He had offered to attend Tobias in his duty at the top of the tower more for the purpose of getting away from the women than for any other reason. He seized the broom and followed Tobias with the scraper out upon the open gallery. If the storm had seemed furious before supper, it had risen to a top gale now. The two men could scarcely face it on the windward side. The gale came in blasts that slapped their burden of snow against the lighthouse with great force. Ralph was barely able to keep his feet. But the sturdy lightkeeper went about the task with a certain phlegm. They managed to free the glass of its curtain of snow. Then Ralph staggered around to the sheltered gallery, on the heels of Tobias. The younger man’s was a gloomy face when they once more entered the lamp room. "Cheer up," said Tobias, getting his breath and eyeing Ralph aslant. "They tell me the worst is yet to come. Though I tell you fair, Ralphie, if the last end o’ my life is anywhere as hard as what happened me when I shipped cabin boy on the old _Sarah Drinkwater_, the good Lord help me to bear it! "Why, Ralphie, from the time she was warped out o’ the dock at Provincetown till we unloaded them box shocks at Santiago I didn’t git to git my clothes off—no, sir! "We _did_ have bad weather, I cal’late, though I never got out on deck often enough the whole endurin’ v’y’ge to observe the sea and sky. I was washing dishes, making up berths, cleaning pots and pans, peeling ’taters and turmits, and seeding raisins for the skipper’s plum duff most o’ the time. "Seeding raisins! Oh, sugar, I got to thinkin’ that if that was all going to sea meant, I might better have got a job in a scullery and kept on an even footing. And I purty nigh got my lips in such a pucker whistling while I seeded them raisins (cookie wouldn’t trust me otherwise) that I never did get ’em straight since. "Say, lemme tell you!" proceeded Tobias, his weather-stained face beaming in the glow of the great Argand light. "Cap’n Drinkwater demanded his plum duff for supper ev’ry endurin’ day of the v’y’ge, no matter what the weather was. He had an old black cook, Sam Snowball, that had got so’s he could make that pudding to the queen’s taste. "Lemme tell you! The skipper was that stingy that he fed the crew rusty pork and weevilly beans, and a grade of salt horse that would make a crew of Skowegians mutiny. But the _Sarah Drinkwater_ never made long enough v’y’ges for her crew to mutiny—no, sir! "But that plum duff—oh, sugar! Bein’ the boy, I never got more’n the lickin’s of the dish. If I got enough ’taters and salt horse to fill my belly so’s to keep my pants up, I was lucky. The skipper and the mate divided the duff between ’em. "Ahem!" he added critically, "you don’t look as though there was any plums at all in your duff, Ralph." "There isn’t," returned the young man shortly.