e greater blackness beyond.

Captain Kettle summed the situation: "Rounded up and come to an anchor.
There'll be a factory somewhere on the beach there. But I don't know,
though. That one-eyed head-man said nothing about a factory, and if
there was one, why doesn't she whistle to raise 'em up so's they'd be
ready to bring off their bit o' trade in the surf-boats when
day breaks?"

A cloud slid away in the sky, and the moon shone out like the suddenly
opened bulb of a dark lantern. The oily surface of the sea flashed up
into sight, and on it sat the steamer--a picture in black and silver.
She lay there motionless as the trees on the beach, and the reason for
her state was clear. Her forefoot soared stiffly aloft till it was
almost clear of the water; her stern was depressed; her decks listed to
port till it was an acrobatic feat to make passageway along them.

Captain Kettle whistled to himself long and dismally. "Piled her up," he
muttered, "that's what her old man has done. Hit a half-ebb reef, and
fairly taken root there. He's not shoved on his engines astern either,
and that means she's ripped away half her bottom, and he thinks she'll
founder in deep water if he backs her off the ground." A tiny spit of
flame, pale against the moonlight, jerked out from under the awnings of
the steamer's upper bridge. The noise of the shot came some time
afterward, no louder than the cracking of a knuckle. "By James!
somebody's getting his gun into use pretty quick. Well, it's some one
else's trouble, and not mine, and I guess I'm going to stay on the
beach, and watch, and not meddle." He frowned angrily as though some one
had made a suggestion to him. "No, by James! I'm not one of those that
seeks trouble unnecessarily."

But all the same he walked off briskly along the sand, keeping his eyes
fixed on the stranded steamer. That some sort of a scuffle was going on
aboard of her was clear from the shouts and the occasional pistol shots,
which became louder as he drew more near; and Captain Kettle,
connoisseur as he was of differences of this sort on the high seas,
became instinctively more and more interested. And at last when he came
to a small canoe drawn up on the beach above high-water mark, he paused
beside it with a mind loaded with temptation as deep as it would carry.

The canoe was a dug-out, a thing of light cotton-wood, with washboards
forward to carry it through a surf. A couple of paddles and a calabash
formed its f