illage street Mr. Speed wiped his rough palm against the
leg of his trousers and offered his hand to the captain. "I'll have to
say good-by to you here, sir. I've got a little errunting to do--fig o'
terbacker and a box of stror'b'ries. I confess to a terrible tooth for
stror'b'ries. When the hanker ketches me and I can't get to stror'b'ries
my stror'b'ry mark shows up behind my ear. I hope I have done right in
sending off that tele-graft for her--but it's too bad that a landlubber
beau is going to get such a pretty girl." Then Oakum Otie sighed and
melted away into the foggy gloom.

When Captain Mayo was half-way down the harbor, on his way back to the
yacht, he was confronted by a spectacle which startled him. The fog
was suddenly painted with a ruddy flare which spread high and flamed
steadily. His first fears suggested that a vessel was on fire. The
_Olenia_ lay in that direction. He commanded his men to pull hard.

When he burst out of the mists into the zone of the illumination his
misgivings were allayed, but his curiosity was roused.

A dozen yacht tenders flocked in a flotilla near the stern of a rusty
old schooner. All the tenders were burning Coston lights, and from
several boats yachtsmen were sending off rockets which striped the pall
of fog with bizarre colorings.

The stern of the schooner was well lighted up by the torches, and Mayo
saw her name, though he did not need that name to assure him of her
identity; she was the venerable _Polly_.

The light which flamed about her, showing up her rig and lines, was
weirdly unreal and more than ever did she seem like a ghost ship.
The thick curtain of the mist caught up the flare of the torches and
reflected it upon her from the skies, and she was limned in fantastic
fashion from truck to water-line. Shadows of men in the tenders were
thrown against the fog-screen in grotesque outline, and a spirit crew
appeared to be toiling in the top-hamper of the old schooner.

Captain Mayo ordered his men to hold water and the tender drifted close
to the flotilla. He spied a yacht skipper whom he had known when both
were in the coasting trade.

"What's the idea, Duncan?"

His acquaintance grinned. "Serenade for old Epps Candage's girl--handed
to her over his head." He pointed upward.

Projecting over the schooner's rail was the convulsed countenance of
Captain Candage. Choler seemed to be consuming him. The freakish light
painted everything with patterns in arabesq