“Well, there's something in that,” acknowledged Captain Downs, softening a bit. “I haven't got much use for that kind myself. You come along. But if you ain't A-1, shipshape, and seamanlike and come aboard my vessel to loaf on your job you'll wish you were in tophet with the torches lighted. Got any dunnage laying around anywhere?” “No, sir.” “Well, then, I guess you're a regular sailor, all right, the way the breed runs nowadays. That sounds perfectly natural.” The captain led the way down to a public landing, where a power-yawl, with engineer and a mate, was in waiting. “Will she go into the stream to-night, Mr. Dodge?” asked Captain Downs, curtly. “No, sir! About four hundred tons still to come.” Schooner captains keep religiously away from their vessels as long as the crafts lie at the coal-docks. “Come up for me in the morning as soon as she is in the stream. Here's a man to fill the crew. If that coon shows up with another man kick the two of 'em up the wharf.” “Will the passenger come aboard with you, sir?” “He called me up at the hotel about supper-time and said something about wanting to come aboard at the dock. I tried to tell him it was foolish, but it's safe to reckon that a man who wants to sail as passenger from here to Boston on a coal-schooner is a fool, anyway. If he shows up, let him come aboard.” Captain Downs swung away and the night closed in behind him. Mayo took his place in the yawl and preserved meek and proper silence during the trip down the harbor. When they swung under the counter of the schooner which was their destination, the young man noted that she was the _Drusilla M. Alden_, a five-master, of no very enviable record along the coast, so far as the methods and manners of her master went; Mayo had heard of her master, whose nickname was “Old Mull.” He had not recognized him under the name of Captain Downs when the runner had addressed him. The new member of the crew followed the mate up the ladder--only a few steps, for the huge schooner, with most of her cargo aboard, showed less than ten feet of freeboard amidships. “Sleepy, George?” asked the mate, when they were on deck. “No, sir.” “Then you may as well go on this watch.” “Yass'r!” “We'll call it now eight bells, midnight. You'll go off watch eight bells, morning.” Mayo knew that the hour was not much later than eleven, but he did not protest; he knew something about the procedure aboard coastwise coal-schooners. Search-lights bent steady glare upon the chutes down which rushed the streams of coal, black dust swirling in the white radiance. The great pockets at Lambert Point are never idle. High above, on the railway, trains of coal-cars racketed. Under his feet the fabric of the vessel trembled as the chutes fed her through the three hatches. Sweating, coal-blackened men toiled in the depths of her, revealed below hatches by the electric lights, pecking at the avalanche with their shovels, trimming cargo.