"And why stop because of the Widow Barnes?" asked Bill, suddenly interested. "I'm game to do it. I don't want to see you done out of business by that Crosby outfit. Jobs are scarce, and I'm quite satisfied with this one. Will you give me leave to dispose of those schooners for you?" "Why, of course not! I just--was thinkin'--how anybody _might_ do it--that's all." "It would be easy as----" "Let's drop the subject. Come on aboard the _Mary_, Bill." But the thought of striking underhandedly at the Crosby fleet was planted in Captain Bert's brain. The schooners had all been towed to Howesport from the shipyards by tugboats. It was doubtful whether their crews were yet organized; probably only a few men kept watch on the vessels while they lay in the Cowyard waiting for the Crosby Company to begin shipping operations. "I've knocked around the water long enough to know that a new company like this Crosby outfit has fired all its ammunition in its opening shot," insisted Bill, while they prepared the _Mary Chilton_ for clearing Robbins Wharf. "Who ever heard of a new company in coastwise shipping starting out bang with six vessels? Two would be a plenty, for an opener. And they're all brand new two-masters, too. Must have cost a bunch of money. Cap'n, if we dispose of those schooners somehow, the Crosby Company is dead." Captain Bert was silent a moment. It did seem logical. But the widow--she was so tormented scrupulous. Being honest, doing nobody wrong--that was about all he heard when he took frequent suppers and Sunday dinners with her. He had even dreamed that some day, if the packet business held good, he would make those meals permanent fixtures in his life by marrying the widow. "Those old barrels in the hold--they're some the _Mary's_ owner-to-be asked me to fetch him," continued Bill. "There's a lot of dunnage in there with them. Lord, the _Mary's_ a regular floating junk shop!" "She always was," drily commented the captain. "Leaks, rolls, and the deck is so rotten in places you'd go through if you stepped out a hornpipe. Any man who can sell her ought to be Secretary of the Navy." It was nine o'clock when the _Mary Chilton_ cast off and headed under full sail down the harbor toward Cape Cod Bay. There was no moon, and a thin fog blew over the water in a fair June breeze. Captain Blackmer stood aft at the wheel. Bill was puttering around, first in the foc'sle, then in the hold. The southwesterly breeze began to pick up off-shore. Dead ahead in the fog veil loomed the six schooners. Salt water politics! Captain Bert recollected that he had played them before. There was the time, when he was an A. B., that the old bark _Shannon Magec_ rammed the Dutch brig off the Brazilian coast, and he and the rest of the crew looted her cargo. He had never told Widow Barnes about that. Then, too, there were other things he had never told her--but what she didn't know wouldn't harm her. [Illustration]