"You must have been," insisted Captain Mayo.

"I know we was all of two miles north of the regular course. I 'ain't

sailed across these shoals for thirty years not to know soundings when

I make 'em myself. Furthermore, she'll speak for herself, where she's

sunk."

The captain could not gainsay that dictum.

The mate scowled at the young man.

"I've got a question of my own. What ye doing, yourself, all of two

miles out of your course, whanging along, tooting your old whistle as

if you owned the sea and had rollers under you to go across dry ground

with, too?"

"I was not two miles out of my course," protested the captain, and yet

the sickening feeling came to him that there had been some dreadful

error, somewhere, somehow.

"When they put these steamers into the hands of real men instead of

having dudes and kids run 'em, then shipping will stand a fair show on

this coast," declared the mate, casting a disparaging glance at Mayo's

new uniform. "It was my watch on deck, and I know what I'm talking

about. You came belting along straight at us, two points out of your

course, and I thought the fog was playing tricks, and I didn't believe

my own ears. You have drowned my captain and four honest men. When I

stand up in court they'll get the straight facts from me, I can tell you

that. And they tell me it's your first trip. I might have knowed it

was some greenhorn, when I heard you coming two points off your course.

You'd better take off them clothes. I reckon you've made your last

trip, too!"

It was the querulous railing of a man who had been near death; it

was the everlasting grouch of the sailing-man against the lordly

steamboater. Mayo had no heart for rebuke or retort. What had happened

to him, anyway? This old schooner man seemed to know exactly what he was

talking about.

"If you don't believe what I'm telling you, go out on deck and see if

you can't hear the Hedge Fence whistle," advised the mate, sourly. "If

she don't bear south of east I'll eat that suit they're drying out for

me. And that will show you that you're two miles to the norrard of where

you ought to be."

On his way to the pilot-house Captain Mayo did hear the hollow voice

of the distant whistle, with its double blast and its long interval

of silence. The sound came from abaft his beam and his disquietude

increased.




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