+
+Now, as she stood there in the pallid gloom, she suggested some tall,
+beautiful genius, presiding over the wrack of elemental things, facing
+a more glorious future.
+
+"How shut in everything seems!" she said, as Dan took the wheel from
+her hands.  He had a long fog-horn which he blew at intervals.
+
+"We haven't seen a speck of a ship," he explained, "but now the fog is
+about us there's liable to be a fleet of them in our vicinity at any
+time.  At least that has been my experience with fogs.  It would not be
+much fun to be rammed, although in our present condition I fancy it
+would hurt the other vessel more than it would this."
+
+Hour after hour they went on blindly, silently, save at such times as
+Dan's raucous horn blasts went tearing through the fog.  The wind had
+died away.  Sometimes the forward part of the vessel was hidden from
+their view.  Frequently it seemed distorted; strange phantom shapes
+filled the deck, and the soughing of the yielding hull brought strange,
+uncanny sounds to their ears.
+
+Dan was seated on the deck, his eyes peering about on all sides, trying
+to pierce the veil, every nerve taut, every sense alert.  The girl
+crept close beside him, so that she touched him, and there she
+remained, while all the terrors of the ghostly ship arose to confront
+her.  The weed-hung, slimy rails and wave-bitten deck stretched away in
+ever-fading perspective to the foremast where everything ended in an
+amorphous blur.
+
+There came a time when the two felt almost a part of the deep--two
+mortals admitted into all the hidden evils that lurk thereon.  Their
+lot to witness the inception of mighty tempests; to hear great gray
+waves boast of the harm they had done and the winds to plan their
+rending deeds.  Perhaps they themselves would be called to the work, to
+deal to some proud vessel the death blow as so many derelicts have done.
+
+Once far off there sounded a series of whistle blasts, hoarse,
+tremulous notes of warning and inquiry.  But as the two listened with
+straining ears the sounds became more dim.  Finally they ceased
+altogether.
+
+The girl eventually lost all sense of acute feeling.  She sat dumb, her
+undeviating eyes fastened upon Dan's face, as though in him she found
+all that was tangible or normal or real.  Her hand was resting on his
+shoulder now, clutching it tight; but if he knew it was there, he made
+no sign.
+
+At length, toward evening, as though in a dream, Dan's voice bore upon
+her ears.  For a moment she gazed at him dully, and then she
+comprehended his words.
+
+"It is beginning to rain, Virginia.  The fog will go away now."
+
+"Oh, good!" she exclaimed.
+
+"The wind is freshening, too," he added, "and it doesn't feel very
+good.  I think we're going to have a blow for a change."
+
+It seemed so.  Already the mists were beginning to scuttle away before
+the increasing wind-rush which moaned with evil breath.
+
+"Will you hold the wheel for a moment, please," said Dan.
+
+As she placed her hands on the spokes he went forward and lowered the
+sail.  There were two lines of reef points in the section of canvas and
+Dan took in both.  When he hoisted it again there was just a patch of
+three-cornered sail.
+
+Within half an hour it was raining hard.  The wind was increasing
+slowly but surely, and the sea was rising.  Dan asked the girl to go
+into the cabin and to remain there either until the storm was over, or
+he summoned her.  She obeyed him partially.  She went into the cabin,
+but returned quickly with two slickers.
+
+"Do you suppose," she cried, "I am going to let you be alone now?  I am
+going to help you, and, if it must be, to die with you.  I am not a bit
+afraid any more."
+
+Dan placed his hand on her arm.
+
+"Get down here, then, under the lee of this cabin.  We are not going to
+die.  At least not yet a while."
+
+So the storm came.  With his patch of sail Dan had headed the craft up
+into the wind; and thus, with the boat already beginning to rise and
+fall, with the broad bow groaning, and oozing ends of planking, and
+dirty water, and the deck, contracting and expanding like the belly of
+a stricken whale, he settled down to the long fight.
+
+The fog had all departed now.  North, east, south, and west, nothing
+but the gray of onrushing waves and a shrouded sky as implacable as the
+morning of doom.  Darkness was falling swiftly.  Soon the terrible
+night began.
+
+Not that it was the worst storm in which Dan had ever been, but
+certainly he had never faced North Atlantic tumult under such a
+disadvantage, under conditions so desperately precarious.  The bow rose
+but heavily to the seas, and never topped them.  The water rushing
+over, poured down the deck in mill-races, filling it to the rails,
+occasionally springing up over the poop and the top of the after cabin,
+lashing the faces of the two crouching at the wheel behind it.
+
+"It's a sou'easter, I'm almost certain," roared Dan in the girl's ear.
+"It will work up to a climax gradually, and then gradually go down, at
+this season of the year.  Don't be afraid of the water.  We can't sink,
+I believe; the only danger is that we might break up--and we won't do
+that."
+
+But despite the optimism of his words, Dan was not altogether certain
+that the wallowing wreck would hold together.  There was nothing to do
+but wait and see.  The situation he grasped in all its grievous
+details.  He had never been so happy, so utterly at peace as aboard
+this derelict.  No gilded barge of antiquity had ever been so glorious,
+so golden as this mangled wraith of the seas in the sunlit hours of the
+immediate past.  Her voice, her laughter, had filled them with music,
+her presence with all the poetry and romance of the world, and the
+light in her eyes shining for him alone had filled him with a great
+tenderness.
+
+Now, the night, the storm, danger--death, perhaps.  He shut his jaws
+and drove the flooding thoughts from his mind.  Anger,--the anger of
+bereavement,--filled him, and he glared into the tempest and twisted
+the wheel as though combating a sentient adversary.
+
+An hour passed, Cimmerian blackness had fallen.  The waves came
+savagely, ill-defined masses let loose from a viewless limbo to work
+their harm.  Sometimes they caught the dull gray flash of breaking
+waters, but more often everything was hidden.  The roar of the wind and
+wave was incessant.
+
+Dan's efforts to keep the derelict's head to the seas had failed.  The
+hulk had slued around and was driving before the tempest, whither he
+did not know.  Groaning, crashing, crackling, the hulk lumbered on.
+Once a wave leaped over the stern, stunning them with its thunderous
+impact, dragging at them powerfully, as though to draw them back into
+the sea whence it came.
+
+Plunging thus, helpless, unseeing, they seemed to be flying as swiftly
+as the wind.  A wild ride--to where?  Were they driving out into the
+lonely heart of the deep, there to perish in a last long dive?  Or was
+it shoreward, with oblivion coming in the dreadful grinding and
+crashing and shattering of timbers?
+
+Neither had the heart for even a faint hope for safety; and yet Dan,
+with his hands stiffened on the wheel spokes, fought on.  The girl,
+with her head bowed, sat still, her hands clinging to his shoulders.
+They did not speak.  Twice Dan had attempted to utter a cheering word,
+but the wind had swept the sounds from his lips.
+
+Both knew that at any moment the derelict might succumb to the forces
+striving to destroy her.  And, as they sat waiting, the realization
+came to both what a small part of the incidents of this heaving night
+the dismemberment of their washing vessel would be.  In the vortex of
+the riot, when the heavens and the ocean seemed united in the creation
+of chaos, they sensed the littleness of their own lives and the vanity
+of their affairs.
+
+As a thunderous roar of wind smote the vessel Dan felt the pressure of
+Virginia's hand on his shoulder suddenly tighten.  He turned to her,
+and through the darkness caught the vague outlines of her face, which
+was fixed on the faint blur which marked the forward part of the hulk.
+
+His eyes followed just as her fingers loosened their grasp.  He saw
+nothing save the dull flash of swirling waters and the amorphous blotch
+of hull.  Slowly her hand tightened again; and then, as he looked he
+caught above the deck an impression of something moving.  It seemed to
+be something that was revealing itself to the instinct rather than to
+their visual senses.
+
+As the wind passed on, leaving that confused murmur, broken only by the
+dogged rush of waters, Virginia spoke to Dan with trembling voice.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+Dan's eyes were still staring forward.  He spoke through his clenched
+teeth.
+
+"Wait a moment."  More accustomed to the gloom ahead he was able to
+determine that the sail had torn from the boom and was waving out from
+the shattered mast-top like a flag.  The mast itself seemed to be
+reeling.  Was the hull opening and disintegrating?
+
+Almost without volition he half arose to his feet.  The girl followed
+his action, still clinging to his shoulder.  Dan inclined his head to
+speak to her, when with a shriek the wind came again.  There was a dull
+crash forward, a splintering and rearing of wood, a quivering of the
+entire hull; and then, as though hurled by a giant hand, a huge section
+of wood, whether a part of cargo or hull Dan could not tell, shot out
+of the night, crashing a hole in the roof of the cabin behind which
+they were crouching, and then bounded over their heads into the sea.
+
+Both remained still, as though carved in stone.  Forward there was a
+crashing sound, a series of blows, as though some great hammer were
+engaged in disintegrating the hull.  There was a grinding of wood
+against wood which caused the deck under their feet to tremble.  Still
+neither moved.  The terrible thought that the derelict was going to
+pieces was in both their minds.  They had no doubt of this now.  They
+simply waited.
+
+Virginia had no great fear.  Her dominant thought was the dread of the
+first immersion in the cold, cruel, black waters.  But it would not
+last long.  Not long, not long--these two words kept ringing in her
+mind.  Her shoulders were drawn up, as though preparing for the shock.
+
+Dan had not moved.  Half crouching, half kneeling, his eyes were
+fastened upon the vague deck ahead.  Now, as though the elements had
+worked to give him sight, the black sky was suddenly seared by a long,
+lurid line of lightning.  It was but the fraction of a second; it was
+long enough.  In that blue glow the derelict took form, grim, ghostly,
+heaving, as a spirit picture might be thrown upon a black cloth, every
+detail limned in filmy perfection.
+
+With a cry Dan leaped to his feet and seized an axe lying by his side.
+
+"We are not breaking," he shouted.  "The mast has torn out of its step
+and is pounding us.  I am going to cut it away.  We shall be all right."
+
+The girl heard his voice, caught the enthusiasm of it, but
+distinguished not a single word.  As he crawled slowly by the side of
+the cabin to the steps leading to the deck she half arose as though to
+follow him.
+
+"Dan, Dan," she cried, "don't leave me!"
+
+He waved her back, and a second later had gained the deck.  For a few
+minutes she sat there, wondering, fearing, and then in a lull in the
+storm she heard the blows of the axe.  A great wave rose over the
+quarter and ran forward with a roar.  There came a shout.  She
+listened.  The sounds of the axe were heard no more.
+
+"Dan!" she called.  "Dan!"  Her words were whistled away on the wind.
+
+In desperation she worked her way to the steps and peered down upon the
+deck.  She heard nothing but the wind and the waves.  And then with her
+hair streaming wild, with lips bloodless, she stood upright and rushed
+to the deck.  The wind tore at her, flying water buffeted her, and the
+hulk swayed under her feet; but, as though endowed with superhuman
+power, as though scorning the elements to which she had bowed through
+the night she ran forward, heedless of everything but that her
+companion was in danger.
+
+Where she was going she knew not, nor cared.  A hand grasped the end of
+her slicker and brought her to a halt.  She looked down and saw Dan
+stretched upon the deck, the mast lying across his legs.  She knelt at
+his side.
+
+"Dan!"
+
+He drew her head down so that her ear was near his mouth.
+
+"Not hurt," he said coolly.  "The wave knocked the mast across me just
+as I had almost cut it through.  Find the axe.  Two strokes will free
+me.  Hurry.  Another wave may drown me."
+
+The girl swept her hands hastily over the deck.  She found the axe a
+few feet from Dan, and with that frenzied, nervous strength which comes
+to women in times of stress, she hacked at the mast, which Dan had
+almost cut through when the wave struck him.  Three times the edge of
+the implement glanced.  She ground her teeth, raised it a fourth time
+taking careful aim.  Then she let fly with all her strength, and the
+axe bit deep.  She raised it again, smiling now.  Two strokes, three
+strokes, four strokes.  The keen blade severed the last inch of wood,
+the hulk pitched forward, and the mast with its boom and its tangle of
+rigging and canvas rolled from Dan and plunged into the sea.
+
+He was on his feet in a second, and with his arm about her waist they
+ran astern and reached their posts at the wheel in safety.  But there
+was no need to bother with the wheel now.  There was nothing to do, in
+fact, but sit inactive and accept what came to them.
+
+And yet, had they but known it, Fate, which it may be said takes the
+lives of the young grudgingly, had worked for their ultimate good.  The
+Gulf Stream had carried them to a point off Hatteras, and there the
+storm had enveloped them.  As Dan had surmised, it was from the
+south-east, and laboring and flailing as sorely as she might, the winds
+and the waves had steadily lashed the vessel toward safety.
+
+They could not know that.  It was only after an unusual interval in the
+powerful wind-blast that Dan looked upward and suddenly held up his
+hand.  He looked at the vague form of the girl and bared his teeth in a
+quick, mirthless smile.
+
+"The wind is changing," he muttered.  "What now?"
+
+There came another rush of wind.  But it was not so strong as its
+predecessors had been; and looking into the sky he could see the cloud
+movement.  He shook Virginia by the shoulder, and there was a
+triumphant ring in his voice as he shouted into her ear,
+
+"The gale is passing!"
+
+Gradually but surely the shrieking of the elements diminished; the seas
+were palpably falling.  Great, dark shapes could now be seen rushing
+across the lightening firmament, and once the girl, stretching her arm
+upward, exclaimed, as through a rift overhead she caught a glimpse of a
+little star.
+
+Half an hour--there came a great peace.
+
+Now, a man and a woman out of the chaos--with the world and all its
+civilization and its manners and its men and its affairs as though they
+had never been, as though the two had lived for a flashing minute in
+some old dream--the strain of years that makes for ceremony and
+diffidence and convention and custom suddenly stopped, turned backward.
+
+They were the first man and the first woman on the verge of upheaval,
+having felt fear, not as we feel it, but in a dull, instinctive
+way--wondering horribly.  Just two, just a man and a woman, emerging
+from all the destructive might of the world.
+
+She--not Virginia Howland now--just She--turned toward the man who
+crouched with one hand still clutching the wheel, the other lying
+loosely, palm downward upon the deck.  Her face was filled with the
+glow of returning blood, her hair streamed, her eyes shone.
+
+Gone, the tempest.  The waves were lashing, surly, hissing a monotone
+as old as Time is old.  The darkness was the gloom of an age before the
+sun was born.  The air was filled with low sounds that had been dead
+for aeons.  And she turned to him, and he turned to her.
+
+Her bosom was rising and falling; he could hear her quick, hard
+breathing.  As though without volition, she moved a step forward, and
+with a low cry held out her arms to him, trembling no more, her heart
+filled with a wild, joyous song.  Suddenly she felt his breath upon her
+face, felt herself crushed in his arms, as she would be crushed.
+Gently he kissed her upon the lips, and then again and again and again.
+For a moment she lay dumb in his arms, and then as he drew back his
+head she put her arms around his neck and held his lips to hers.  So
+they stood.
+
+A force far greater than the unharnessed might of the ocean now
+thrilled and filled and exalted them.  Slowly she raised her hands and
+passed them over his face, lingeringly; once more she felt herself
+drawn to him, and laughed joyously.
+
+As Dan turned, out of the darkness ahead he saw a light.  He looked
+again.  He saw it plainly now, that steady white disc with its red
+sector.
+
+"Cape Henry!" he cried.  "Good God!"
+
+The girl started.
+
+"What?" she said, wonderingly.
+
+"Cape Henry to port, Virginia.  We'll have a tug in an hour.  The dawn
+is coming now.  The sun will see us in Newport News."
+
+Virginia regarded him dreamily, and tightened her clasp about his neck.
+
+"Newport News," she said; "and what do I care!  You have not kissed me
+in an age."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+The next afternoon Horace Howland sat in his office at No. 11 Broadway,
+staring moodily at his desk with its accumulation of papers.  For long,
+it seemed, he had lived in an agony of suspense.  Friends had come and
+gone and said their words, and passed on unrecognized and unheeded.
+
+How many times had he wished that the Ward liner which had crossed the
+path of the boats and picked them up the morning after the fire had
+left him at least to perish.  A full half-dozen tugs and steamships had
+been sent to the scene of the conflagration there to cruise about until
+some trace of the missing should be found.  A Clyde vessel had sighted
+the burned steamship, a mere mass of charred and twisted frames and
+plates, sinking low in the sea.  A Government cruiser and a revenue
+cutter had joined in the search.
+
+But no word had come.  An hour before, a messenger boy had arrived with
+a telegram.  It was one of many received by Mr. Howland every day, and
+he tossed it, unopened, upon a pile of similar envelopes upon his desk.
+
+Now, as he turned his eyes yearningly out of a window which gave upon
+the harbor, the name of a reporter was announced.  Mr. Howland had
+talked and talked and talked to reporters until he was sick of them as
+of every one and everything else.  He turned to his secretary.
+
+"See that fellow, will you?" he said.
+
+In less than a minute the secretary hurried into the office with an
+excited manner, the reporter at his heels, bearing a long sheet of
+tissue paper filled with typewriting.
+
+"I have come to see you about the rescue of your daughter, Mr. Howland."
+
+The merchant wheeled quickly in his chair.
+
+"What!" he cried.  Then he sprang to his feet and seized the manuscript
+which the reporter held out to him.  Quickly he read it.  Then he read
+it again, more slowly.  He read it a third time.  His hand flew to his
+forehead, and he staggered back to his chair.  The secretary stepped to
+his side, but Mr. Howland waved him away.
+
+"When did this come?" he asked.
+
+"A few moments ago," replied the reporter.
+
+"Well," and Mr. Howland gazed at his informant with suffused eyes, "I
+thank you for your kindness.  You must know how grateful I am.  Of
+course there is nothing I can tell you--nothing you want to know."
+
+The reporter hesitated a moment.
+
+"No," he said, "I don't suppose you can tell me much.  Except--"
+
+"Eh?" said Mr. Howland.
+
+"Except--you read the despatch.  It speaks of Captain Merrithew as Miss
+Howland's _fiance_."
+
+"Yes."  Mr. Howland's years of business resource and acumen were
+beginning to assert themselves.  "Oh, _fiance_!  I see.  Romance will
+help your article.  Well, there isn't any.  Captain Merrithew and my
+daughter were engaged before we started on this _Tampico_ jaunt."  He
+looked at the reporter steadily.  "Merrithew, you know, is really the
+Assistant Marine Superintendent of the Coastwise Company; also a
+stock-holder.  He was sailing the _Tampico_ merely for experience."
+
+The reporter smiled at Mr. Howland.
+
+"Merrithew is to be congratulated," he said.
+
+"I fancy so," replied Mr. Howland.  "In fact," he added, "do you know,
+I have reason to be quite sure of it."
+
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dan Merrithew, by Lawrence Perry
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