ght and feeling
in drunken men. The skipper sprang up, clenched his right hand, and
gazed in fierce astonishment at his friend, who advanced towards him
with a benignant smile, quite regardless of consequences. Even in the
act of striking, the captain restrained his arm and opened his hand.
Paul met it with a friendly grasp, while the faces of both men expanded
in smiling goodwill.

"Y-you're a trump, P-Paul," said the captain. "I--I--won't drink
a-another d'op!"

And Master Trench kept his word. From that day forth, till
circumstances rendered drinking impossible, he drank nothing stronger
than water.

Soon after this event the weather improved, damages were again repaired,
and the skipper--in whom there was much of the spirit of the old
vikings--once more laid his course for Norway, resolving to steer, as
the said vikings were wont to do, by the stars. But a spirit of mutiny
was abroad in the forecastle by that time. If hard work, hard fare, and
hard fortune are trying even to good men and true, what must they be to
bad men and false?

"Here's how it lays, men," said Big Swinton, in a subdued voice, to a
knot of friends around him. "Blowin' hard as it has bin ever since we
left England, it stands to reason that we must have pretty nigh got
across the western sea to that noo land discovered by that man wi' the
queer name--I can't remember rightly--"

"Columbus, you mean," cried George Blazer. "Why, my father sailed with
Columbus on his first voyage."

"No, it wasn't Columbus," returned Swinton, in a sharp tone, "an' you
needn't speak as if we was all deaf, Blazer. It was John Cabot I was
thinkin' of, who, with his son Sebastian, discovered land a long way to
the nor'ard o' Columbus's track. They called it Newfoundland. Well, as
I was sayin', we must be a long way nearer to that land than to Norway,
an' it will be far easier to reach it. Moreover, the Cabots said that
the natives there are friendly and peaceable, so it's my opinion that we
should carry on as we go till we reach Newfoundland, an' see whether we
can't lead a jollier life there than we did in Old England."

"But it's _my_ opinion," suggested Little Stubbs, "that the skipper's
opinion on that point will have to be found out first, Swinton, for it's
of more importance than yours. You ain't skipper _yet_, you know."

"That's so, Stubbs," said Squill, with a nod.

"Let your tongues lie still," retorted Swinton, in an undertoned growl.