"It's so onnatural hot, too." George Johnston stroked his mouth meditatively and gazed at the heavy, oily sea. "Besides," with a jerk at the red head, "he has n't got nothing to commend him, an' it's my opinion that there ain't no law that can compel him to share and share alike, if he jes eats and sleeps an' don't talk. It 'pears to me that it don't take more 'n ten days to get over a rip-snortin' drunk. I suspicion he's done sumphin' he had n't orter, an' he 's Jonahin' the hull trip."

The two men looked at each other darkly, and gravely nodded in unison. For it must be admitted that as a companion on the cruise Sandy McKiver had so far been a failure. Sulky and surly and rude, he resented all attempts at friendliness, until the crew gave him up in disgust, and the skipper himself regretted shipping so crabbed a hand.

Indeed, the atmosphere on board the Finance was a little prickly. Never in the memory of the twelve men had such extraordinary August calm occurred in January. The winter of 1888, remarkable for fateful contrasts, had now begun its atmospheric coquetry. The sticky rigging, the brazen sky, the leaden sea, the lumpy waves of vitreous and iridescent surfacethese were more exasperating than wind and frozen foam and the bone in the schooner's teeth that stirs the sailor's heart. Some people might have looked apprehensively at the flapping sails, and have listened to the wailing of the blocks with a dull fear, wondering what the foil to this stupendous calm would be. But the fishermen chafed at the lost time and at their forced inertness. For every hook had long been ganged, and every trawl was properly stowed in its respective bucket, ready for bait and business. No, the twelve men had only two guides-the barometer and superstition. The skipper said the barometer was all right, but McKiver, the thirteenth man, had become the superstition of the

crew.

There he lay, his head propped up against a dory's mast and sail, motionless, with a look of ineffable weariness on his coarse face,—refining it a little in the sight of angels, but not in the recognition of his mates, there he lay, the pathetic spectacle of a strong man cast out of humanity because he had cast manhood

out of his heart. What thoughts swept like bats through his dark brain! Indistinct visions of dishonor that seemed for the first time to be unmanly, an undefined disgust for the liquor that starved Kate, a remorse that was beginning to emerge as from a dense fog, a surprised suspicion that he had been a coward to his wife in the moment when he should have pleaded on his knees for forgiveness, and a growing desire to touch Kate-honest, warmhearted Kate-and to hear his little kid squeal. How he cursed the Finance, its captain, and its crew! How he cursed the enforced idleness! It made him think. But, without knowing it, thought was molding him into a man.

So they drifted into Eastport, and found no bait. Then a little breeze sprang up, and they ran for Cutler. There they baited up, sailing for Georges thirteen days after they had left Fairharbor. There were not a few on board that afternoon who put that ominous figure and McKiver's advent together, and asserted that no good could come from the combination.

But McKiver, now busy for the first time baiting up his two buckets of trawls, smiled grimly upon his mates, and forgot his thoughts. For the weather was turning cold, the barometer was dropping, and the wind was rising from the northwest. Before the crew realized it, each man was clumsy in woolen clothes, jumpers, oilskins, rubber boots, mittens, and sou'westers, and they were hove to under a handkerchief, in a blinding gale of snow and wind, their only mark had been Seal Island off their port bow, and that mark had disappeared in the drift.

Sudden changes at sea are the meat and drink of the fishermen. They are part of that exciting life which will turn in at four bells in a calm, and stumble out of the bunk at two bells in a "snorter," without the slightest trace of resentment. It did not take the crew of the Finance long to get their ship into shape. Even in the stinging flail of snow, before the night came and the sea arose in his wrath, the deck was cleared of every movable thing except the two nests of dories that were snugly lashed together between the masts amidships. Trawls, buckets, pens, buoys, and spare sails were stowed below near the fresh herring, that had no need of ice to keep them fresh, so cold had it already

become. By night the wheel was lashed and the Finance jogging without helmsman, meeting the buffets of the storm with almost human intelligence. The men were all huddled below, with hatches fast. Four stayed aft: the skipper, Fred, George, and McKiver. They sat in silence, each in his

own bunk, bent over with chin in hands, their shoulders pressed upon the upper berths, their feet steadied on the floor, immovable, a part of the swaying, protesting, creaking fittings and furniture. There they smoked, clad in their thick clothes and oilskins, ready for any emergency, re

garding the sullen storm with expressionless faces. Forward in the cuddy the other nine men were cut off from their mates except by a venture along the life-line, which it had already become a mockery to grasp. A horizontal icicle, when the boat pitches to escape the demoniac onslaught of a curler, when the blinding snow cuts like a rain of stilettos, and when the gale plucks at you with the force of a limited express, is not the tenderest guide to conduct you to safety.

"Whar's she at, skip?" Fred Briant noted the skipper's glance at the barometer. This prophet of the deep, this more than wife to the sailor, on the interpretation of whose moods hang the life and death of the seafarer, lay comfortably upon the skipper's pillow on its back, its fateful black needle pointing five points below "France," where it seemed to hold with a pertinacity worthy of a happier cause.

"Steady at five!" roared the skipper, in a lull of comparative calm from the bombardment of the storm. "I say, Sandy, shovel a little more coal."

Sandy McKiver's face lighted with a smile of response. He was no longer sullen and offish. His face had become purified from whisky, and resolute. Responsibility had clothed him with a new complexion; danger had given his wavering eyes directness and aim. He was as different from the McKiver of a week ago as a ravenous bluefish is from a slothful, wormy rockcod. With consummate dexterity he glided over the heaving, pitching floor to the coal-locker, and filled up the hungry stove without losing a lump.

coal question was liable to become serious, Three days of such penetrating weather would easily use up a three-weeks supply. Why, the snow and ice lay thick upon the companionway, and were fast becoming a slush on the cabin floor. Even now, a wilder flurry blew a gust of fine sleet down from the crack of the companionway above, and landed it at the foot of the stove, where it lay unmelted. The four men regarded this patch of snow, each wondering how long it would take for it to disappear.

Suddenly Fred Briant arose, felt the buckles of his rubber boots, tightened up his oilskin, pulled the flaps of his sou'wester over his ears and buttoned them under his chin, and drew on a pair of thick woolen mitts having about the indefinite discoloration of tapioca pudding. He swayed up to the companionway.

"I guess I'll go an' see how the boys is for'ard," he explained casually. "I'll bring back some feed an' coffee, an' see how the coal is holdin' on. Bear a hand there, George, an' shut the slide on me."

"Hol' on!" Sandy McKiver stood to his height. "I want a breath of air, an' two is better 'n one in this hell. A couple o' extra buckets o' coal would come in handy jes now, hey, skipper?"

Fred Briant looked at the man he had once despised, and his underhanging lip trembled a little. Then suddenly he shot out a clammy mitt and clasped McKiver's huge hand. 'Come on, mate! he roared. "An' if any one says you 're not white, I 'll sliver him, by -!"

66

The two men forced their heads and

Fred and George cast glances at each other as if they were casting for trout. These said plainly that Sandy McKiver was fit for something else than the bait-mill. It was their discovery, and they were proud of it. Coal was a secondary subject when they perceived that their sodden mate had become somewhat of a man. Let the poets prate about the furnace of affliction! It is the ice of desperation that brings out true. manhood and its worth.

How cruelly cold it was! Even the stove, pushed to its utmost, could hardly keep the frost on the mustaches of the men from steaming like little bergs of ice. But McKiver saw by the skipper's face that the

lifting a monstrous weight. In the opening of the companionway slide the cabin was flooded with flurry and roar.

Left alone, the skipper sat regarding George Johnston struggling to get the slide in place. Then he opened his oilskin and tucked his barometer into his breast and carefully buttoned it in. He slid over to the impoverished coal-locker and inspected it thoughtfully; then he said:

"Let 's jine 'em, George. This ain't no place for us. We 're better in the cud. One stove is all we can afford, an' the glass ain't goin' up none. Come, let her go!"

In a quarter of an hour two more beaten, exhausted pygmies clawed at the forecastle

seventy-two hours, the wind abated, the snow ceased, and the temperature rose. The horizon presented an ominous band of crape. The sea was still as rebellious as a litter of wildcats. For an hour the crew cleared deck and chopped ice. The vessel was considerably lightened, and groaned less; but the captain shook his head.

"Boys," he said, "it 's no use. We 're runnin' out o' coal 'bout as fast as we run out of Eastport. Haul in on them sheets an' make it nor'west by no'th. I want to fetch Shelburne. The glass is droppin' like He's down to twenty-nine an'

scootin'."

Even as the skipper spoke, the clouds closed in; the snow obscured all things from sight, and the hurricane leaped upon the Finance as if loosed by Satan himself. There was now no such thing as waiting in the closed cuddy with lashed helm for the weather to change. It had become a battle for life, and every man on board knew it. It was now watch and watch, and a thrash to quarter in an Arctic hurricane, and a thrash back. Two at the helm, two on the lookout with nothing to see, and two amidships ready for the last emergency-the rest below waiting their turn.

Hell has bequeathed to earth no greater horror than the anticipation of inevitable disaster or death. The convicted murderer dies a thousand tortured deaths before the painless moment of electrocution. Indeed, the evil he dreaded comes to him as a positive relief. So the hopelessly besieged have welcomed the final onslaught of a pitiless enemy. So the exhausted, sleepless crew of the Finance welcomed the shriek of the lookout, electrifying them into an activity which eagerly faced the known. Death now mockingly held before them the hopeless prize of life.

It was two o'clock in the morning when the cry of "Breakers ahead! She's struck!" sent every man to the rigging. Pounding, overwhelmed, gashed, the old fisherman staggered over the outlying reefs, and brought up bow on in the embrace of two rampant ledges, sunken at high tide. The wind howled hysterically. The snow cut like powder of steel. Then the waves began to play with an easy prey. There were four hours left before dawn to strew the coast with kindling-wood and battered corpses. As a relish, the sea first tore the rudder from its fastenings and hurled it at

LXVI.-110

the granite shore; that could not have been more than a few hundred feet away. For the crew could plainly distinguish the processional of the surf by its thunder, and the recessional by the rattle of gravelthe suction of a sure death.

In the first lull of onslaught delay meant but suicide before sure execution; immediate action was imperative to hope. The deck was white with foam. At every punch the ship grunted horribly. The nest of dories had long since disappeared like curlews in the scud. The mainmast now went by the board with the successive spitting cracks of a gust of spiteful artillery. Fortunately, for the moment the crew had instinctively made for the foremast rigging. It generally lasts a little longer.

But Sandy McKiver was transfigured by a delirium of joy. It was a savage, elemental joy, such as Nolan felt when he led the Six Hundred, such as Shaw felt when he marshaled his faithful blacks into certain death, such as every hero feels when he faces inevitable destruction, and by his undaunted courage dares the miracle that alone can save him. There McKiver stood on the last ratline of the rigging, one hand clutching the rope, while with the other he sheltered his eyes from the snow and scum, trying to pierce the darkness and discover the distance of the shore. His eyes blazed so hot a defiance to the wrecking fury that one might have wondered why the ice that enveloped his face did not melt. For McKiver now felt for the first time what others of the crew had muttered when he staggered aboard, drunk. His sin-a coward's sin, a man's desertion of a loving wifewas being visited upon his innocent mates; and now expiation leaped like lava in his blood, although he had never heard of Moses and the goat.

Ah, but he felt as strong as the keel that still held the vessel together in the remorseless surf! Ah, but he felt as unconquerable as the granite rock against which waves beat in vain! His thoughts were fast and furious, like the storm. Perhaps Kate was dead, starved by her husband, and the kid gone too, murdered by his neglect. "Kate, old gal!" he kept saying to himself. "By hell itself can't wipe me out without makin' it up somehow." His right arm shot out, defying the force of the whole Atlantic, and his hand caught in mid-air—a Rope!