it well; something told him so. He gazed at the tugboatman
silently for a minute,--and then he knocked Captain Barney to the
sidewalk.

CHAPTER IV

DAN STAKES HIS LIFE, AND WINS

Before the Winter passed, Dan had taken his master's examination with
flying colors and was made Captain of the _Fledgling_, owned by the
Phoenix Towboat Company. She was a new boat, rugged, powerful, one
hundred and twenty-five feet water line, designed and built to go
anywhere and do anything.

The Phoenix Company was known as a venturesome organization, as willing
to send its fleet ramping out through the fog to the assistance of a
distressed liner as to transport arms to West Indian or Central
American revolutionists. Before Dan had commanded the _Fledgling_ many
months he had done both, and was beginning to be known up and down the
coast as a captain to be called upon in emergencies verging upon the
extraordinary, not to say extra-hazardous.

All of which he accepted joyously, as the portion of youth in search of
experience that life has to offer. He was sufficiently introspective
to rate the temper of his spirit at something approaching its real
value, and he knew it was to be cherished, guarded, lest the fine edge
be lost. As the world reckons things it was a humble calling upon
which he had entered, a calling hardly qualified to enlist the pride of
the family whose name he bore.

As a matter of fact, the pride of his few relations was not enlisted.
He had been made to feel that. He did not complain. He appreciated
their attitude. But that did not curb a high-hearted ambition to lift
his vocation to the ideals he had formulated concerning it--and the
future lay before him.

But he was not thinking of these things now. The face of the sea was
gray in sullen fury. From a blue horizon, dulled and almost
obliterated by long, jagged layers of steely clouds, came the ceaseless
rush of deep-chested waves, as even, as fascinating as the
vermiculations of a serpent. And the wind, tearing along the floor of
the sea, whipped off the wave crests and sent them shivering,
shimmering ahead, like the plumes of hard-riding cavalry.

The storm had passed. The effects remained, and Dan Merrithew shifted
his wheel several spokes east of north and took the brunt bow on. She
bore it well, did the stout _Fledgling_; she did that--she split the
waves or crashed through them, or laughed over them, as a stout tug
should when coaxed b