"Why, after waiting until I was sure they were gone, I'd come home." "And your flag?" "Half-mast." "Half-mast--that's it. I hope you'll never have to fly a half-masted flag, Johnnie. But suppose you did see them, and they were in shoal water, say--and the shoals to looard, of course, and it blowing----" "I'd stand in and get them." "And it blowing hard--blowing hard, Johnnie?--and shoal--shoal water?" "Why"--Johnnie was looking troubled--"why, I'd have to stand in just the same, wouldn't I?" "Your own men and you ask me, Johnnie-boy?" "Why, of course I'd have to stand in and get them." "And if you got in so far you couldn't get out--you got smothered, say?" "Why, then--then we'd be lost--all hands would be lost." Poor Johnnie! he was all but crying. "That's it. And that's where some would say you showed yourself a man, and some a fool, Johnnie-boy. Some would say, 'Use judgment--think of the other eighteen or twenty men safe aboard the vessel.' Would you use judgment, or what, Johnnie?" "M-m--I don't know. What would you do, Captain Clancy?" "What d'y' think I'd do, Johnnie?" Clancy drew the boy up and tucked the little face to his own broad breast. The rest of us knew well enough what Clancy would do. "Judgment hell!" Clancy would say, and go in and get lost--or maybe get away with it where a more careful man would be lost--but we waited to hear what Johnnie--such a little boy--would say. He said it at last, after looking long into Clancy's face. "I think you'd go in, Captain Clancy." Clancy laughed at that. "Lord, Johnnie-boy, no wonder everybody loves you. No matter what a man does, all you see is the best that's in him." It was time to clean up then, and Johnnie of course was bound to help. V FROM OUT OF CROW'S NEST "What'll I do with this?" asked Johnnie, in the middle of the cleaning up, holding up a pan of sweepings. "Oh, that"--Clancy naturally took charge--"heave it overboard. Ebb tide'll carry it away. Heave it into the slip. Wait--maybe you'll have to hoist the hatches. 'Tisn't raining much now, anyway, and it will soon stop altogether. Might as well go aloft and make a good job of the hatches, hadn't he, Peter?" "Wait a minute." Peter was squinting through the porthole. "I shouldn't wonder but this is one of our fellows coming in. I know she's a banker. The Enchantress, I think. Look, Tommie, and see what you make of her." Clancy looked. "That's who it is, Peter. Hi, Johnnie, here'll be a chance for you to hoist the flag. Hurry aloft and tend to the hatches, as Peter says, and you can hoist the flag for the Enchantress home from the Banks."