ked up a schooner, dismasted and
battered. As he approached, close-hauled on the wind, he saw her decks
crowded by an unusually large crew, and on sailing in closer, made out
among others the faces of his missing comrades. And he was just in the
nick of time, for they were fighting a losing fight at the pumps. An
hour later they, with the crew of the sinking craft, were aboard the
_Sophie Sutherland_.

Having wandered so far from their own vessel, they had taken refuge on
the strange schooner just before the storm broke. She was a Canadian
sealer on her first voyage, and as was now apparent, her last.

The captain of the _Sophie Sutherland_ had a story to tell, also,
and he told it well--so well, in fact, that when all hands were gathered
together on deck during the dog-watch, Emil Johansen strode over to
Chris and gripped him by the hand.

"Chris," he said, so loudly that all could hear, "Chris, I gif in. You
vas yoost so good a sailorman as I. You vas a bully boy, und able
seaman, und I pe proud for you!

"Und Chris!" He turned as if he had forgotten something, and called
back, "From dis time always you call me 'Emil' mitout der 'Mister!'"

TO REPEL BOARDERS

"No; honest, now, Bob, I'm sure I was born too late. The twentieth
century's no place for me. If I'd had my way----"

"You'd have been born in the sixteenth," I broke in, laughing, "with
Drake and Hawkins and Raleigh and the rest of the sea-kings."

"You're right!" Paul affirmed. He rolled over upon his back on the
little after-deck, with a long sigh of dissatisfaction.

It was a little past midnight, and, with the wind nearly astern, we were
running down Lower San Francisco Bay to Bay Farm Island. Paul Fairfax
and I went to the same school, lived next door to each other, and
"chummed it" together. By saving money, by earning more, and by
each of us foregoing a bicycle on his birthday, we had collected
the purchase-price of the _Mist_, a beamy twenty-eight-footer,
sloop-rigged, with baby topsail and centerboard. Paul's father was a
yachtsman himself, and he had conducted the business for us, poking
around, overhauling, sticking his penknife into the timbers, and testing
the planks with the greatest care. In fact, it was on his schooner,
the _Whim_, that Paul and I had picked up what we knew about
boat-sailing, and now that the _Mist_ was ours, we were hard at
work adding to our knowledge.

The _Mist_, being broad of beam, was comfortable and r