the various offices
of first mate, second mate, A-1 seaman, and hand before the mast-as
well as the skipper's boon companion-the _Polly_ was manoeuvered to her
anchorage in Saturday Cove and was snugged for the night. Smoke began to
curl in blue wreaths from her galley funnel, and there were occasional
glimpses of the cook, a sallow-complexioned, one-eyed youth whose chief
and everlasting decoration provided him with the nickname of "Smut-nosed
Dolph."

Then came some of the ocean aristocrats to join the humbler guests in
that tavern of the seas.

Avant couriers of a metropolitan yacht club, on its annual cruise,
arrived, jockeying in with billowing mountains of snowy canvas spread to
catch the last whispers of the breeze. Later arrivals, after the breeze
failed, were towed in by the smart motor craft of the fleet. One by one,
as the anchors splashed, brass cannons barked salute and were answered
by the commodore's gun.

Captain Candage sat on the edge of the _Polly's_ house and snapped
an involuntary and wrathful wink every time a cannon banged. In that
hill-bound harbor, where the fog had massed, every noise was magnified
as by a sounding-board. There were cheery hails, yachtsmen bawled over
the mist-gemmed brass rails interchange of the day's experiences, and
frisking yacht tenders, barking staccato exhausts, began to carry men to
and fro on errands of sociability. In the silences Captain Candage could
hear the popping of champagne corks.

"Them fellers certainly live high and sleep in the garret," observed
Oakum Otie. He was seated cross-legged on the top of the house and was
hammering down the lumps in a freshly twisted eye-splice with the end of
a marlinespike.

"It has always been a wonder to me," growled Captain Candage, "how dudes
who don't seem to have no more wit than them fellows haw-hawing over
there, and swigging liquor by the cart-load, ever make money the way
they do so as to afford all this."

On that point Captain Candage might have found Mate McGaw of the
_Olenia_ willing to engage in profitable discussion and amicable
understanding!

"They don't make it-they don't know enough to make it," stated Otie,
with the conviction of a man who knew exactly what he was talking about.
"It has all been left to 'em by their fathers."

The bearded and brown men of the apple-tree crews leaned the patched
elbows of their old coats on the rails and gloomily surveyed the
conviviality on board the plaything c