“Heard you had trouble with Marston,” proceeded the old skipper, with brutal frankness. “Anybody who has trouble with that damnation pirate comes well recommended to me. He is trying to steal every steamboat line on this coast. Thank Gawd, he can never get his claws on the old Vose line. Some great doings in the steamboat business are ahead, Mayo. Reckon it's a good line to be in if you like fight and want to make your bigness.” Mayo walked on in silence. He was troubled by this added information that news of his affair with Marston had gained such wide currency. However, he was glad that this new opportunity offered him a chance to hide himself in the isolation of a freighter's pilot-house. Captain Candage received the news with meek resignation. “I knowed it would have to come,” he said. “Couldn't expect much else. Howsomever, it ain't comforting.” “Can't keep a good boy like this pawing around in fish gurry,” stated Captain Wass. “I know it, and I wish him well and all the best!” Their leave-taking, presided over by the peremptory master of the _Nequasset_, was short. “I'll probably have a chance to see you when we come here again,” called Mayo from the wharf, looking down into the mournful countenance of the skipper. “Perhaps I'll have time to run down to Maquoit while we are discharging. At any rate, explain it all for me, especially to your daughter.” “I'll tell all concerned just what's right,” Captain Candage assured him. “I'll tell her for you.” She was on the beach when the skipper came rowing in alone from the _Ethel and May_. “He's gone,” he called to her. “Of course we couldn't keep him. He's too smart to stay on a job like this.” When they were on their way up to the widow's cottage he stole side-glances at her, and her silence distressed him. “Let's see! He says to me--if I can remember it right-he says, says he, 'Take my best respects and '--let's see--yes, 'take my best respects and love to your Polly--'” “Father! Please don't fib.” “It's just as I remember it, dear. 'Especial,' he says. I remember that! 'Especial,' he says. And he looked mighty sad, dear, mighty sad.” He put his arm about her. “There are a lot of sad things in this world for everybody, Polly. Sometimes things get so blamed mixed up that I feel like going off and climbing a tree!” XV ~ THE RULES OF THE ROAD Now the _Dreadnought's_ a-sailing the Atlantic so wide, Where the high, roaring seas roll along her black side. Her sailors like lions walk the deck to and fro, She's the Liverpool packet--O Lord let her go! --Song of the Flash Packet. On a day in early August the _Nequasset_ came walloping laboriously up-coast through a dungeon fog, steel rails her dragging burden, caution her watchword.