ed three times, frowned at the checker-board,
scratched his yellow head, let drop his eyelids and pondered. At about
the time Bowen began to think the keeper must be taking a nap, a long
arm swooped down and moved a black checker one square north-easterly.

Now, if Bowen had been riding to anchor in that one spot with old 67 for
nineteen years, perhaps he, too, would have paid small attention to a
gale of wind and a high sea; but he was a shore-going man, and he grew
very, very weary of the jumping and the rolling, and of the everlasting
rattling and chafing of the iron chains in the iron hawse-holes.

Two chains there were, like double-leashes to a whippet's throat. The
heave of the sea would get her and up she would ride, shaking, snapping,
quivering to get her head. Up, up she would go, and as she struggled up,
up, Bowen, watching, would find himself crying out, "By the Lord, she's
parted them." But no--Gr-r--the iron chains would go, Kr-r the iron
hawse-holes would echo, and, suddenly brought to, dead she would stop,
shake herself, and again shake herself to get free; but always the
savage chains would be there to her throat, and down she would fall
trembling; and the white slaver would scatter a cable length from her
jaws as she fell.

Bowen, with an arm hooked into a weather-stay, would stand out and watch
her by the hour; and "Some fine night you'll break loose," he would say
over and over to himself, "and then there'll be the devil to pay around
here," and on returning to the cabin he would tell Nelson about it.

"No, no," Nelson would shake his head, and after he had had time to
think it over, he would smile at Bowen's fears. On nights like these,
when he couldn't have his little game because he couldn't keep the
checkers from hopping off the board, Nelson liked to lie in his bunk,
within range of the big, square, sawdust-filled box which set just
forward of the cheerful stove. With eyes mostly on the oil-clothed
floor, the light-keeper would smoke and yarn unhurriedly. "No, no,"
Nelson would repeat. "For nineteen year now she ban here, yoost like you
see now. No drift for ol' 67. She ban too well trained."

But the chafed-out chains gave way at last. Christmas Eve it was, the
night when Bowen had hoped to be through with his work. It was also the
third and worst night of the gale, and Bowen, restless, homesick, was on
deck to see it. She leaped and strained as she had leaped and strained
ten thousand times