But the treatment accorded Pearl had finally brought the deeper feelings of the master mariner to the surface. He was unable longer to endure in silence the pain of seeing the girl so abused. Tom's desperate meanness, too, served to whip the old man's rage to a froth. And that froth was what had spilled upon the startled Petty family when Cap'n Jonah made his astonishing threat. "Whatever! Now I _have_ done it!" he kept repeating to himself as he lay in his uncomfortable bed. "I've got to do somethin'--I really have. Got to make good that bluff. I could see Sarah and Orrin was all struck of a heap. If they think I've got money an' that Pearly may get it if they don't treat her better, they'll near 'bout turn themselves inside out to salve her over--an' me, too. "But, whatever!" he concluded. "Somehow, I must make good that bluff. If I ain't a rich man, I've got to make them think I am." CHAPTER XV MISUNDERSTANDINGS When Cap'n Jonah Hand awoke from a final fitful sleep the following morning, he thought at first any scheme he might have for the befooling of the Pettys must be postponed. When he awoke to find the edge of a red sun peeping above the sea-line, he could scarcely turn over in bed. "Whatever! It's got me!" groaned the master mariner, and something like fear clawed at his staunch old heart. He had passed through storm and stress at sea for nearly half a century and had never shown the white feather. As he once related to 'Liphalet Truitt, he had faced death at the hands of savages, and death in a most horrid form, without a quiver. He had been rich without losing his poise; he had been utterly penniless, yet had retained his cheerfulness. The ups and downs of life had left Jonah Hand, despite his given name, a man who believed in his own good fortune and submitted to such buffets as he suffered with composure. Here was something new. "To be cast upon his beam ends," as he termed it, by such an enemy as this, discouraged him. He had felt premonitions of the ailment for several years. He had seen many seamen go down before this enemy, who would have stood staunchly to face the elements, or against the troubles that are the common lot of man. "Oh! Ah! Ouch! Whatever!" groaned the captain, turning over by fits and starts. Every movement hurt him. His joints seemed to have stiffened during the night, and whenever he sought to bend them, sharp pains shot through them. Even his fingers had no flexibility. "It's got me--the dratted rheumatics!" he muttered. "I might ha' knowed it, after trottin' over that cold floor an' up an' down the stairs without my shoes. Ouch! Whatever!" He felt that he could not rise--he who was always the first of the household astir. He heard Orrin and Tom come yawning down into the kitchen. They started the fire in the range and shook down the sitting-room stove and opened the drafts. Then they went out to do the barn chores.