Lockwin sits in the same uncommunicative attitude. "Pardner, you didn't come out into Georgian Bay for nothing. I know that. So I will tell you what I am going to do with the collectorship. By the great jumping Jewhillikins, that's a wave in the stateroom windows! I never see anything like that." The captain passes. "High sea, cap'n!" It is not in good form for Corkey to rise. He is a passenger, with a navigator's reputation to sustain. "High hell!" says the captain. "What a hullabaloo them choppers is a-making," says Corkey to Lockwin. "I reckon they're about scared to death. Well, as I was a-saying, I want to know what the jam-jorum said." Corkey is terrified. He does not fear that he will go down in Georgian Bay. He dreads to hear the bursting of the bladders that are supporting him in his sea of glory. Lockwin starts as from a waking dream: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Corkey, but I could have told you at the start that the administration, when it was confronted by the question whether or not it would give you anything, said; 'No!' It will give you nothing. The administration said it would not appoint you lightkeeper at Ozaukee." "There hain't no light at Ozaukee," says Corkey. "That's what the administration said, too," replies Lockwin. "Did you tell 'em I got you fine?" asks Corkey. "I told them I thought you had as good a case as I had." "Did you tell 'em I'd knock seventeen kinds of stuffin' out of their whole party? That I'd--" Corkey is at his wits ends. His challenge has been accepted. At the outset he had saved fifty twenty-dollar gold pieces out of his wages. He has spent fifteen already. The thought of a contest against the machine candidate carries with it the loss of the rest of the little hoard. He has boasted that he will retain Emery Storrs, the eminent advocate. Corkey grows black in the face. He hiccoughs. He strangles. He unburdens himself with a supreme sneeze. The mate enters the cabin. "I _knew_ that sneeze would wreck us!" he cries savagely. "Is your old tub sinking?" asks Corkey, in retort. "That's what she is!" replies the mate. Corkey looks like a man relieved. Politics is off his mind. He will not be laughed at on the docks now. "Pardner, I'm sorry we're in this hole," he says, as the twain rush through the door to the deck. It was dim under that swinging lamp. It is dark out here. The wind is bitter. The second mate stands hard by. "How much water is in?" asks Corkey. "Plenty," says the second mate. "What have ye done?" asks Corkey. "Captain's blind, stavin' drunk, and won't do nothin'." "Nice picnic!" says Corkey. "Nice picnic!" says the second mate, warming up. It is midnight in the middle of Georgian Bay. There is a fall gale such as comes only once in four or five years. In the morning there will be three hundred wrecks on the great lakes--the most inhospitable bodies of water in the world. And of all stormy places let the sailor keep out of Georgian Bay.