ipper Tom smiled grimly. It was now his turn to venture a curious
survey. He ran his eye over the painter's slight body with twinkling
amusement. "Will you, now?" he mused. "Oh, well, now," he drawled,
"I'd not trouble t' do it an I was you. You're not knowin', anyhow,
that he've not made a man of _hisself_. 'Tis five year' since he done
that there damned sketch." Then uneasily, and with a touch of sullen
resentment: "I 'low you'd best leave un alone, sir. He've had trouble
enough as it is."

"So?" Cobden flashed. "Already? That's _good_."

"It haven't done no harm," the skipper deliberated; "but--well, God
knows I'd not like t' see another young one cast away in a mess like
that."

Cobden was vaguely concerned. He did not, however, at the moment
inquire. It crossed his mind, in a mere flash, that Skipper Tom had
spoken with a deal of feeling. What could this trouble have been?
Cobden forgot, then, that there had been any trouble at all.

"Well, well," Skipper Tom declared more heartily, "trouble's the foe
o' folly."

Cobden laughed pleasantly and turned once more to the picture. He was
presently absorbed in a critical ecstasy. Skipper Tom, too, was by
this time staring out upon the pictured sea, as though it lay in
fearsome truth before him. He was frowning heavily.

* * * * *

It was the picture of a breaker, a savage thing. In the foreground,
lifted somewhat from the turmoil, was a black rock. It was a
precarious foothold, a place to shrink from in terror. The sea reached
for it; the greater waves boiled over and sucked it bare. It was wet,
slimy, overhanging death. Beyond the brink was a swirl of broken
water--a spent breaker, crashing in, streaked with irresistible
current and flecked with hissing fragments.

Adjectives which connote noise are unavoidable. Cobden has said that
the picture expressed a sounding confusion. It was true. "You could
_hear_ that water," says he, tritely. There was the illusion of
noise--of the thud and swish of breaking water and of the gallop of
the wind. So complete was the illusion, and so did the spirit of the
scene transport the beholder, that Cobden once lifted his voice above
the pictured tumult. Terry Lute's art was indeed triumphant!

A foreground, then, of slimy rock, an appalling nearness and an
inspiration of terror in the swirling breaker below. But not yet the
point of dreadful interest. That lay a little beyond. It was a black
ledg