laugh.

"Never heard of her," responded the voice, "we're hard aground on one
of your Long Island shoals it seems."

"That's what yer are," exclaimed the captain, "how come yer ter be
huggin' the shore so hard?"

"Trying to avoid a collision with another vessel."

"Are yer all right?" bellowed the captain.

"Seem to be. So far as we can find out there's not a plate started,
but if you're from the land we've got a couple of passengers we'd be
thankful if you'd take ashore. Will you come on board?"

"Sure, if yer'll drop a Jacob's ladder," bellowed the captain at the
invisible speaker.

"In a minute."

The conversation had been carried on without either of the parties to
it being able to see one another, but the captain of the vessel--for he
had been the boy's interlocutor--now came off the bridge and with some
of the crew watched two sailors lower a Jacob's ladder and make it fast
to the rail.

"Now we go aboard," said Captain Hudgins, clambering up the swaying
contrivance as nimbly as an athlete, "make our painter fast ter the
ladder, Rob."

This being done, the boys followed the veteran on board. The steamer,
when they gained her deck, puzzled them a good deal and it was not till
her captain, a genial blond-bearded Britisher, explained to them that
she was a cattle ship that they understood the utility of the wooden
structures with which her decks were obstructed.

The captain explained that these were pens for the cattle she expected
to take back to England, from which country she was returning after
having taken over a large consignment of steers.

"Which," went on the captain, "brings us to my passengers. They are
Mr. Frank Harkness and his son, of Lariat, a small cattle town in the
West, where Mr. Harkness has a large ranch. They were his cattle that
we took over and as he had difficulty in engaging a berth on a liner at
this time of year, when the passenger ships are crowded, he decided to
return with us. Here is Mr. Harkness now," he added, as a tall,
bronzed man, with a long coat draped over a pair of broad shoulders,
and a wide-brimmed sombrero above keen eyes, approached.

"Visitors from the shore, captain?" he inquired, a pleasant smile
illuminating his clean-shaven, sun-browned face.

"That's what they are," rejoined the captain, "just dropped in on us,
don't you know."

"You mean we dropped in on them," amended the other with a laugh, "come
here, Harry," he called, raising his voic