bounty, and a little extra, in recognition of work in the company's
interest.

"Dan," said the Captain, as the young man entered the pilot-house in
his well-fitting shore clothes, "you ought to get a pot of money out of
this; now don't go ashore and spend it all tonight. You bank most of
it. Take it from me--if I'd started to bank my money at your age, I
would be paying men to run tugboats for me now."

"Oh, I've money in the bank," laughed Dan. "I'll bank most of this;
but first I'm going to lay out just fifty dollars, which ought to buy
about all the Christmas joy I need. I was going to Boston to shock
some sober relations of mine, but I've changed my mind. About seven
o'clock this evening you'll find me in a restaurant not far from
Broadway and Forty-second Street; an hour later you'll locate me in the
front row of a Broadway theatre; and--better come with me, Captain
Bunker."

"No, thanks, Dan," said the Captain. "If you come with _me_ over to
the house in Staten Island about two hours from now, you'll see just
three little noses pressed against the window pane--waiting for daddy
and Santa Claus." The Captain's big red face grew tender and his eyes
softened. "When you get older, Dan," he added, "you'll know that
Christmas ain't so much what you get out of it as what you put into it."

Dan thought of the Captain's words as he crossed the ferry to New York.
All through the day he had been filled with the pleasurable conviction
that the morrow was a pretty decent sort of day to be ashore, and he
had intended to work up to the joys thereof to the utmost of his
capacity.

Now, with his knowledge as to the sort of enjoyment which Captain
Bunker was going to get out of the day, his well-laid plans seemed to
turn to ashes. The trouble was, he could not exactly say why this
should be. He finally decided that his prospective sojourn amid the
gay life of the metropolis had not been at all responsible for the
mental uplift which had colored his view of the day.

It had come, he now believed, solely from the attitude of the Captain
and Jeff Morrill the engineer, and Sam Tonkin the deck-hand--soon to
become a mate--and Bill Lawson, another deck-hand; all of whom had
little children at home. Well, he had no little children at home.
That settled the matter so far as he was concerned. Blithely he began
to plan his dinner and select the theatre he should attend. But, no;
the old problem returned insistently, and a