's done well enough that way.
But he's the first Silt, I swanny! that ever stayed ashore."

"And now you are going to remain ashore yourself," she said, laughing.

"I'm going to try it, Louise. I've done my sheer of roaming about.
Mebbe I'll settle down here for good."

"With Cap'n Abe? Won't that be fine?"

"Yep. With Abe," he muttered and remained silent for the rest of the
meal.

On Saturday the store trade was expected to be larger than usual.
Louise told Cap'n Amazon she would gladly help wait on the customers;
but he would not listen to that for a moment.

"I'm not goin' to have you out there in that store for these folks to
look over and pick to pieces, my girl," he said decidedly. "You stay
aft and I'll 'tend to things for'ard and handle this crew. Besides,
there's that half-grown lout, Amiel Perdue. Abe said he sometimes
helped around. He knows the ship, alow and aloft, and how the stores
is stowed."

The morning was still young when Betty came downstairs in hot rage and
attacked Cap'n Amazon. It seemed she had gone up to give the chambers
their usual weekly cleaning, and had found the room in which the
captain slept locked against her. It was Cap'n Abe's room and it
seemed it was Cap'n Abe's custom--as it was Cap'n Amazon's--to make his
own bed and keep his room tidy during the week. But Betty had always
given it a thorough cleaning and changed the bed linen on Saturdays.

"What's that room locked for? I want to know what you mean?" the woman
demanded of Cap'n Amazon. "Think I'm goin' to work in a house where
doors is locked against me? I'm as honest as any Silt that ever
hobbled on two laigs. Nex' thing, I cal'late, you'll be lockin' the
coal shed and countin' the sticks in the woodpile."

She had much more to say--and said it. It seemed to make her feel
better to do so. Cap'n Amazon looked coolly at her, but did not offer
to take the key out of his trousers' pocket.

"What d'ye mean?" repeated Betty, breathless.

"I mean to keep my cabin locked," he told her in a perfectly passive
voice, but in a manner that halted her suddenly, angry as she was. "I
don't want no woman messin' with my berth nor with my duds. That
door's no more locked against you than it is against my niece. You do
the rest of your work and don't you worry your soul 'bout my cabin."

Louise, who was an observant spectator of this contest, expected at
first that Betty would not stand the indignity--that she wo