It was a plucky undertaking for the under-engined, under-manned tramp, but the _Alsatian_ sent extra hands aboard, and the two vessels crept slowly in toward the Atlantic coast, swung to the northward, and after a tedious voyage came in sight of Sandy Hook. The wild and tragic experience through which she had passed seemed incredible to those on board. So many days overdue was this crack liner of the International service that tugs had been sent to search for her. The newspapers reported her as missing and probably lost. “You and Johnny Kent will be grand-stand heroes,” said Jenkins P. Chase to Captain Michael O’Shea. “You have done a tremendously big thing, you know. By jingo, nothing is too good for you. Of course, the company will treat you handsomely and come down with the cash. But don’t forget my proposition. It still holds good. Come to my office and fill out a blank check and I’ll sign it like a shot. That murderous scoundrel, Vonderholtz, intended to throw me overboard. I saw it in his eyes.” “About that check, Mr. Chase,” said O’Shea with a friendly smile, “forget it. You are a great little man, and we forgive you for being so rich, but ’twas not the kind of a job that seafarin’ men take money for from a shipmate. Johnny and me had to find a way out. It was a matter of professional pride, as ye might say.” The rubicund engineer beamed his indorsement of this sentiment and added cheerily: “What the company chooses to give us will be our lawful due, which we earned in savin’ property and treasure. And if my share amounts enough to buy me a tidy little farm in the grand old State o’ Maine, I won’t envy you and your millions one darned solitary mite, Mr. Jenkins P. Chase. And I won’t feel like joining any Communal Brotherhood to take ’em away from you.” THE BRANDED MAN I An elderly man of ample girth was plying a hoe in a very neat and tidy vegetable garden. His battered, good-natured visage reflected pleasure in the task and contentment with existence. Blue overalls were hitched to his shoulders by a pair of straps. A lock of gray hair poked itself through a hole in his ragged straw hat. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up to display a pair of ponderous, sunburnt arms upon which were tattooed an anchor and a pink-eyed mermaid. Ever and anon this bucolic person turned his attention to a boy who was weeding the onion bed on his hands and knees, and thundered admonitions at him in a voice that carried across the pasture and startled the grazing cows. The youth thus bombarded showed no signs of terror. In fact, he grinned quite amiably as if hardened to threats of being skinned alive or triced up by the thumbs. Obviously, he considered his employer’s bark worse than his bite. At length the latter leaned on his hoe to remark with heated candor: “Say, Bub, those weeds grow faster than you pull ’em up. Is there anything slower than you in this part of the country?”