contradict or oppose;--better let him blow it all out.
Both owner and skipper determined to take the risk. The Susie Ann had
been laid up all winter awaiting the opening of the spring work, and
the successful carrying out of the present venture was Marrows's only
escape from financial ruin, and Baxter's only chance of getting his
back wages. There was an unpaid bill, too, for caulking, then a year
old, lying in Abram's bureau drawer, together with an account at Mike
Lavin's machine shop for a new set of grate bars, now almost worn out.
Worse than all the bank's lien on the sloop was due in a few weeks.
What money the sloop earned, therefore, must be earned quickly.

And then again, Abram ruminated, Shark Ledge wasn't the worst place on
the coast,--despite Captain Joe's warning,--especially on this
particular morning, when a light wind was blowing off shore. Plenty of
other sloops had delivered stone over their rails to the divers below.
Marrows remembered that he had been out to the Ledge himself when the
Screamer came up into the wind and crawled slowly up until her forefoot
was within a biscuit toss of the stone pile.

What Marrows forgot was that Captain Bob Brandt of Cape Ann had then
held the spokes of the Screamer's wheel,--a man who knew every twist
and turn of the treacherous tide.

So Baxter shook out the sloop's jib and mainsail and started on his
journey eight miles seaward, with orders to make fast on arrival to the
spar buoy which lay within a few hundred yards of the Ledge, and there
wait until the tide turned, when she could drop into position to
unload. The tug with all of us on board would follow when we had taken
on fresh water and coal.

On the run out Captain Joe watched the sloop until she had made her
first tack, then he turned to his work and again busied himself in
overhauling his diving dress; tightening the set-screws in his copper
collar, re-cording his breastplate and putting new leather thongs in
his leaden shoes. There was some stone on the sloop's deck which was
needed to complete a level down among the black fish and torn
cod,--twenty-two feet down,--where the sea kelp streamed up in long
blades above the top of his helmet and the rock crabs scurried out of
his way. If Baxter didn't make a "tarnel fool of himself and git into
one o' them swirl-holes," he intended to get these stones into place
before night.

He knew these "holes," as he did every other swirl around the ledge and
wha