d the _Martha Brown_.

Five minutes later the little craft swept up alongside, one of our
people hospitably dropped a rope's end into her to hang on by, and the
man in the sternsheets--a long, angular, big-boned individual, about six
feet three inches in height, apparently about thirty-four years of age,
with a thick thatch of reddish-brown hair, and an equally thick beard
and moustache of the same colour, and attired, despite the intense heat,
in a heavy pilot cloth jacket and trousers, a blue worsted jersey, a fur
cap, and sea-boots reaching above his knees--uncoiling his long limbs,
rose in the boat, and, with a nimbleness strangely at variance with his
ungainly appearance, climbed the side, swung himself in over our low
rail, and flung a quick, enquiring glance round the deck.

"Mornin'!" he remarked briefly in a surly tone of voice to the skipper,
Cunningham, and myself, as we stepped forward to meet him. "I see this
here schooner's the _Marthy Brown_ o' Baltimore. Which o' you 'uns is
the cap'n of her?"

"I am," answered our "Old Man," stepping forward. "Name of Ephraim
Brown. This here is my first officer, Mr Mark Temple, and this is Mr
Cunnin'ham, my second officer."

"Jerushy! First and second officers, eh?" exclaimed the stranger in a
fine tone of irony. "My, but you air puttin' on style, Cap'n, and no
mistake! I'm plain Abner Slocum, cap'n and owner of the schooner
_Kingfisher_, sailin' out o' Nantucket; and my first, second, third, and
fourth mate is all rolled into one under the name o' Dan'l Greene.
That's him--the red-headed feller in the Scotch cap helpin' t'other 'un
to roll up my schooner's mains'l. Well, Cap'n Brown, I've took the
liberty to come aboard your ship to ask what you happens to be doin'
here, if I ain't presumin' too much."

"May I ask what business that is of your'n, Cap'n--eh--um--Slocum?"
demanded Brown blandly.

"Cert'nly you may," retorted Slocum, with elaborate politeness, which,
however, vanished the next instant. "An' it won't take me half a second
to answer ye," he continued truculently. "It's business o' mine because
this 'ere island, and everything in the sea for three mile round it,
happens to belong to me--left me by my deceased brother-in-law, Abr'am
Johnson. And I don't want, and won't have--you hear me!--won't have
nobody trespassin' on my property. So the sooner you 'uns gits, the
better it'll be for all parties. And now I hopes you understan's. And
th