all hands on the pumps, boys, for dear life.

"Well, as I say, she took that ship out there in a fog, like a cat in a
bag you might say, and filled up with paving stones to boot, and she
planted her right there where the _Alfred_ could come slap up against
her and give the owners a chance to say 'Good morning' to the
underwriters. And she owner of a good fourth at the time. Why, she's got
dollars laid away now where you and I have got buttons. And, mind you,
the underwriters had as good as told her that that would be her last
trip. The insurance was going to fall in as soon as she made port. Now
ain't that what you would call a smart woman, laying all joking aside?
But I wouldn't want my wife to hear this, Jim. There's a little jealousy
mixed in there, between you and me and the bedpost."

"Well," said Rackby, satisfied, "I had always understood that she was
one of these kind that if they was let out they would always find their
way home somehow."

"Yes, sir!" said Elmer heartily. "Why, I was over here the day they was
stepping the mainmast, and Hat was going to slip a five-dollar gold
piece under the mast for luck, the way the last man did, but she thought
better of it. I see her change her mind at the last minute and reach in
and take out a bright penny and creep that under quick, thinking the
Lord would never notice the difference. I never knew a woman that was
more downright fore-handed. Yes, sir, she's a dabster!"

How true it is that we never know our friends in this world so largely
made up of conjecture! Could Hat have known how powerfully Elmer had
pleaded her cause, and at a time when it was half lost, would she have
moved heaven and earth, as she was moving them, to bring him into
disrepute? Would she have looked at him when they met with a dagger in
either eye and one between her teeth? Would she have tugged that rope
girdle tighter about her hips and passed him, as she did, with only a
resolute quiver of her person?

Elmer was in hopes that she would come round in time. "She's not much of
a hand to hold a thing up against a body, Hat isn't," he tried to tell
himself. And yet a vague presentiment, something like trouble in the
wind, oppressed him.

Affairs were in this posture when launching day dawned fair. The _Minnie
Williams_ stood ready on the ways, dressed in her international code
flags, which flew from all trucks. Sails of stiff new duck were bent to
the booms, anchor chains had been roused up