air with fine spray, which flew as high as the
crosstrees and cut the face like a knife, making it impossible to see
over a hundred yards ahead. The sea was a dark lead color as with long,
slow, majestic roll it was heaped up by the wind into liquid mountains
of foam. The wild antics of the schooner were sickening as she forged
along. She would almost stop, as though climbing a mountain, then
rapidly rolling to right and left as she gained the summit of a huge
sea, she steadied herself and paused for a moment as though affrighted
at the yawning precipice before her. Like an avalanche, she shot forward
and down as the sea astern struck her with the force of a thousand
battering rams, burying her bow to the cat-heads in the milky foam at
the bottom that came on deck in all directions--forward, astern, to
right and left, through the hawse-pipes and over the rail.

The wind began to drop, and by ten o'clock we were talking of heaving
her to. We passed a ship, two schooners and a four-masted barkentine
under the smallest canvas, and at eleven o'clock, running up the spanker
and jib, we hove her to, and in another hour we were beating back again
against the aftersea under full sail to regain the sealing ground away
to the westward.

Below, a couple of men were sewing the "bricklayer's" body in canvas
preparatory to the sea burial. And so with the storm passed away the
"bricklayer's" soul.

THE LOST POACHER

"But they won't take excuses. You're across the line, and that's enough.
They'll take you. In you go, Siberia and the salt mines. And as for
Uncle Sam, why, what's he to know about it? Never a word will get back
to the States. 'The _Mary Thomas_,' the papers will say, 'the _Mary
Thomas_ lost with all hands. Probably in a typhoon in the Japanese
seas.' That's what the papers will say, and people, too. In you go,
Siberia and the salt mines. Dead to the world and kith and kin, though
you live fifty years."

In such manner John Lewis, commonly known as the "sea-lawyer," settled
the matter out of hand.

It was a serious moment in the forecastle of the _Mary Thomas_. No
sooner had the watch below begun to talk the trouble over, than the
watch on deck came down and joined them. As there was no wind, every
hand could be spared with the exception of the man at the wheel, and he
remained only for the sake of discipline. Even "Bub" Russell, the
cabin-boy, had crept forward to hear what was going on.

However, it was