d be movin' queek enough.
Come away, Sandy! Come away, Peter, man!"

For all his sailing, the captain was a true landsman, and when under
pressure his thin nautical veneer slipped off him, and his language was
not of the sea.

"Come away, Sandy," he called artlessly, "and gee her a bit. _Gee_!"

"I can have the law on you for obstructing the King's Highway!"
thundered the man on the bridge.

"The water will be jist as much the King's Highway as the road!"
retorted the captain indignantly. "If you would be leafing other
folks' business alone, and attending to your own, you would be knowing
the law better. It is a rule of the sea that effery vessel--"

"The sea!" the enemy burst in with an overwhelming roar. "The sea! A
vessel! A miserable fish pond, and an old tub like that, the sea and a
vessel! Get away with you! Get out of my sight!"

He waved a hand as if he would wipe the _Inverness_ from off the face
of the waters.

During the altercation, Roderick McRae had been leaning far over the
railing, striving to attract the attention of the madman in the buggy.
But his voice was drowned in the laughter and cheers of the passengers
who were enjoying the battle immensely. At this moment he put his
fingers to his teeth and uttered a long, sharp whistle. "Ho! Lawyer
Ed!" he shouted. The man on the bridge started. His angry face, with
the quickness of lightning, broke into radiance.

"Roderick!--Rod! Are you there? Hooray!" He caught off his hat and
waved it in the air. "Come on home with me! I dare you to jump it!"

The _Inverness_ was at a perilous distance from the bridge, but the
young man did not hesitate a moment before the half-laughing challenge.
He leaped lightly upon the railing, poised a moment and, with a mighty
spring, landed upon the bridge. The onlookers gave a gasp and then a
relieved and admiring cheer.

Another spring put Roderick into the buggy, where his friend hammered
him on the back, and they laughed like a couple of school-boys. And
that was what they really were, for though Roderick McRae was nearly
twenty-four, he was feeling like a boy in his home-coming joy, and as
for Lawyer Ed he hadn't grown an hour older, either in feeling or
appearance, but lived perennially somewhere near the joyous age of
eighteen.

Meanwhile the real captain of the _Inverness_ had begun to bestir
himself. The Ancient Mariner cared not the smallest lump of coal that
went into the furnace doo