ime fer it. Five hundred
fer yeh, Crump--a hundred fer the nigger, or I knock his head in. She
brushes the bar, and yer oil tank goes--yeh understand?" He watched a
red star in the south.

Crump looked about. No sail or light or coast guard about Au Fer--at
low tide not even a skiff could find the passages. He nodded
cunningly:

"She's old and fire-fitten. Tedge, I knowed yer mind--I was always
waitin' fer the word. It's a place fer it--and yeh say yeh carry seven
hundred on them cows? Boat an' cargo--three thousand seven hundred--"

"They'll be that singed and washed in the sands off Au Fer that
nobody'll know what they died of!" retorted Tedge thickly. "Yeh, go
down, Crump, and lay yer waste and oil right. I trust yeh, Crump--the
nigger'll get his, too. She'll ride high and burn flat, hoggin' in the
sand----"

"She's soaked with oil plumb for'ard to the pens now," grunted Crump.
"She's fitten to go like a match all along when she bumps--"

He vanished, and the master cunningly watched the ember star
southeasterly.

He was holding above it now, to port and landward. The white, hard
sands must be shoaling fast under the cattle-freighted _Marie_. It
little mattered about the course now; she would grind her nose in the
quiet reef shortly.

Tedge merely stared, expectantly awaiting the blow. And when it came
he was malevolently disappointed. A mere slithering along over the
sand, a creak, a slight jar, and she lay dead in the flat, calm
sea--it was ridiculous that that smooth beaching would break an oil
tank, that the engine spark would flare the machine waste, leap to the
greasy beams and floors.

The wheezy exhaust coughed on; the belt flapped as the paddle wheel
kept on its dead shove of the _Marie's_ keel into the sand. Hogjaw had
shouted and run forward. He was staring into the phosphorescent water
circling about the bow when Crump raised his cry:

"Fire--amidships!"

Tedge ran down the after-stairs. Sulphurously he began cursing at the
trickle of smoke under the motor frame. It was nothing--a child could
have put it out with a bucket of sand. But upon it fell Tedge and the
engineer, stamping, shouting, shoving oil-soaked waste upon it, and
covertly blocking off the astounded black deckman when he rushed to
aid.

"Water, Hogjaw!" roared the master. "She's gainin' on us--she's under
the bilge floor now!" He hurled a bucket viciously at his helper. And
as they pretended to fight the fire, Crump suddenly