y done. The cook placed a frying-pan
on the stove, wiped it around with a piece of suet when it had heated,
and tossed in a thick chunk of beefsteak. While he worked he talked with
a companion on deck, who was busily engaged in filling a bucket overside
and flinging the salt water over heaps of oysters that lay on the deck.
This completed, he covered the oysters with wet sacks, and went into the
cabin, where a place was set for him on a tiny table, and where the cook
served the dinner and joined him in eating it.

All the romance of Joe's nature stirred at the sight. That was life. They
were living, and gaining their living, out in the free open, under the sun
and sky, with the sea rocking beneath them, and the wind blowing on them,
or the rain falling on them, as the chance might be. Each day and every
day he sat in a room, pent up with fifty more of his kind, racking his
brains and cramming dry husks of knowledge, while they were doing all
this, living glad and careless and happy, rowing boats and sailing, and
cooking their own food, and certainly meeting with adventures such as one
only dreams of in the crowded school-room.

Joe sighed. He felt that he was made for this sort of life and not for
the life of a scholar. As a scholar he was undeniably a failure. He had
flunked in his examinations, while at that very moment, he knew, Bessie
was going triumphantly home, her last examination over and done, and with
credit. Oh, it was not to be borne! His father was wrong in sending him
to school. That might be well enough for boys who were inclined to study,
but it was manifest that he was not so inclined. There were more careers
in life than that of the schools. Men had gone down to the sea in the
lowest capacity, and risen in greatness, and owned great fleets, and done
great deeds, and left their names on the pages of time. And why not he,
Joe Bronson?

He closed his eyes and felt immensely sorry for himself; and when he
opened his eyes again he found that he had been asleep, and that the
sun was sinking fast.

It was after dark when he arrived home, and he went straight to his room
and to bed without meeting any one. He sank down between the cool sheets
with a sigh of satisfaction at the thought that, come what would, he need
no longer worry about his history. Then another and unwelcome thought
obtruded itself, and he knew that the next school term would come, and
that six months thereafter, another examination in the