won dignity, and utterly regardless of his
boat, the pilot had found the bridge at once. He clung to the rail there
and braced one naked foot against a stanchion. To him the ship's speed
seemed the all-absorbing thing, for either Mr. Hartley had forgotten
just how many revolutions would make fifteen knots or else he had
underestimated his engine-room's capacity. The Puncher split the waves
and spewed them twenty feet above her, racing head-on for the reef,
and Curley Crothers was too busy at his wheel to pass the pilot the
surreptitious insult he intended.

The gongs clanged presently, and the Puncher swallowed half her speed at
once, giving the pilot courage.

"This exceedingly damn dangerous place, sah!" he remarked.

"No bottom at eight!" sang Joe Byng in the chains.

Three words passed between the commander and Crothers, and the Puncher
hove a weed-draped underside high over the crest of a beam-on roller as
she veered a dozen points, ducked her starboard rail into the trough
of it, and sliced her long thin nose, sizzling and swirling, into the
welter ahead. It was growing weedier and dirtier each minute.

"No bottom at eight!" chanted Joe Byng.

And at the sound of his voice the pilot hauled himself up by his
leverage on the rail and found his voice again.

"This most exceedingly damn dangerous place, sah!"

But the commander was too busy acting all three L's--Log, Lead and
Lookout--his shrouded figure swaying to the heave and fall and his eyes
fixed straight ahead of him on the double line of boiling foam. He had
conned his course and had it charted in his head. There was no time to
argue with a pilot.

"Port you-ah hel-um, sah! Port you-ah hel-um!"

"By the mark--seven!" sang Joe Byng from the chains.

"Port you-ah hel-um, sah!" yelled the pilot in an ecstasy of fright.

"Starboard a little," came the quiet command.

Curley Crothers moved his wheel and the Puncher's bow yawed twenty feet,
as if Providence had pushed her.

"Gawd A'mighty!" murmured Joe Byng, gazing open-mouthed at fifty feet of
jagged rock that grinned up suddenly three waves away.

The pilot braced both feet against a stanchion and tried to take the
weigh off her by pulling.

"Half speed, sah! Go slow, sah! Go dead slow, sah! You'll pile up you-ah
damn ship, sah! Ah tell you, sah, you'll pile her up as suah as hell,
sah! 'Bout a million sharks round he-ah, sah! For the love o' God,
sah--Captain, sah--"

"Oh, muzzle him, some o