stant can be seen the white rushing forward
of the breakers towards the rocky coast.

Dangerous work this, navigating the Sea Eagle through the thick gloom of
the night but the old man knew his business. He was on the bridge pacing
back and forth like some strange animal and giving hoarse directions to
the man at the wheel. He knew every inch of that coast, the sunken reefs
and dangerous rocks.

"Starboard your helm," he growled.

The sailor spun the wheel obediently. And the captain resumed his pacing
back and forth upon the bridge. Not much could be seen of him, except
that he was a powerful man, with a peculiar crouching stoop, as if he
and the sea were engaged in a mysterious game. One striving to get a
dangerous death-hold upon the other, both wary and using unceasing
watchfulness.

There was a strange softness in Captain Broom's tread like that of a
padding panther, but his arms had the loose forward powerful swing of a
gorilla's. Once he stepped into the chart house to look at something and
the light of the lamp will give us a square look at him.

"That man a pirate!" you exclaim at the first glance; one who carried
the blackest name along the coast as a smuggler and wrecker, who had
brought cargoes of wretched slaves from Africa in the days before the
Civil War and who had had more marvelous escapes than any man in the
history of piracy with the exception of Black Jack Morgan! Impossible!

"Why that man is nothing but an old farmer," you exclaim in
disappointment, when you see him. "He ought to be peddling vegetables on
market day." But just wait.

True, Skipper Broom had come from a long line of New England farmers,
hard, close-fisted, close-mouthed men. Young Broom had broken away from
the farm and followed his bent for sea-faring, but to the end of his
days, he kept his farmerlike appearance and he affected many of the
traits of the yeoman which he found to be on more than one occasion a
most useful disguise.

Let's look at him. That heavy winter cap pulled down on his grizzled
head gives him a most "Reuben" like appearance. Jeans pants are thrust
into heavy cowhide boots. The deadly gray eyes soft as granite have
become red rimmed from fits of fury and hard through many scenes of
coldly calculated cruelty. A most dangerous customer and I for one, and
I ought to know, consider that he will have the better of Jim Darlington
in their approaching encounter--and yet Jim is never beaten until the
last sh