ad from the
heave of the Atlantic rollers, the schooner with her yachtlike lines
was truly a picture to please the most exacting mariner.

On her deck paced the young captain whose personal affairs had been
a subject of comment between Cap'n Ira Ball and his wife. He was a
heavy-set, upstanding, blue-jerseyed figure, lithe and as spry on
his feet as a cat. Tunis Latham was thirty, handsome in the bold way
of longshore men, and ruddy-faced. He had crisp, short, sandy hair;
his cheeks, chin, and lip were scraped as clean as his palm; his
eyes were like blue-steel points, but with humorous wrinkles at the
outer corners of them, matched by a faint smile that almost always
wreathed his lips. Altogether he was a man that a woman would be
sure to look at twice.

The revelation of the lighter traits of his character counteracted
the otherwise sober look of Tunis Latham. His sternness and fitness
to command were revealed at first glance; his softer attributes
dawned upon one later.

As he swayed back and forth across the deck of the flying _Seamew_,
rolling easily in sailor gait to the pitching of the schooner, his
sharp glance cast alow and then aloft betrayed the keen perception
and attentive mind of the master mariner, while his surface
appearance merely suggested a young man pridefully enjoying the
novelty of pacing the deck of his first command. For this was the
maiden trip of the _Seamew_ under this name and commanded by this
master.

She was not a new vessel, but neither was she old. At least, her
decks were not marred, her rails were ungashed with the wear of
lines, and even her fenders were almost shop-new. Of course, any
craft may have a fresh suit of sails; and new paint and gilding on
the figurehead or a new name board under the stern do not bespeak a
craft just off the builder's ways. Yet there was an appearance about
the schooner-yacht which would assure any able seaman at first
glance that she was still to be sea-tried. She was like a maiden at
her first dance, just venturing out upon the floor.

An old salt hung to the _Seamew's_ wheel as the bonny craft sped
channelward. Horace Newbegin was a veritable sea dog. He had sailed
every navigable sea in all this watery world, and sailed in almost
every conceivable sort of craft. And he had sailed many voyages
under Tunis Latham's father, who had owned and commanded the
four-master _Ada May_, which, ill-freighted and ill-fated at last,
had struck and sunk on th