-you know they have lived about as long
as they can. It's sorrowful to have 'em go, but you have to feel
reconciled. But I know just how it is with you in the case of that
steamer, for I'm a sailor like you. It's just like getting a fine boy
through college, seeing him start out full of life, and courage, and
hopes, and prospects, and then seeing him drop dead at your feet."

There was a quaver in the old man's tones. But Mayo, who knew the souls
of mariners, understood. Under their hard shells there is imagination
that has been nurtured in long, long thoughts. In the calms under
starlit skies, in the black darkness when tossing surges swing beneath
the keel, in the glimmering vistas of sun-lighted seas, sailors ponder
while their more stolid brothers on land allow their souls to doze.

"You are right, Captain Candage. That's why I almost hate to go out to
the _Conomo_. Those infernal ghouls of junkmen will be tearing her into
bits instead of trying to put the breath of life back into her."

The helpless steamer seemed more lonely than when they had visited her
before. The mosquito fleet that had surrounded her, hoping for some
stray pickings, had dispersed. A tug and a couple of lighters were stuck
against her icy sides, and, like leeches, were sucking from her what
they could. They were prosecuting their work industriously, for the
sea was calm in one of those lulls between storms, a wintry truce that
Atlantic coastwise toilers understand and depend on.

Mayo, his curiosity prompting him, determined to go on board one of the
lighters and discover to what extremes the junk jackals were proceeding.

Two of his dorymen ferried him after the schooner had been hove to near
the wreck.

"What's your business?" inquired a man who was bundled in a fur coat and
seemed to be bossing operations.

"Nothing much," confessed the young man from his dory, which was tossing
alongside the lighter. "I'm only a fisherman."

The swinging cranes of the lighters, winches purring, the little
lifting-engines puffing in breathless staccato, were hoisting and
dropping cargo--potatoes in sacks, and huge rolls of print paper. Mayo
was a bit astonished to note that they were not stripping the steamer;
not even her anchors and chains had been disturbed.

"Fend off!" commanded the boss.

Captain Dodge dropped one of the windows of his pilot-house and leaned
on his elbows, thrusting his head out. The tug _Seba J. Ransom_ was
still on the jo