began laughing and
stood up. The deckman was grinning also. The master watched him
narrowly.

"Kick the stuff into the waste under the stairs," he grunted. "Hogjaw,
this here boat's goin'--yeh understand? We take the skiff and pull to
the shrimp camps, and she hogs down and burns--"

The black man was laughing. Then he stopped curiously. "The cows--"

"Damn the cows! I'll git my money back on 'em! Yeh go lower away on
the skiff davits. Yeh don't ask me nothin'--yeh don't know nothin'!"

"Sho', boss! I don't know nothin', or see nothin'!"

He swung out of the smoke already drifting greasily up from the foul
waist of the _Marie Louise_. A little glare of red was beginning to
reflect from the mirrored sea. The ripples of the beaching had
vanished; obscurely, undramatically as she had lived, the _Marie
Louise_ sat on the bar to choke in her own fetid fumes.

Tedge clambered to the upper deck and hurried to his bunk in the
wheelhouse. There were papers there he must save--the master's
license, the insurance policy, and a few other things. The smell of
burning wood and grease was thickening; and suddenly now, through it,
he saw the quiet, questioning face of the stranger.

He had forgotten him completely. Tedge's small brain had room but for
one idea at a time: first his rage at the lilies, and then the
wrecking of the _Marie_. And this man knew. He had been staring down
the after-companionway. He had seen and heard. He had seen the master
and crew laughing while the fire mounted.

Tedge came to him. "We're quittin' ship," he growled.

"Yes, but the cattle--" The other looked stupefiedly at him.

"We got to pull inside afore the sea comes up--"

"Well, break the pens, can't you? Give 'em a chance to swim for a bar.
I'm a cowman myself--I cain't let dumb brutes burn and not lift a
hand--"

The fire in the waist was beginning to roar. A plume of smoke streamed
straight up in the starlight. The glare showed the younger man's
startled eyes. He shifted them to look over the foredeck rail down to
the cattle. Sparks were falling among them, the fire veered slightly
forward; and the survivors were crowding uneasily over the fallen
ones, catching that curious sense of danger which forewarns creatures
of the wild before the Northers, a burning forest, or creeping flood,
to move on.

"You cain't leave 'em so," muttered the stranger. "No; I seen you--"

He did not finish. Tedge had been setting himself for what he knew h