“What yacht—” began the squire. He had forgotten for the moment the alleged object of the trip to Mayville. “Oh, you mean my party?” he said. “Why, they won’t be here until night. I won’t need you two at all to-day. You can have the day off. Here’s fifty cents to buy both of you your dinners. You needn’t come back until night.” “Well,” said Ed Sanders as he and John Hart departed from the dock and went on up the main street of Mayville, “I thought the squire wasn’t hurt much by that bump he got yesterday in the cabin, but I declare if I don’t think it injured his brain. Did you ever know of his giving anybody fifty cents before?” “No, never did,” answered John Hart; “but if getting seasick has that effect on him, we’ll make him sick every time he goes out. Next southerly we get, with the tide running out, we’ll sail into the worst chop-sea we can find and give him a dollar’s worth.” Squire Brackett, however, watched them disappear with a satisfaction equal to theirs. He rubbed his hands like a money-changer, and stepped from the wharf aboard the _Viking_ with the assurance of a buccaneer. He almost imagined he was a sailor when a man on the wharf accosted him. “Fine boat you’ve got there,” said the stranger—evidently from the city. “She’s pretty good, if I do say it,” replied Squire Brackett, swelling out his chest and looking nautical. “Looks as though she might carry sail some,” continued the stranger, admiringly. “Ha!” exclaimed the squire. “The harder it blows the better we like it. My men say to me, time and time again, ‘Most too much wind, Captain Brackett; better reef, hadn’t we?’ ‘Not much,’ is what I say. ‘Let a topsail go if it wants to. I’ll buy another when that’s gone. Keep her down to her work. She’ll stand it.’ What’s the use of having a good boat if you keep her in a glass case, eh, sir?” “Well, I suppose that’s so,” replied the stranger, much impressed. “But you’ve got to have the nerve to do it.” “It’s nothing when you’re accustomed to it,” said Squire Brackett, taking a nautical survey of the sky, and rolling toward the companionway like an old salt. Before he began operations, however, he returned on deck, took the bow-line and drew the yacht close in to the pier, stepped off and cast loose the end of the line where it was made fast to a spiling. There was another line out astern, to which an anchor was attached, and which had been dropped at some distance from the boat. This was to keep the yacht from getting in too snug to the pier and scraping the paint from its sides. The squire took hold of this rope and drew the yacht out farther from the pier, so that no one could step aboard from there. Thus safe from interruption, he again went below and sprang breathlessly to the drawer.