k so gloomy,
my friend?"

Captain Petersen shook the rain from the brim of his sou'wester.

"We are putting our necks within a rope," he said.

"Not your neck--only mine," replied Martin. "It is a necktie that one
gets accustomed to. Look at my father! One rarely sees an old man so
free from care. How he laughs! How he enjoys his dinner and his wine!
The wine runs down a man's throat none the less pleasantly because there
is a loose rope around it. And he has played a dangerous game all his
life--that old man, eh?"

"It is all very well for you," said Captain Petersen, gravely, turning
his gloomy eyes towards his companion. "A prince does not get shot or
hanged or sent to the bottom in the high seas."

"Ah! you think that," said Prince Martin, momentarily grave. "One can
never tell."

Then he broke into a laugh.

"Come!" he said, "I am going aloft to look for that English boat. Come
on to the fore-yard. We can watch him come in--that little bulldog of a
man."

"If he has any sense he will wait in the open until this gale is over,"
grumbled Petersen, nevertheless following his companion forward.

"He has only one sense, that man--a sense of infinite fearlessness."

"He is probably afraid--" Captain Petersen paused to hoist himself
laboriously on to the rail.

"Of what?" inquired Martin, looking through the ratlines.

"Of a woman."

And Martin Bukaty's answer was lost in the roar of the wind as he went
aloft.

They lay on the fore-yard for half an hour, talking from time to time in
breathless monosyllables, for the wind was gathering itself together for
that last effort which usually denotes the end of a gale. Then Captain
Petersen pointed his steady hand almost straight ahead. On the gray
horizon a little column of smoke rose like a pillar. It was a steamer
approaching before the wind.

Captain Cable came on at a great pace. His ship was very low in the
water, and kicked up awkwardly on a following sea. He swung round the
beacon on the shoulder of a great wave that turned him over till
the rounded wet sides of the steamer gleamed like a whale's back. He
disappeared into the haze nearer the land, and presently emerged again
astern of the _Olaf_, a black nozzle of iron and an intermittent fan
of spray. He was crashing into the seas at full speed--a very different
kind of sailor to the careful captain of the _Olaf_. His low decks were
clear, and each sea leaped over the bow and washed aft--green and whit