d worked my
passage every foot of the way--and over there to Brett's store I met
Luther Wixon, who was home from a v'yage to the West Indies. Lute and me
had been to sea together half a dozen times, and we got kind of
swappin' yarns about the vessels we'd been in.

"'Have you heard about the old _Foam Flake_?' says Lute. 'She was
wrecked on the Jersey coast off Barnegat,' he says, 'and now they've
made a barge out of her hull and she's freightin' hay in New York
harbor,' he says.

"Well, sir, I hauled off and fetched the broadside of my leg a slap you
could have heard to Jericho. 'By the creepin', jumpin',' says I. 'I've
got it!' 'Yes,' he says, 'you act as if you had. But what do you take
for it?' 'I wouldn't take a dollar note for it right now,' I told him.
And I wouldn't have, nuther. The old _Foam Flake_--maybe you remember
her, Cap'n Sears--was the dumdest, lop-sidedest, crankiest old white tub
of a bark that ever carried sail. When I was aboard of her she wouldn't
steer fit to eat, always wanted to go to port when you tried to put her
to starboard, walloped and slopped along awkward as a cow, was the
slowest thing afloat, and all she was ever really fit for was what they
are usin' her for now, and that was to stow hay in. If that wan't that
old horse of Minot's all over then I hope I'll never smoke a five-cent
cigar again. 'You ain't "Pet" no more,' says I to the critter; 'your
name's "Foam Flake!"' Haw, haw! See now, don't you, Cap'n Sears?"

Foam Flake and the truck-wagon landed the captain at the Knowles gate
and, a few minutes later, Kendrick was, rather shamefacedly, announcing
to the judge his acceptance of the superintendency of the Fair Harbor.
The invalid, as grimly sardonic and indomitable as ever, chuckled
between spasms of pain and weakness.

"Good! Good!" he exclaimed. "I thought you wouldn't say no if you once
saw how things were over there. Congratulations on your good sense,
Kendrick."

Sears shook his head. "Don't be any more sarcastic than you can help,
Judge," he said.

"No sarcasm about it. If you hadn't stepped in to help that girl I
should have known you didn't have any sense at all. By the way, I didn't
praise her too highly when we talked before, did I? She is considerable
of a girl, Elizabeth Berry, eh, Cap'n?"

The captain nodded.

"She is," he admitted. "And she was so confoundedly plucky, and she
stood up against that crowd of--of----"

"Mariners' women. Yes. Ho, ho! I shoul