making harbor.

"Them fellers has smelt something outside that don't smell good,"
grunted the Cap'n. But he still stood on his way. "I reckon I've got
softenin' of the brain," he muttered; "livin' inshore has given it
to me. 'Cause if I was in my right senses I'd be runnin' a race with
them fellers to see which would get inside Bug Light and to a safe
anchorage first. And yet I'm standin' on with this old bailin'-dish
because I'm afraid of what a landlubber will say to folks in Smyrna
about my bein' a coward, and with no way of my provin' that I ain't.
All that them hoss-marines has got a nose for is a b'iled dinner when
it's ready. They couldn't smell nasty weather even if 'twas daubed
onto their mustaches."

At the end of another hour, during which the crew of the _Dobson_
had become thoroughly awake and aware of the fact that the coast-line
was only a blue thread on the northern horizon, Cap'n Sproul had
completely satisfied his suspicions as to a certain bunch of slaty
cloud.

There was a blow in it--a coming shift of wind preceded by flaws that
made the Cap'n knot his eyebrows dubiously.

"There!" he blurted, turning his gaze on Hiram, perched on the
grating. "If you reckon you've got enough of a sail out of this, we'll
put about for harbor. But I want it distinctly understood that I ain't
sayin' the word 'enough.' I'd keep on sailin' to the West Injies if
we had grub a-plenty to last us."

"There ain't grub enough," suggested Jackson Denslow, who came up
from the waist with calm disregard of shipboard etiquette. "The boys
have all caught plenty of fish, and we want to get in before dark.
So gee her round, Cap'n."

"Don't you give off no orders to me!" roared the Cap'n. "Go back
for'ard where you belong."

"That's the sense of the boys, just the same," retorted Denslow,
retreating a couple of steps. "'Delphus Murray is seasick, and two
or three of the boys are gettin' so. We ain't enlisted for no
seafarin' trip."

"Don't you realize that we're on the high seas now and that you're
talkin' mutiny, and that mutiny's a state-prison crime?" clamored
the irate skipper. "I'd have killed a Portygee for sayin' a quarter
as much. I'd have killed him for settin' foot abaft the
gratin'--killed him before he opened his mouth."

"We ain't Portygees," rejoined Denslow, stubbornly. "We ain't no
sailors."

"Nor I ain't liar enough to call you sailors," the Cap'n cried, in
scornful fury.

"If ye want to come right