nice small paint-brush."

Forty-eight hours later, when the last wakening vision among the twenty
men had taken cognizance of the grisly object aloft, the gaff was guyed
outboard, the rope cut at the fife-rail, and the body of Tom Plate
dropped, feet first, to the sea.

Then when Captain Swarth's eyes permitted he took an observation or
two, and, after a short lecture to his crew on the danger of sleeping
in tropic moonlight, shaped his course for Barbados Island, to take up
the burden of his battle with fate where the blindness had forced him
to lay it down; to scheme and to plan, to dare and to do, to war and to
destroy, against the inevitable coming of the time when fate should
prove the stronger--when he would lose in a game where one must always
win or die.

SALVAGE

She had a large crew, abnormally large hawse-pipes, and a bad
reputation--the last attribute born of the first. Registered as the
_Rosebud_, this innocent name was painted on her stern and on her
sixteen dories; but she was known among the fishing-fleet as the
_Ishmaelite_, and the name fitted her. Secretive and unfriendly, she
fished alone, avoided company, answered few hails, and, seldom filling
her hold, disposed of her catch as her needs required, in out-of-the-way
ports, often as far south as Charleston. And she usually left behind
her such bitter memories of her visit as placed the last port at the
bottom of her list of markets.

No ship-chandler or provision-dealer ever showed her receipted bills,
and not a few of them openly averred that certain burglaries of their
goods had plausible connection with her presence in port. Be this as it
may, the fact stood that farmers on the coast who saw her high bow and
unmistakable hawse-pipes when she ran in for bait invariably
double-locked their barns and chicken-coops, and turned loose all tied
dogs when night descended, often to find both dogs and chickens gone in
the morning.

Once, too, three small schooners had come home with empty holds, and
complained of the appearance, while anchored in the fog, of a flotilla
of dories manned by masked men, who overpowered and locked all hands in
cabin or forecastle, and then removed the cargoes of fish to their own
craft, hidden in the fog. Shortly after this, the _Ishmaelite_ disposed
of a large catch in Baltimore, and the piracy was believed of her, but
never proved.

Her luck at finding things was remarkable. Drifting dories, spars,
oars, and