every inch of him--none of which did
either Archie or Tod understand. Before he climbed down the ladder he
announced with a solemn smile that he thought the craft was well
protected so far as collisions on foggy nights were concerned, but he
doubted if their arms were sufficient and that he had better leave them
his big sea knife which had been twice around Cape Horn, and which
might be useful in lopping off arms and legs whenever the cutthroats
got too impudent and aggressive; whereupon Archie threw his arms around
his grizzled neck and said he was a "bully commodore," and that if he
would come and live with them aboard the hulk they would obey his
orders to a man.

Archie leaned over the rotten rail and saw the old salt stop a little
way from the hulk and stand looking at them for some minutes and then
wave his hand, at which the boys waved back, but the lad did not see
the tears that lingered for an instant on the captain's eyelids, and
which the sea-breeze caught away; nor did he hear the words, as the
captain resumed his walk: "He's all I've got left, and yet he don't
know it and I can't tell him. Ain't it hell?"

Neither did they notice that he never once raised his eyes toward the
House of Refuge as he passed its side. A new door and a new roof had
been added, but in other respects it was to him the same grewsome,
lonely hut as on that last night when he had denounced his son outside
its swinging door.

Often the boys made neighborly visits to friendly tribes and settlers.
Fogarty was one of these, and Doctor Cavendish was another. The
doctor's country was a place of buttered bread and preserves and a romp
with Rex, who was almost as feeble as Meg had been in his last days.
But Fogarty's cabin was a mine of never-ending delight. In addition to
the quaint low house of clapboards and old ship-timber, with its
sloping roof and little toy windows, so unlike his own at Yardley, and
smoked ceilings, there was a scrap heap piled up and scattered over the
yard which in itself was a veritable treasure-house. Here were rusty
chains and wooden figure-heads of broken-nosed, blind maidens and
tailless dolphins. Here were twisted iron rods, fish-baskets, broken
lobster-pots, rotting seines and tangled, useless nets--some used as
coverings for coops of restless chickens--old worn-out rope, tangled
rigging--everything that a fisherman who had spent his life on Barnegat
beach could pull from the surf or find stranded on the s