This was Captain Andrew Davis, popularly known as Captain Andy, who had been for thirty years a Gloucester fishing-skipper, one of the present-day Vikings who sail forth from the Queen Fishing City at the head of its blue harbor. He had commanded one fine fishing-vessel after another, was known along the water-front and among the fishing-fleet as a "crackerjack" and "driver," with other more complimentary titles. He had got the better of the sea in a hundred raging battles on behalf of himself and others. But it partially worsted him at last by wrecking his vessel in what he mildly termed a "November breeze"--in reality a howling hurricane--and by laming him for life when at the height of the storm the schooner's main-boom fell on him. He was dragged forth from under it, half-dead, but, "game to the last," refused to be carried below. Lashed to the weather main-bitt--one of the sawed-off posts rising from the vessel's deck to which the main-sheet was made fast--in order to prevent his being swept overboard by the great seas washing over that deck, he had kept barking out orders and fighting for the lives of his crew so long as he could command a breath. "And I didn't lose a man, Doc!" he said long afterwards to his friend and admirer, the Exmouth doctor, the hard-working physician with whose long-suffering bell Leon had mischievously tampered. "I didn't lose a man--only the vessel. When the gale blew down we had to take to the dories, for she was just washing to pieces under us. Too bad: she was an able vessel too! But I guess I'll have to 'take my medicine' for the rest of my life--an' take it limping!"--with a rueful smile. But the many waters through which he had passed had not quenched in Captain Andy the chivalrous love for his human brothers. Rather did they baptize and freshen it until it sprouted anew, after he took up his residence ashore, in a paternal love for boys which kept his great heart youthful in his massive, sixty-year-old body; and which kept him hopefully dreaming, too, of deeds that shall be done by the sons now being reared for Uncle Sam, that shall rival or outshine the knightly feats of their fathers both on land and sea. So he smiled happily, this grand old sea-scout, as, on the occasion of the first meeting for the inauguration of the Boy Scout Movement, he heaved his powerful frame into a seat beside his friend the doctor who was equally interested in the new doings. "Hi there, Doc!" said Captain Andy joyously, laying his hand, big and warm as a tea-kettle, on the doctor's arm, "we're launching a new boat for the boys to-night, eh? Seems to me that it's an able craft too--this new movement--intended to keep the lads goin' ahead under all the sail they can carry, and on a course where they'll get the benefit of the best breezes, too."