standing there for, like a hen-coop with the door open and letting my vittels cool off? Hiper your boots! Down below with you and dish that supper onto the table!”      

       The skipper lingered on deck, his hand at his ear.     

       The fog was settling over the inner harbor. In the dim vastness seaward a steamer was hooting. Each prolonged blast, at half-minute intervals, sounded nearer. The sound was deep, full-toned, a mighty diapason.     

       “What big fellow can it be that's coming in here?” the captain grunted.     

       “Most likely only another tin skimmer of a yacht,” suggested the mate, tossing the eye-splice and the marline-spike into the open hatch of the lazaret. “You know what they like to do, them play-critters! They stick on a whistle that's big enough for Seguin fog-horn.” He squinted under the edge of his palm and waited. “There she looms. What did I tell ye? Nothing but a yacht.”      

       “But she's a bouncer,” remarked the skipper. “What do you make her?”      

       “O—L,” spelled Otie—“O—L—Olenia. Must be a local pilot aboard. None of them New York spiffer captains could find Saturday Cove through the feather-tide that's outside just now.”      

       “Well, whether they can or whether they can't isn't of any interest to me,” stated the skipper, with fine indifference. “I'd hate to be in a tight place and have to depend on one of them gilded dudes! I smell supper. Come on!”      

       He was a little uncertain as to what demeanor he ought to assume below, but he clumped down the companion-way with considerable show of confidence, and Otie followed.     

       The captain cast a sharp glance at his daughter. He had been afraid that he would find her crying, and he did not know how to handle such cases with any certainty.     

       But she had dried her eyes and she gave him no very amiable look—rather, she hinted defiance. He felt more at ease. In his opinion, any person who had spirit enough left for fight was in a mood to keep on enjoying life.     

       “Perhaps I went a mite too far, Polly,” he admitted. He was mild, but he preserved a little touch of surliness in order that she might not conclude that 

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