Captain Candage sat on the edge of the _Polly's_ house and snapped an involuntary and wrathful wink every time a cannon banged. In that hill-bound harbor, where the fog had massed, every noise was magnified as by a sounding-board. There were cheery hails, yachtsmen bawled over the mist-gemmed brass rails interchange of the day's experiences, and frisking yacht tenders, barking staccato exhausts, began to carry men to and fro on errands of sociability. In the silences Captain Candage could hear the popping of champagne corks. “Them fellers certainly live high and sleep in the garret,” observed Oakum Otie. He was seated cross-legged on the top of the house and was hammering down the lumps in a freshly twisted eye-splice with the end of a marlinespike. “It has always been a wonder to me,” growled Captain Candage, “how dudes who don't seem to have no more wit than them fellows haw-hawing over there, and swigging liquor by the cart-load, ever make money the way they do so as to afford all this.” On that point Captain Candage might have found Mate McGaw of the _Olenia_ willing to engage in profitable discussion and amicable understanding! “They don't make it-they don't know enough to make it,” stated Otie, with the conviction of a man who knew exactly what he was talking about. “It has all been left to 'em by their fathers.” The bearded and brown men of the apple-tree crews leaned the patched elbows of their old coats on the rails and gloomily surveyed the conviviality on board the plaything crafts. Remarks which they exchanged with one another were framed to indicate a sort of lofty scorn for these frolickers of the sea. The coasting skippers, most of whom wore hard hats, as if they did not want to be confounded with those foppish yacht captains, patrolled their quarter-decks and spat disdainfully over their rails. Everlastingly there was the clank of pumps on board the Apple-treers, and the pumps were tackling the everlasting leaks. Water reddened by contact with bricks, water made turbid by percolation through paving-blocks, splashed continuously from hiccuping scuppers. Captain Ranse Lougee of the topsail schooner _Belvedere_, laden with fish scraps for a Boston glue-factory, dropped over the counter into his dory and came rowing to the _Polly_, standing up and facing forward and swaying with the fisherman's stroke. He straddled easily over the schooner's scant freeboard and came aft, and was greeted cordially by Captain Candage. “Thought I'd show them frosted-cakers that there's a little sociability amongst the gents in the coasting trade, too,” he informed his host. “Furthermore, I want to borry the ex-act time o' day. _And_, furthermore, I'm glad to get away from that cussed aromy on board the _Belvedere_ and sort of air out my nose once in a while. What's the good word, Cap?”