“I wish you would put me ashore and send me back. I shall lose my position in the store if I stay away too long.” His obstinacy showed again, promptly. “I don't want you in that millinery-shop. I'm told that dude drummers pester girls in stores.” “They do not trouble me, father. Haven't you any confidence in your own daughter?” “Yes, I have,” he said, firmly, and then added, “but I keep thinking of the dudes and then I get afraid.” She gave him quick a glance, plainly tempted to make an impatient retort, and then turned and went down into the cabin. “Don't be mad with me, Polly,” he called after her. “I guess, maybe, I'm all wrong. I'm going to think it over; I ain't promising nothing sure, but it won't be none surprising if I set you ashore here and send you back home. Don't cry, little girl.” There were tears in his voice as well as in his eyes. The lime-schooner vocalist felt an impulse to voice another verse: “Ow-w-w, here comes the _Polly_ in the middle of the road, Towed by a mule and paving-blocks her load. Devil is a-waiting and the devil may as well, 'Cause he'll never get them paving-blocks to finish paving hell.” Captain Candage left his wheel and strode to the rail. All the softness was gone from his face and his voice. “You horn-jawed, muck-faced jezebo of a sea-sculpin, you dare to yap out any more of that sculch and I'll come aboard you after we anchor and jump down your gullet and gallop the etarnal innards out of ye! Don't you know that I've got ladies aboard here?” “It don't sound like it,” returned the songster. “Well, you hear what _I_ sound like! Half-hitch them jaw taakuls of yours!” Captain Candage's meditations were not disturbed after that. With the assistance of his one helper aboard ship, “Oakum Otie,” a gray and whiskered individual who combined in one person the various offices of first mate, second mate, A-1 seaman, and hand before the mast-as well as the skipper's boon companion-the _Polly_ was manoeuvered to her anchorage in Saturday Cove and was snugged for the night. Smoke began to curl in blue wreaths from her galley funnel, and there were occasional glimpses of the cook, a sallow-complexioned, one-eyed youth whose chief and everlasting decoration provided him with the nickname of “Smut-nosed Dolph.” Then came some of the ocean aristocrats to join the humbler guests in that tavern of the seas. Avant couriers of a metropolitan yacht club, on its annual cruise, arrived, jockeying in with billowing mountains of snowy canvas spread to catch the last whispers of the breeze. Later arrivals, after the breeze failed, were towed in by the smart motor craft of the fleet. One by one, as the anchors splashed, brass cannons barked salute and were answered by the commodore's gun.