Captain Bert bit his lip. There was good sense in what Captain Ed had suggested. Captain Ed was shrewd. His investments had brought him opulence, made him Howesport's wealthiest citizen. Yes, Captain Ed's opinion was always worth weighing. Captain Bert's tall, erect, thin yet sinewy frame, legs thrust wide apart, would have graced the quarterdeck of a finer craft than even the trim _Bessie Barker_. For twenty years he had successfully carried on the shipping business between Howesport and Boston. It was hard for him to give up now. His black hair and short beard, draping bold aquiline features, were turning gray. The old muscular strength of the days when he was in the South American trade had diminished with his increasing years, which had now piled up to sixty-four. When he had discarded the _Mary Chilton_ and bought the _Bessie Barker_ two years ago, he had thought, "She'll last a lifetime. A few years more of service, and then--life ashore. Perhaps owner of a fleet of packets----" He had never thought of such a thing as competition. People had laughed at him when he started the packet business twenty years ago. Howesport had the railroad. At best, it was a dead port. "He'll never make it pay," they had said, and in derision had dubbed him "the Packet Admiral." Yet he had made it pay. It hadn't made him rich like Captain Ed, but give him a few years' lease of life and with business growing as it had lately, and--Well, he _would_ be an admiral, of a line of packets plying between various ports and bringing him a small fortune, perhaps even wealth. That was all he asked--a few more years like the last five. But now--the Crosby Company. "They've sold stock in town, too," said Captain Bert. "Mis' Mehitable Barnes fired a broadside into my hull this afternoon by informin' me that she'd bought twenty shares of it." "Lord sakes--that so? I didn't know she was that well-to-do." "She ain't. Took about her last cent. Seems she knows Crosby--he used to come here summers--and he coaxed her into it. Misrepresented things to her, too. Didn't tell her they intend to operate a packet business against me and cut my throat, in addition to their regular coastwise shippin'. No; Crosby outlined it to her wholly as a fleet of coastwise schooners." "I vum!" "Mehitable usually tells me all her business. But she sorter kept this a secret from everybody. You know women do that--once in a while." "Folks here have said you've been kinder courtin' her late years. Funny she ain't let the cat out o' the bag 'fore this." "Oh--just intimate friends, that's all." Captain Bert cleared his throat. "Still, for her it may be a good investment. But cripes! The air was sizzlin' when I told her Crosby's goin' to put a packet on 'tween here and Boston to compete with me!" he chuckled. "Didn't like it, eh?"