"But fear not," says Judkins; "we shall yet escape from this peril," and blows a distress signal, and right away comes an answer; and in about a minute and a half, from almost under our stern, comes a tugboat, the _Niobe_, with "Parson" Davies skipper of her. I'd never met Davies, but I'd heard of him; and I'd seen the _Niobe_ laying off Bayport Harbor when we came out, and what would be bringing her so handy now, and she not hailing from Bayport at all, but from Westport, a hundred miles farther away? Judkins hailed the _Niobe_ to have a line ready, and then turns to us and says: "Men, it would be a great deed for me to imperil your lives to save this valuable ship and cargo to her owners; but what a nobler, what a far nobler, deed it is to save human lives! Not my life, men, but others'--your lives, fathers of families that I know some of you are, or loving husbands, brothers, and sons of loving mothers. But can we thus save her? No, no; we cannot. In a few hours it will be dark, and these seas, which you see breaking over this noble ship, will most surely batter her and all on her before morning. It would then be too late to escape from her. Not," he says, waving his hand, "that we shall not even now make a desperate attempt to get her off. We shall. Indeed we shall!" and orders a line taken from the _Niobe_. I made it my business--there was no competition--to be the man making the line fast to our after-bitts, and a worn and ancient piece of hemp I saw it was. The _Niobe_ backed off, and the line parted. She passed us another line, and that parted. The second line was rottener than the first, and while she was doing it I knew there was a store-new 200-fathom coil of a 13-inch hawser in our hold. When the second line parts, Judkins waves his arms in despair and orders the _Niobe_ to make fast under our high lee quarter, where it is smooth as milk and plenty of water for a tug of her tonnage. "Captain Davies," he calls out then, "what a fortunate event for us you happened along!" "Yes, captain," responds "Parson," his head out of his pilot-house window. "A most heavenly inspiration it was which impelled me in this direction in weather like this." "Doubtless, doubtless, the hand o' Providence," says Judkins in a downcast voice; and then, more lively: "What is your judgment of this gale, Captain Davies?" Gale! A man could have almost gone motor-boating with a bunch of seaside hotel guests in it. "If I know anything of weather, captain," says "Parson," rolling his head this way and that at the sky, "she's comin' on to blow a hurricane. And for you to keep your crew aboard your doomed ship durin' the fury of it would be nothin' less than criminal, captain. Not" (raising one pious hand) "that I would set my judgment over agin yours, captain, for your vast experience of the sea qualifies you to judge of these things even better than I."