They give
me the choice of four inches of cold steel or actin' as navigator--the
bloody crew o' pirates!"

"And what did ye do?" demanded Amiel Perdue, his mouth ajar.

"Well," snorted the storekeeper, "ye can see I didn't choose a knife in
my gizzard. We sailed up an' down the coast of Brazil and the Guineas
for two months, sellin' the cargo piecemeal to dirty little Portugee
traders an' smugglers. Then we h'isted the black flag and took our
first prize--an English barque goin' down to Rio. It was me saved her
crew's lives and give 'em a chance't in their longboat. They made Para
all right, I heard afterward.

"We burned that barque," proceeded the storekeeper dreamily, "after we
looted her of everything wuth while. Then----"

The door was flung open with a gust of wind behind it. A lanky,
half-grown lad stuck his head in at the opening to shrill:

"Hi! ain't ye heard 'bout it?"

"Bout what?" demanded Milt Baker.

"There's a schooner drivin' in on to the Gull Rocks," cried the news
vender. "Something gone wrong with her rudder, they say. She's goin'
spang onto the reef. Ev'rybody's down there, an' the life-savers are
comin' around from Wellriver with their gear."

"Gale out o' the no'theast, too!" exclaimed Cap'n Joab, starting for
the door.

The story-teller saw his audience melt away in a minute. He went out
on the porch. Fluttering across the fields and sand lots from all
directions were the neighbors--both men and women. The possibility of
a wreck--the great tragedy of long-shore existence--would bring
everybody not bed-ridden to the sands.

He saw Betty Gallup in high boots, her pea-coat buttoned tightly across
her flat bosom, her man's hat pulled down over her ears, already
halfway to the shore. From the cottage on the bluffs above The Beaches
the summer visitors were trailing down. Below Bozewell's bungalow the
motion picture company were running excitedly about.

"Like sandpipers," muttered the storekeeper. "Crazy critters. Wonder
where that schooner is."

He hesitated to leave the premises. Cap'n Abe had never been known to
follow the crowd to the beach when an endangered craft was in the
offing. Indeed, he never looked in the direction of the sea if he
could help it when a storm lashed its surface and piled the breakers
high upon the strand.

But suddenly the man remembered that he was _not_ Cap'n Abe! He stood
here in an entirely different character. Cap'n Amazon, the ro