s, and charged you nothin'. All
I wanted was to get Cappen Benson the right kind of a crew."

"Let's see that receipt," snarled the mate. "Put that gun up, too, or
I'll show you one of my own. I'll tend to your good men when you get
ashore." He glared at the quiescent Bigpig, and followed the
shipping-master--who still held his pistol ready, however--over to the
rail, where the receipt was produced and signed.

"Away you go, now," said the mate; "you and your gun. Get over the
side."

The shipping-master did not answer until he had scrambled down to the
waiting tug and around to the far side of her deck-house. There, ready
to dodge, he looked up at the mate with a triumphant grin on his shrewd
face, and called:

"Say, Mr. Jackson, 'member the old bark _Fair Wind_ ten years ago,
and the ordinary seaman you triced up and skinned alive with a
deck-scraper? D' you 'member, curse you? 'Member breakin' the same
boy's arm with a heaver? You do, don't you? I'm him. 'Member me sayin'
I'd get square?"

He stepped back to avoid the whirling belaying-pin sent by the mate,
which, rebounding, only smashed a window in the pilot-house. Then, amid
an exchange of blasphemous disapproval between Mr. Jackson and the tug
captain, and derisive jeers from the shipping-master,--who also averred
that Mr. Jackson ought to be shot, but was not worth hanging for,--the
tug gathered in her lines and steamed away.

Wrathful of soul, Mr. Jackson turned to the men on the deck. They had
changed their position; they were now close to the fife-rail at the
mainmast, surrounding Bigpig Monahan (for by their names we must know
them), who, with an injured expression of face, was shedding outer
garments and voicing his opinion of Mr. Jackson, which the others
answered by nods and encouraging words. He had dropped a pair of
starched cuffs over a belaying-pin, and was rolling up his
shirt-sleeve, showing an arm as large as a small man's leg, and the
mate was just about to interrupt the discourse, when the second mate
called his name. Turning, he beheld him beckoning violently from the
cabin companionway, and joined him.

"Got your gun, Mr. Jackson?" asked the second officer, anxiously, as he
drew him within the door. "I started for mine when the shippin'-master
pulled. I can't make that crowd out; but they're lookin' for fight,
that's plain. When you were at the rail they were sayin': 'Soak him,
Bigpig.' 'Paste him, Bigpig.' 'Put a head on him.' They mi