n board!"

The sailors obeyed, and the astounded Scraps, after a brief flight
through the air, found himself arriving on his back on the _Mary
Turner's_ deck. At any rate, he took it for no more than a rough joke,
and rolled about ecstatically, squirming vermicularly, in anticipation of
what new delights of play were to be visited upon him. He reached out,
with an enticing growl of good fellowship, for Michael, who was now free
on deck, and received in return a forbidding and crusty snarl.

"Guess we'll have to add him to our collection, eh, sir?" Daughtry
observed, sparing a moment to pat reassurance on the big puppy's head and
being rewarded with a caressing lick on his hand from the puppy's
blissful tongue.

No first-class ship's steward can exist without possessing a more than
average measure of executive ability. Dag Daughtry was a first-class
ship's steward. Placing the Ancient Mariner in a nook of safety, and
setting Big John to unlashing the remaining boat and hooking on the
falls, he sent Kwaque into the hold to fill kegs of water from the scant
remnant of supply, and Ah Moy to clear out the food in the galley.

The starboard boat, cluttered with men, provisions, and property and
being rapidly rowed away from the danger centre, which was the _Mary
Turner_, was scarcely a hundred yards away, when the whale, missing the
schooner clean, turned at full speed and close range, churning the water,
and all but collided with the boat. So near did she come that the rowers
on the side next to her pulled in their oars. The surge she raised,
heeled the loaded boat gunwale under, so that a degree of water was
shipped ere it righted. Nishikanta, automatic still in hand, standing up
in the sternsheets by the comfortable seat he had selected for himself,
was staggered by the lurch of the boat. In his instinctive, spasmodic
effort to maintain balance, he relaxed his clutch on the pistol, which
fell into the sea.

"_Ha-ah_!" Daughtry girded. "What price Nishikanta? I got his number,
and he's lost you fellows' goats. He's your meat now. Easy meat? I
should say! And when it comes to the eating, eat him first. Sure, he's
a skunk, and will taste like one, but many's the honest man that's eaten
skunk and pulled through a tight place. But you'd better soak 'im all
night in salt water, first."

Grimshaw, whose seat in the sternsheets was none of the best, grasped the
situation simultaneously with Daughtry, and, wit