lated, and hesitated, for her gaze was distinctly
not reassuring.

"Don't tell me, please, how I look. I'm thankful that I have no mirror.
Isn't that a piece of lumber?" she inquired, crisply, putting a stop on
further personalities. "Wait! It's down in a hollow just now."

The sea lifted it again immediately. Mayo saw that it was a long
strip of scantling, undoubtedly from the deckload that the _Polly_
had jettisoned when she was tripped. It lay to windward, and that fact
promised its recovery; but how was the tide? Mayo squinted at the sun,
did a moment's quick reckoning from the tide time of the day before, and
smiled.

"We'll get that, Miss Candage. She's coming this way."

Watching it, seeing it lift and sink, waiting for it, helped to pass the
time. Then at last it came alongside, and he crawled cautiously down the
curve of the bilge and secured it. After he had braced it in the hole
in the schooner's bottom with the help of Mr. Speed, the girl gave him a
crumpled wad of cloth when he turned from his task.

"It's the rest of my petticoat. You may as well have it," she explained,
a pretty touch of pink confusion in her cheeks.

Mr. Speed boosted Mayo and the young man attached the cloth to the
scantling and flung their banner to the breeze. Then there was not much
to do except to wait, everlastingly squinting across the bright sea to
the horizon's edge.

X ~ HOSPITALITY, PER JULIUS MARSTON

Hoo--oo--rah; and up she rises!
Hoo--oo--rah! and up she rises!
Early in the morning.
What shall we do with a saucy sailor?
Put him in the long boat and make him bail 'erv
Early in the morn--ing!
--Old "Stamp-and-go."

Mayo saw the sail first. It was coming in from the sea, and was very far
and minute. He pointed it out with an exclamation.

"What do you make it, sir?" asked Captain Candage. "Your eyes are
younger 'n mine are."

"I reckon it's a fisherman bound in from Cashes Banks. He seems to be
lying well over, and that shows there's a good breeze outside. He ought
to reach near enough to see us, judging from the way he's heading."

That little sail, nicked against the sky, was something else to watch
and speculate on and wait for, and they forgot, almost, that they were
hungry and thirsty and sun-parched.

However, Captain Mayo kept his own gaze most steadfastly on the landward
horizon. He did not reveal any of his thoughts, for he did