It was light enough then for Patsie Oddie to see that the _Eldorado_ was drifting, drifting, not rapidly as yet, but certainly and to sure destruction, with the ten souls aboard of her doomed as so many thousands of others had been doomed before them. And the wind was ever making, and the sea ever rising. She had both anchors out then, as Patsie Oddie saw, and he saw also when her chain parted. “Now she’s draggin’,” he muttered then, and waited to see what action Orcutt would take. “Why in God’s name don’t he do something?” and ordered the man at the wheel on the _Delia_ to stand down. Rounding to and laying the _Delia_ as near to the _Eldorado_ as he dared in that sea, he roared out to Orcutt: “What in God’s name are you doing there, Artie Orcutt? Don’t you see your one anchor can’t hold her? Cut the spars out of her--both spars, man!” Orcutt was frightened enough then, and in short order had the spars over the side. That helped her, but it could not save her. It was too late. She was still dragging--slowly, slowly, but sure as fate, and promising to drag more rapidly as the water grew shoaler. And it was getting shoaler all the time. Oddie threw up his hands. “They’re goin’! To-night will see her and them buried in the sand.” He turned to his crew, standing in subdued groups about the _Delia’s_ deck. “I want a man to go with me in the dory. Maybe we c’n get them off.” There were plenty ready to go; but he wanted only one. “No,” he said to one, “you’ve got a wife,” and to another, “You’ll be missed, too. I want somebody nobody gives a damn about--like myself!” and took a young fellow--there is always one such in every crew of fishermen--that swore he had not mother, father, brother, sister, nor a blessed soul on earth that cared whether he ever came home or was lost. And doubtless he was telling the truth, for he certainly acted up to it. A hard case he was, but a good fisherman. And courage? He had courage. He laughed--no affected cackle, but a good round laugh--when he leaped over the side and into the dory with Patsie Oddie. “If I don’t come back,” he called to his bunkmate, “you c’n have that diddy-box you’ve been so crazy to get--the diddy-box and all’s in it. For the rest, you c’n all have a raffle and give the money to the Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund, back in Gloucester.” “Malachi-boy, but you’re a man after my own heart,” said Oddie, as the dory lifted on to the seas and away from the shelter of the _Delia’s_ side. And Malachi laughed at that. There was what he lived for--where Patsie Oddie praised one must have been a man.