make a silk purse out o' a
sow's ear."

After this parting thrust, Ichabod turned on his heel without another
word, and walked swiftly away down the shore. The men from the station
added a few phrases of very trenchant advice to Sandy and his son. They
waited until the beach-combers had entered the sharpie and set sail due
north toward the hamlet of Portsmouth.

When the coast guard came up again with Captain Ichabod, they found him
seated on the sand hard by the noisy breakers. Three Dominick hens
clucked about him. The old fisherman was throwing them kernels of corn,
which he took from his pocket. The men gazed somewhat somberly at the
fowls. It was plain that these were the only creatures that had escaped
alive from the three-master whose bones littered the beach.

Ichabod looked up at his friends with a wry smile, that was touched with
grimness.

"Boys," he remarked whimsically, "it seems to me as if Icky had had
about enough reminders fer one day without these pesky Dominick pullets
a-buttin' in."

CHAPTER XI

THE AWAKENING OF ICHABOD

The door to the fisherman's shack stood ajar, and in the opening showed
the form of a man. As the light from the newly risen moon fell full upon
the wrinkled features of the face, a pleased, contented smile was to be
seen as he placidly puffed his corncob pipe and blew rings before him in
the quiet, heavy, midnight air. It was Captain Ichabod, home again after
the momentous happenings of the day when the dead body was found in the
wreck of _The Isabel_.

The Captain had been more or less methodical in his ways all his life,
but he had never carried routine so far as to keep a diary. Probably
during the past twenty years, living the life he had upon his lonely
island, there had not been enough of incident to have suggested even the
idea of such a record. But on this particular night, the fisherman,
closeted within his shack, had been toiling through three long hours in
order to set down a detailed narrative of the strange happenings in
which he had been concerned since the coming of the great storm. He had
ransacked his belongings until he found pencil and paper. Then, with his
characteristically painstaking and deliberate manner, he had indited an
itemized account of the various events. Now he had completed his work,
and rested well content with his accomplishment. As he lounged in the
doorway, he was taking a glimpse over the beautiful expanse of water,
the while