Captain Douglas had used those very words to describe the bo'sun when he and the mate spoke at mess. But Pete Jackson felt no qualms of plagiarism in borrowing the apt phrases. He even remembered a little more the new skipper had said. "Tug," Jackson advised with a superior air, "I think you'd better take a home study course next voyage in the elements of physics and chemistry. That's what you need--a little educating. Take it from the Captain and me." For a long moment, Tug Skelly played miserably with fingers that were like bananas. Then he heaved a sigh and turned. At the bulkhead, however, he looked back. "Edjacation," he asserted with a truculent nod, "ain't everything, Pete. No, sir!" And with that Tug lumbered out. Pete Jackson snorted and turned troubledly once again to his forward sight. The nearer the _Lucifer_ got to the Straits, the more the first mate found himself wishing they were back on the good old slow lanes. There were no familiar skymarks here; and the _Lucifer_ was being guided by dead reckoning. Yet, remembering young Douglas's words, Jackson took heart. "Witches!" Pete Jackson scoffed aloud to the empty bridge round him. "Hah!" But the sneer didn't sound too convincing even to himself. * * * * * It was the beginning of the long middle watch, when most of the _Lucifer's_ crew slept; but Tug Skelly returning to his bunk didn't go right to sleep as usual. Instead, he paced his narrow deck for many long minutes--before finally beginning an activity that would undoubtedly have astonished any of his shipmates if they had been awake to witness it. Out of his cabin locker, Tug dragged his battered bulger. And as he donned it the bo'sun's massive face, gargoyled by the port starlight, wore a strangely desperate but determined expression. He went down into the holds and stayed there for some time before he finally emerged on the hull. All during the long watch that ticked away inside the peaceful _Lucifer_, a shapeless, bulging form toiled outside her hull. The myriad stars roundabout blinked in amazement at the tiny, squid-like object that moved on the great hull. They watched with endless curiosity as the moving blob several times disappeared from view only to reappear again. And they marveled greatly at how the aspect of the hull was changed wherever the restless object toiled. When finally the blob disappeared for the last time, the stars blinked in delighted wonder at the vision he had left them. The middle watch inside the _Lucifer_ was not yet ended when Tug Skelly crawled out of his bulger and toppled into his bunk like a stricken Sequoia. * * * * * "_Captain. Captain Douglas._" The _Lucifer's_ young skipper opened his eyes, focused them on the lad who was shaking him by the shoulder, and sat upright. It was Andy, the galley-boy, who stood before the bed, his tow-thatched face screwed up puzzledly.