"I bet twenty to fifteen on Jeffries before we left Gloucester." This was from the cook, who, having read all about the fight, was now mixing a pan of bread, with his sad eyes directed to a deck beam. "Yes, twenty to-- Cæsar Zippicus!" he brought his fist down _bff!_ in the lump of dough. "And I left ten more--I just remember--with Billy Mills to bet for me at the same odds." Professor, lying in a lower bunk, took the trouble to roll over and say: "And why did you do that?" "Why? Why?" The cook glared at the lower bunk. "You people-- Caesar Zippicus!" and, raising the bread pan high above his head, he brought it down smash atop of the galley-locker. Whang! The cook looked ashamed. "I just remember I left another twenty with Jerry McCarty to place on Jeffries, too," he explained. "Never mind, cook," said Tom, "you wouldn't 'a' lost nothing if it'd been Dan Magee." "To blazes with you and Dan Magee!" whooped the cook. "And that's what I says, too, cook." This was from Fortune Bay. "I been hearin' more o' Dan Magee this night! It's Dan Magee this an' Dan Magee that. And what did ever the man do?" "Do?" Tom held a reverential hand high. "A book wouldn't tell th' half Dan did. Where's Jack?" "Gone for'ard." "Too bad--if Jack Ferris wasn't aft playin' cribbage with the skipper in the cabin, you'd hear a few things more of Dan Magee. But he'll be for'ard by'n'by for his turnin'-in mug-up, an' then----" And by and by Jack came. "They're castin' doubt on Dan Magee," declared Tom to his dorymate. "Tell him about the time he licked th' seven p'licemen in Saint Johns or about that time in Soorey." Jack glanced at the clock. "There might be time for the Soorey fight. We were chasing mackerel," said Ferris, "on the Cape shore this time, and a lively southeaster coming on one day, the skipper said he guessed he'd run into Soorey to let it blow by. And as we'd been up three nights owling, after we dropped anchor all hands turned in for a good sleep. "Late in the afternoon somebody sings out, 'Supper!' and I woke up. Looking across the cabin, I saw Dan awake, too, sitting on the locker, with his slipshods to one side and his rubber boots to the other. He was casting an eye now to one and now to the other, when he looks up and sees me. 'What d'y'say, Jackie boy?' says Dan. 'Will we slide into our slipshods and go for'ard for supper, or will we haul on our rubber boots and go ashore and eat like a pair of tourists and look the place over? What d'y'say?' "We hadn't much of a cook that summer. He'd come off a yacht and was everlastingly making potted mackerel, which he could make good; but a pity nobody'd ever told him fishermen don't go ketching fish to be always eating 'em. And so I said: 'Me for ashore.' "So we got into our rubber boots, hoist a dory over the side, and we're shoving off when the skipper, who we thought we'd left asleep, sticks his head up the cabin companionway and sings out: 'Where you two bound?'