“Well, you can't expect me to show any special neighborly kindness to the Wall Street gouger who kept me tied up without a charter two months last spring with his steamboat combinations and his dicker deals!” “How are we to take that, sir?” asked Bradish. The girl was staring with frank wonder at this hard-shelled mariner whom she had not been able to impress by her name or her manner. “Just as you want to.” “I demand an explanation.” “Well, I'll give it to you, seeing that I'm perfectly willing to. Take it one way, and I'm willing to wallop Julius Marston by handing him the kind of a son-in-law you'd make; take it the other way, and I ain't particular about doing anything to accommodate anybody in the Marston family.” He eyed them sardonically. “So, you see, I'm betwixt and between in the matter! It's like settling a question by flipping a cent. And I'll tell you what I'm going to do!” He smacked his palm on the table. He strode back toward the stateroom door. “Mate, ahoy, there! Sailor to sailor, now, and remember that you have asked something of _me!_ If you were captain of this schooner would you marry off these two?” They waited in silence, in which they heard the whummle and screech of the wind outside and the angry squalling of the sheathing of the plunging schooner's cabin walls. The voice which replied to Captain Downs's query did not sound human. It was a sort of muffled wail, but there was no mistaking its positiveness. “No!” said the man behind the door. Back to the table lurched Captain Downs. He pounded down his fist. “That settles it with me!” Then he poised his big hand on the edge of the table-cover. “I was ready to tip one way or the other and it needed only a little push. I have tipped.” Down came the palm flat on the table-cloth with final and decisive firmness. “Young man,” he informed Bradish, “there's an extra stateroom, there, off this dining-saloon. You take it!” “What can I tell my father?” wailed the girl, the fire of her determination suddenly quenched by sobbing helplessness. “You can tell him that I temporarily adopted you as my daughter at three bells on this particular evening, and I'll go to him and back you up if it becomes necessary.” He opened the door leading aft and bowed. “Now, you trot along to your stateroom, sissy!” After hesitating a few moments she hurried away. The skipper locked the door and slipped the key into his pocket. “Do you think I'm going to--” began Bradish, angrily. “I ain't wasting any thoughts on you, sir. I'm saving 'em all for the _Drusilla M. Alden_ just now.” The craft's plunging roll gave evidence that the sea was making. At that instant the first mate came down a few steps of the forward companionway, entering through the coach-house door. “She's breezing up fresh from east'ard, sir!” he reported. “So I've judged from the way this sheathing is talking up. I'll be on deck at once, Mr. Dodge.”