hat it had been given
correctly,--Baxter's subsequent proceedings did not interest him. If he
had anything to say in answer it was of no moment to him. His word was
law on the Ledge; first, because the men daily trusted their lives to
his guidance, and, second, because they all loved him with a love hard
for a landsman to understand, especially today, when the boss and the
gang never, by any possibility, pull together.

"Baxter says he's comin' on, sir," said Billy, when he reached the
captain's side, the grin on his sunburnt face widening until its two
ends hooked over his ears. Billy had heard nothing so funny for weeks.

"Comin' on?"

"That's what he hollered. Wants you to git ready to take his stuff,
sir."

I was out of the shanty now. I came in two jumps. With that squall
rushing from the eastward and the tide making flood, any man who would
leave the protection of the spar buoy for the purpose of unloading was
fit for a lunatic asylum.

Captain Joe had straightened up and was screening his eyes with his
hand when I reached his side, his gaze rivetted on the loosened sloop,
which had now hauled in her tether line and was drifting clear of the
buoy. The captain was still incredulous.

"No, he ain't comin'," he said to me. "He's all right,--he'll port his
helm in a minute,--but he'd better send up his jib"--and he swept his
eye around,--"and that quick, too."

At this instant the sloop wavered and lurched heavily. The outer edge
of the insuck had caught her bow.

Men's minds work quickly in times of great danger,--minds like Captain
Joe's. In a flash he had taken in the fast-approaching roller,
froth-capped by the sudden squall; the surging vessel and the scared
face of Baxter, who, having realized his mistake was now clutching
wildly at the tiller and shouting orders to his men, none of which
could be carried out. Captain Joe knew what would happen,--what had
happened before, and what would happen again with fools like
Baxter,--now,--in a minute,--before he could reach the edge of the
stone pile, hampered as he was in a rubber suit that bound his arms and
tied his great legs together. And he understood too the sea's game, and
that the only way to outwit it would be to use the beast's own tactics.
When it gathered itself for the thrust and started in to hurl the
doomed vessel the full length of its mighty arms, the sloop's only
safety lay in widening the space. A cushion of backwater would then
receive the