er the better!" agreed the stranger. "I'll relish seeing you get
yours!"

Mayo wasted no time. He sent his prisoner down the ladder to the dory
ahead of him, and put out his hand to the old skipper.

"If I can't do better I'll take that devil, whoever he is, by the heels,
and bat out the brains of the other pirates."

"I reckon that they'll back down when they, see that you've caught him
foul," stated the skipper, consolingly. "I've got a lot of confidence
in your grit, sir. But I must say it's a terrible tricky gang we're up
against, so it seems to me."

"This may be just the right string for us to pull," returned Mayo;
"there's no pleading with them, but we may be able to scare 'em."

"I'm afraid I'm too much inclined to look on the dark side," confessed
Captain Candage. "You're going to find 'em all agin' ye ashore, sir.
But the last words my Polly tells me to say to you was to keep up your
courage and not to mind my growling. She thinks We have got a sure thing
here--and that shows how little a girl knows about men's work!"

And yet, that one little message of good cheer from the main so
comforted Mayo that he went on his way with the whimsical thought that
girls who knew just the right time to give a pat and bestow a smile did
understand man's work mighty well.

XXVIII ~ GIRL'S HELP AND MAN'S WORK

We know the tricks of wind and tide
That make and mean disaster,
And balk 'em, too, the Wren and me,
Off on the Old Man's Pastur'.
Day out and in the blackfish there
Go wabbling out and under,
And nights we watch the coasters creep
From light to light in yonder.
--The Skipper.

It was the period of January calms--that lull between the tempest
ravings of the equinoxes, and the _Ethel and May_ made slow time of it
on her return to the main. In Mayo's mood of anxious impatience, hope in
his affairs was as baffling as the winds in the little schooner's sails.

His passenger sat on the rail and gave the pacing captain occasional
glances in which irony and sullenness were mingled.

"So you're going to put me into court, eh?" he inquired, when at last
they drifted past the end of the breakwater at Limeport. "Well, that
will give you a good excuse for throwing up your work on that wreck."

Mayo kept on walking and did not reply. He had been pondering on the
question of what to do with this new "elephant" on his hands. In a way,
this s