ow her tricks
better than I do in a seaway. I'll help the boys take in sail."

The master obeyed with alacrity. He seemed to be cowed. Anger no longer
blinded him to their predicament.

"Just say what you want done, and I'll try to do it," he told Mayo, in
a voice which had become suddenly mild and rather beseeching. Then he
called to his daughter, who had come to the foot of the companion steps,
"Better blow out that cabin light, Polly girl! She's li'ble to dance
bad, and we don't want to run the chance of fire."

Mayo got a glimpse at her face as he hurried upon the house on his way
to the main halyards. Her face was pale, but there was the firm spirit
of her Yankee ancestry of the sea in her poise and in her very silence
in that crisis. She obeyed without complaint or question and the cabin
was dark; even the glimmer of the light had held something of cheer. Now
the gloom was somber and depressing.

The schooner came round with a sort of scared hurry when the master
threw the wheel hard over and trod on the spokes with all his weight. As
soon as the bellying mainsail began to flap, the three men let it go on
the run. They kept up the jumbo sail, as the main jib is called; they
reefed the foresail down to its smallest compass.

Mayo, young, nimble, and eager, singly knotted more reef points
than both his helpers together, and his crisp commands were obeyed
unquestioningly.

"He sartinly is chain lightning in pants," confided Dolph to Otie.

"He knows his card," said Otie to Dolph.

Captain Mayo led the way aft, crawling over the shingles and laths.

"I hope it's your judgment, sir, that we'd better keep her into the wind
as she is and try to ride this thing out," he suggested to the master.

"It is my judgment, sir," returned Captain Candage, with official
gravity.

Hove to, the old _Polly_ rode in fairly comfortable style. She was deep
with her load of lumber, but the lumber made her buoyant and she
lifted easily. Her breadth of beam helped to steady her in the sweeping
seas--but Captain Mayo clung to a mainstay and faced the wind and
the driving rain and knew that the open Atlantic was no place for the
_Polly_ on a night like that.

Spume from the crested breakers at her wallowing bow salted the rain on
his dripping face. It was an unseasonable tempest, scarcely to be looked
for at that time of year. But he had had frequent experience with the
vagaries of easterlies, and he knew that a summer easterly,