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circles, shrieking as they swept past the bows. A rain-squall or
two strayed aimlessly over the hopeless waste, ran down wind and
back again, and melted away.

"'Seems to me I saw somethin' flicker jest naow over yonder," said
Uncle Salters, pointing to the northeast.

"Can't be any of the fleet," said Disko, peering under his
eyebrows, a hand on the fo'c'sle gangway as the solid bows
hatcheted into the troughs. "Sea's oilin' over dretful fast.
Danny, don't you want to skip up a piece an' see how aour trawl-
buoy lays?"

Danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than climbed up the main
rigging (this consumed Harvey with envy), hitched himself around
the reeling crosstrees, and let his eye rove till it caught the
tiny black buoy-flag on the shoulder of a mile-away swell.

"She's all right," he hailed. "Sail O! Dead to the no'th'ard,
comin' down like smoke! Schooner she be, too."

They waited yet another half-hour, the sky clearing in patches,
with a flicker of sickly sun from time to time that made patches
of olive-green water. Then a stump-foremast lifted, ducked, and
disappeared, to be followed on the next wave by a high stern with
old-fashioned wooden snail's-horn davits. The sails were red-
tanned.

"Frenchmen!" shouted Dan. "No, 'tain't, neither. Da-ad!"

"That's no French," said Disko. "Salters, your blame luck holds
tighter'n a screw in a keg-head."

"I've eyes. It's Uncle Abishai."

"You can't nowise tell fer sure."

"The head-king of all Jonahs," groaned Tom Platt. "Oh, Salters,
Salters, why wasn't you abed an' asleep?

"How could I tell?" said poor Salters, as the schooner swung up.

She might have been the very Flying Dutchman, so foul, draggled,
and unkempt was every rope and stick aboard. Her old-style
quarter-deck was some four or five feet high, and her rigging flew
knotted and tangled like weed at a wharf-end. She was running
before the wind - yawing frightfully - her staysail let down to
act as a sort of extra foresail, -" scandalised," they call it, -
and her fore-boom guyed out over the side. Her bowsprit cocked up
like an old-fashioned frigate's; her jib-boom had been fished and
spliced and nailed and clamped beyond further repair; and as she
hove herself forward, and sat down on her broad tail, she looked
for all the world like a blowzy, frousy, bad old woman sneering at
a decent girl.

"That's Abishai," said Salters. "Full o' gin an' Judique men, an'
the judgments o' Providence layin' fer him an' never takin' good
holt. He's run in to bait, Miquelon way."

"He'll run her under," said Long Jack. "That's no rig fer this
weather."

"Not he, 'r he'd 'a' done it long ago," Disko replied. "Looks's if
he cal'lated to run us under. Ain't she daown by the head more'n
natural, Tom Platt?"

"Ef it's his style o' loadin' her she ain't safe," said the
sailor, slowly. "Ef she's spewed her oakum he'd better git to his
pumps mighty quick.

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