hours before daylight to making us comfortable. When I
dressed as much of myself as a suit of Mr. Atwood's--his Sunday best, I
presume--would cover, and, with a pair of carpet slippers about the size
and shape of toy ferry boats on my feet, emerged from the bedroom, I
found the table set in the kitchen, the teapot steaming and Mrs.
Atwood cooking "spider bread" on the stove. When Miss Colton, looking
surprisingly presentable--considering that she, too, was wearing
borrowed apparel four sizes too large for her--made her appearance, we
sat down to a simple meal which, I think, was the most appetizing I ever
tasted.

The Atwoods were bursting with curiosity concerning our getting adrift
in the motor boat. I described the adventure briefly. When I told of
Lute's forgetfulness in the matter of gasolene the lightkeeper thumped
the table.

"There, by godfreys!" he exclaimed. "I could see it comin'! That
feller's for all the world like a cook I had once aboard the Ezry H.
Jones. That cook was the biggest numskull that ever drawed the breath
of life. Always forgettin' somethin', he was, and always at the most
inconvenient time. Once, if you'll believe it, I had a skipper of
another vessel come aboard and, wishin' to be sort of hospitable, as you
might say, I offered him a glass of rum."

"Joshua!"

"Oh, it's all right, Betsy. This was years ago. I'm as good a teetotaler
now as you be, and I never was what you'd call a soak. But I've SEEN
fellers--Why, I knew one once that used to go to bed in the dark. He
was so full of alcohol he didn't dast to light a match fear he'd catch
a-fire. Fact! He was eighty-odd then, and he lived to be nigh a hundred.
Preserved, you understand, same as one of them specimens in a museum.
He'd kept forever, I cal'late, if he hadn't fell off the dock. The water
fixed him; he wasn't used to it. He was the wust--"

"Never mind him. Stick to the cook."

"Yes, yes. Well, I sent that cook for the rum and when he fetched it, I
thought it smelt funny. And when I TASTED it--godfreys! 'Twas bay rum;
yes, sir, bay rum! same as they put on your hair. You see, he'd forgot
to buy any rum when we was in our last port and, havin' the bay rum
along he fetched that. 'Twas SOME kind of rum and that was enough for
him. I WAS mad, but that visitin' skipper, he didn't care. Drank it down
and smacked his lips. 'I'm a State of Maine man,' he says, 'and that's
a prohibition state. This tastes like home,' he says. 'If y