And so I would if any good would come of it, but putting out to sea a day like this because you bragged you would--risking your vessel and crew, or making hard work for them if nothing else--that ain't good sense, is it? Besides, I had to tell her something to get away without setting up to be a model of virtue. What else could I do? Women are the devil--sometimes--aren't they, Joe? There's some are. I suppose it wouldn't do any great harm to head her for home. I don't believe there's going to be much more fish going to be seined this fall--and wouldn't she make a passage of it in this easterly? Oh, Lord, it would be the race all over again, only ten times as long a drag." While he sat there in the cabin, smoking and meditating, letting us into his thoughts every now and then, the voices of some of our crew were heard on deck. We all went up and got the word that was being passed around. A coast steamer had just come to anchor in the harbor with the report that just outside--about ten miles to the west'ard--was a vessel, dismasted and clean-swept, and dragging toward the rocks. They could not help her themselves--too rough--a hurricane outside--to launch a boat was out of the question. They didn't mind taking a chance, they said, but to attempt her rescue would be suicide. It looked like a pretty hard chance going out in that gale, but Clancy didn't wait. "Nobody else seems to be hurrying to get out, and we being the able-est looking craft in the harbor, I callate it's up to us to go." He got the exact location of the distressed vessel from the coaster, and then it was up anchor, make sail, and out we went. There were people who called Clancy a fool for ordering out his vessel and risking his crew that day--men in that very harbor--and maybe he was. But for myself, I want that kind of a fool for my skipper. The man that will take a chance for a stranger will take a bigger chance for his own by and by. We saw her while we were yet miles away, down to the west'ard--near Whitehead and with the cruel stretch of rocks under her lee quarter. Even with plenty of sea-room she could not have lasted long, and here with these ledges to catch her she looked to be in for a short shrift. We had a good chance to get a look at her as we bore down. Everything was gone from her deck, even the house and rail. There was not as much loose wood on deck as would make a tooth-pick. Afterwards we learned that two seas hove her down so that they had to cut the spars away to right her, and then just as she was coming up another monster had caught her and swept her clean--not only swept clean, but stove in her planks and started some of her beams so that she began to leak in a fashion that four men to the pumps could just manage to keep up with.