"If this is goin' to sea," said Jackson Denslow, continuing the sour mutterings of the night, "I'm glad I never saw salt water before I got pulled into this trip." "It ain't goin' to sea," remarked another of the Smyrna amateur mariners. "It's goin' ashore!" He waved a disconsolate gesture toward the cove where the remains of the _Dobson_ swashed in the breakers. "If any one ever gets me navigatin' again onto anything desp'ritter than a stone-bo't on Smyrna bog," said Denslow, "I hope my relatives will have me put into a insane horsepittle." "Look at that!" shouted Ludelphus Murray. "This is a thunderation nice kind of a night to have a celebration on!" This yelp, sounding above the somniferous monotone of grumbling, stirred Cap'n Sproul from his dozing. He snapped his head up from his knees. A rocket was streaking across the sky and popped with a sprinkling of colored fires. Another and another followed with desperate haste, and a Greek fire shed baleful light across the waters. "Yes, sir," repeated Murray, indignantly sarcastic, "it's a nice night and a nice time of night to be celebratin' when other folks is cold and sufferin' and hungry." "What's the matter?" asked Hiram, stirring in his turn. The Cap'n was prompt with biting reply. "One of your Smyrna 'cyclopedys of things that ain't so is open at the page headed 'idjit,' with a chaw of tobacker for a book-mark. If the United States Government don't scoop in the whole of us for maintainin' false beacons on a dangerous coast in a storm, then I miss my cal'lations, that's all!" "That shows the right spirit out there," vouchsafed Hiram, his eyes kindling as another rocket slashed the sky. "Fireworks as soon as they've located us is the right spirit, I say! The least we can do is to give 'em three cheers." But at this Cap'n Sproul staggered up, groaning as his old enemy, rheumatism, dug its claws into his flesh. He made for the shore, his disgust too deep for words. "Me--me," he grunted, "in with a gang that can't tell the difference between a vessel goin' to pieces and a fireworks celebration! I don't wonder that the Atlantic Ocean tasted of us and spit us ashore. She couldn't stand it to drown us!" When the others straggled down and gabbled questions at him he refused to reply, but stood peering into the lifting dawn. He got a glimpse of her rig before her masts went over. She was a hermaphrodite brig, and old-fashioned at that. She was old-fashioned enough to have a figure-head. It came ashore at Cap'n Sproul's feet as _avant-coureur_ of the rest of the wreckage. It led the procession because it was the first to suffer when the brig butted her nose against the Blue Cow Reef. It came ashore intact, a full-sized woman carved from pine and painted white. The Cap'n recognized the fatuous smile as the figure rolled its face up at him from the brine. "The old _Polyhymnia_!" he muttered.