our job, sir. Will you pick up my few little belongings in my
stateroom and bring them to me, Mr. McGaw? I'd better stay here on deck
with my friends." He emphasized the last word, and Captain Candage gave
him a grateful look. "I'm sorry, mates! I can't say any more!" Captain
Mayo did not allow himself to make further comment on the melancholy
situation. The others were silent; the affair was out of their
reckoning; they had no words to fit the case. Polly Candage stood
looking out to sea. He had hoped that she would give him a glance of
understanding sympathy, at least. But she did not, not even when he
helped her down the steps into the tender.

Mate McGaw came with the captain's bag and belongings, and promptly
received orders from the owner from the quarter-deck.

"Go on to the bridge and hail that schooner. Tell her we are headed for
New York and can't be bothered by these persons!"

Mr. McGaw grasped Mayo's hand in farewell, and then he hurried to his
duty. His megaphoned message echoed over their heads while the tender
was on its way.

"Ay, ay, sir!" returned the fishing-skipper, with hearty bellow. "Glad
to help sailors in trouble."

"And that shows you--" blurted Captain Candage, and stopped his say in
the middle of his outburst when his daughter shoved a significant fist
against his ribs.

Captain Mayo turned his head once while the tender was hastening toward
the schooner. But there were no women in sight on the yacht's deck.
There was an instant's flutter of white from a stateroom port, but he
was not sure whether it was a handkerchief or the end of a wind-waved
curtain. He faced about resolutely and did not look behind again. Shame,
misery, hopelessness--he did not know which emotion was stinging him
most poignantly. The oarsmen in the tender were gazing upward innocently
while they rowed, but he perceived that they were hiding grins. His
humiliation in that amazing fashion would be the forecastle jest.
Through him these new friends of his had been subjected to insult. He
felt that he understood what Polly Candage's silence meant.

The next moment he felt the pat of a little hand on the fist he was
clenching on his knee.

"Poor boy!" she whispered. "I understand! It will come out right if you
don't lose courage."

But she was not looking at him when he gave her a quick side-glance.

The fisherman had come into the wind, rocking on the long swell, dingy
sails flapping, salt-stained sides dipping