Pepeeta continued to press his hand and that gentle sign of love revived his drooping courage. Perhaps there is no other act so full of reassuring power as the pressure of a human hand. Neither a glance from the eye nor a word from the lips can equal it. The fainting pilgrim, the departing friend, the discouraged toiler, the returning prodigal welcome it beyond all other symbols of helpfulness or love, and the dying saint who leans the hardest on the "rod and the staff of God" as he goes down into the dark valley finds a comfort scarcely less sweet in the warm clasp of a human hand. Just as the courage of this daring navigator of the sea of crime had been restored by this signal of his loved one's trust, the boat grated on the beach. "Can we find a minister who will marry us at this time of night?" David said to the ferryman, although he had been careful to ask this question before. "Two blocks south and three east, second door on the right hand side," he answered laconically, as he received the fare. Such adventurers passed often through his hands and their ways were nothing new. The fugitives drove hurriedly to the designated house, knocked at the door, were admitted and in a few moments the final act which sealed their fate had been performed. CHAPTER XVI. THE DERELICTS "Born but to banquet and to drain the bowl." --Homer. The "Mary Ann" had just returned from a trip to New Orleans, and while waiting for her cargo lay moored at the foot of Broadway. As the quack ascended her gang-plank the captain and mate rose to greet him. There was not on the entire river, where so many extraordinary characters have been evolved, a more remarkable pair. The captain was five feet four inches in height, round, ruddy, mellow and jocund. A complete absence or suppression of moral sense, together with health as perfect as an animal's, had rendered him insensible to all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. He had never shed a tear save in excessive laughter, and sorrow had never yet struck a dart through the armor of fat in which he was sheathed. The mate was his counterpart and foil. Six feet and three inches tall, he was long-legged, lantern-jawed and goggle-eyed. Bilious in his constitution, he was melancholic in his temperament, had been crossed in love and soured at twenty, betrayed and bankrupted at thirty, and at forty had turned his back upon the world, forswearing all its amusements but those of the table, which his poor digestion made more painful than pleasurable, all of its ambitions but those of getting money And all friendships but those of the captain, to whom he was attached like a limpet to a rock. Such were the leading characteristics of the two worthies who rose from their deck-stools to meet the doctor as he rolled up the gangway. "Howdy, doctor?" said the mate, in the peculiar drawling vernacular of the poor whites of the south, extending a hand as cold and hard as an anchor.