emed to Captain Mayo, after those few frenzied moments of escape,
that he had awakened from a nightmare; he found himself clinging to the
schooner's barnacled keel, his arm holding Polly Candage from sliding
down over the slimy bottom into the sea.

"Good jeero! We've been in there all night," bawled Captain Candage. He
lay sprawled on the bottom of the Polly, his hornbeam hands clutching
the keel, his face upraised wonderingly to the skies that were flooded
with the glory of the morning. Otie and Dolph were beside him, mouths
open, gulping in draughts of the air as if they were fish freshly drawn
from the ocean depths.

There was a long silence after the skipper's ejaculation.

Thoughts, rather than words, fitted that sacred moment of their
salvation.

The five persons who lay there on the bottom of the schooner stared at
the sun in its cloudless sky and gazed off across the sea whose blue was
shrouded by the golden haze of a perfect summer's day. Only a lazy roll
was left of the sudden turbulence of the night before. A listless breeze
with a fresh tang of salt in it lapped the surface of the long,
slow surges, and the facets of the ripples flashed back the sunlight
cheerily.

Captain Candage pulled himself to the keel, sat upon it, and found
speech in faltering manner.

"I ain't a member of no church, never having felt the need of j'ining,
and not being handy where I could tend out. But I ain't ashamed to say
here, before witnesses, that I have just been telling God, as best I
know how, hoping He'll excuse me if I 'ain't used the sanctimonious way,
that I'm going to be a different man after this--different and better,
according to my best lights."

"I believe you have spoken for all of us, Captain Can-dage," said Mayo,
earnestly. "I thank you!"

They all perceived that the _Polly_ had made offing at a lively pace
during her wild gallop under the impetus of the easterly.

Mayo balanced himself on the keel and took a long survey of the horizon.
In one place a thread of blue, almost as delicate as the tracery of a
vein on a girl's arm, suggested shore line. But without a glass he was
not sure. He saw no sign of any other craft; the storm had driven all
coasters to harbor--and there was not wind enough as yet to help them
out to sea again. But he did not worry; he was sure that something,
some yacht or sea-wagon, would come rolling up over the rim of the ocean
before long. The faint breeze which fanned their fa