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sand of halibut and fifteen thousand of fine cod after two days' fishing. Yes, well they might be halibut sixteen and eighteen cents a pound when they left Gloucester.

It was worth taking chances to get fish like that; and with a skipper who knew the bar as most men know their own kitchens, who could foretell the weather better than all the glasses in the country, who could keep run of a vessel and tell you where you were any time of the day or night out of his head-no need for him to be everlastingly digging out charts and taking sights-they were safe. Yes, sir, they were safe with this man. Fishing in twenty fathoms of water in that kind of weather looked badvery bad-and they wouldn't care to try it with everybody in heavy weather, but with a short scope and with Patsie Oddie on the quarter-why, that was a different matter altogether.

In the morning it was so thick that they couldn't see a length ahead; so the skipper, to be safe, kept the lead going. That afternoon it cleared, and they saw to anchor, but now inside of them, their neighbor of the day before.

Patsie Oddie looked her over. "What do you call her?" he asked finally of Martin Carr.

"The Eldorado or the Alhambra-I wouldn't want to say which, they being alike as two herring."

"That's right; they do look alike, Martin. But she's the Eldorado-Fred Wat

son.

But what's got into him this trip? Generally he fishes farther off. But 'tis Watson's vessel, anyway, and the blessed fool's got his dories out. He must be drunk-if he isn't foolish. But he don't drink-not gen'rally. What ails him at all? She'll be draggin' soon, if she isn't already. He don't seem to know much about that swell in there with an easterly wind-I misdoubt he ever fished in so close before-and if he don't let go his other anchor he'll soon be where a hundred anchors won't do him any good. And look at where some of his dories are now!"

Getting nervous under the strain, Oddie stood down and hailed the two men in the dory farthest from the Eldorado. They said they didn't know quite what to do-no signal to haul had yet been hoisted on the vessel. They guessed, though, they would hang on a while longer.

Patsie understood their feelings. No fisherman wants to be the first to cut and go for the vessel, and so lose fish and gear also. Losses of that kind have to be shared by the men equally. Not only that, but to have somebody look across the table at supper and say, "And so there were some that cut their gear and ran for it to-day, I hear?" No, men face a good bit of danger before that.

In the next of the Eldorado's dories they were pretty nervous, but said that as long as the others weren't cutting they weren't going to.

"That's right," said Patsie, "that's the way to feel about it. But take my advice and you'll buoy your trawls and come aboard of me. It's going to be the divil to pay on this bar to-night-and in these short days it'll soon be night.”

And they, knowing Patsie Oddie's reputation, buoyed their trawls and came aboard the Delia Corrigan. And after that Patsie picked up three more dories out of the blinding snow and took them aboard the Delia. By the time Patsie had those four dories of the Eldorado safe, it was too rough to attempt to put the men aboard their own vessel. "But I'll stand down and hail your vessel," said Patsie.

Now all this time it never occurred to Patsie Oddie that anybody but Fred Watson was master of the Eldorado. In the hurry and bustle of picking up the stray dories, there had been no time to talk of anything but the work in hand. And so his immense surprise when he made out Artie Orcutt standing by the quarter rail of the Eldorado, and so his anger when Orcutt called out before he himself had a chance to hail. "If you're getting so blessed jealous of me, Patsie Oddie, that you can't even see me get a good haul of fish without you trying to steal it from me

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The rest of it was lost in the wind, but there was enough in that much to make Patsie Oddie almost leap into the air. “So it's you, is it? Lord, and I'd known that, you c'n be sure I'd never tried to help you out." That was under his breath, with only a few near by to hear him. He wanted to say a whole lot more, and say it good and hard, evidently, but he didn't. All he did say to Orcutt before bearing away was, "You take my advice, Artie Orcutt, and you'll let go your second anchor." Just that and sheered off and left him.

"And how comes it Artie Orcutt's got the Eldorado?" he then asked of one of the men he had picked up.

"He came aboard at Saint Peer, where we put in with Captain Watson sick of the fever. He came aboard there and took charge."

"H-m!" Oddie stroked his beard and smiled-smiled grimly. "I don't see but what he brought it on himself." But that last as though he were talking to himself.

He looked over toward the Eldorado again. "I can't see that we can help him anyway," he said again, and the grim smile deepened. "We might just as well go below-there's the cook's call. Have ye're supper, boys, and we'll sway up, sheet in and stand out. Whatever Orcutt does, I know I'll not hang around here this night." With the words of their skipper to point the way, most of the Delia's crew agreed that, after all, it was not their funeral. Lord knows, a crew had enough to do to look out for their own vessel in that spot in bad weather. And as for Artie Orcutt-Lord, they all knew him and what he'd do if 'twas the other way about-if 'twas the Delia was in trouble.

But it was not Orcutt alone. There were nine others. That phase of it the crew argued out below, and that was what Patsie Oddie was wrestling with up on deck.

The lights gleamed out of forec's'le and cabin as hatches were slid and closed again, with watch after watch coming and going, but Oddie stayed there on deck. It was a bad deck to walk, too, the vessel pitching heavily and the big seas every once in a while breaking over her. But the skipper seemed to pay no attention, only stamped, stamped, stamped the quarter.

The men passed the word in the morning. “Walkin', walkin', walkin', always walkin', speakin' aloud to himself once in a while. Man, but if he's savin' it up for anybody, I wouldn't want to be that partic'lar party when he's made up his mind to unload."

And what was it his soul was wrestling with? What would any man's soul be wrestling with if he saw whereby a rival might be disposed of for good and for all? Especially when that rival was the kind of a man the woman in the case could not but realize after a great while was not the right kind-that no woman could continue to respect, let alone love.

And then? He had only to let him alone now-say no word, and there it was-destruction as certain as that wind and sea were making, as certain as the sun was rising somewhere to the east'ard.

All that, and the primal passions of Patsie Oddie for the untamed soul of Patsie Oddie to contend with. No wonder he looked like another man in the morning— that in the agony of it all he groaned-and he a strong man-groaned, yes, and pressed his hands to his eyes as one who would shut out the sight of horrid images. Only to think of Patsie Oddie groaning! Yet groan he did, and questioned his soul talking to something inside of him as if it were another man. "But it won't leave me a better man before God-and God knows, too, it won't make Delia happier. God knows it won't-it won't

It was light enough then for Patsie Oddie to see that the Eldorado was drifting, drifting, not rapidly as yet, but certainly and to sure destruction, with the ten souls aboard of her doomed as so many thousands of others had been doomed before them. And the wind was ever making, and the sea ever rising. She had both anchors out then, as Patsie Oddie saw, and he saw also when her chain parted. "Now she's draggin'," he muttered then, and waited to see what action Orcutt would take. "Why in God's name don't he do something?" and ordered the man at the wheel on the Delia to stand down.

Rounding to and laying the Delia as near to the Eldorado as he dared in that sea, he roared out to Orcutt: "What in God's name are you doing there, Artie Orcutt? Don't you see your one anchor can't hold her? Cut the spars out of her-both spars, man!"

Orcutt was frightened enough then, and in short order had the spars over the side. That helped her, but it couldn't save her. It was too late. She was still dragging -slowly, slowly, but sure as fate, and promising to drag more rapidly as the water grew shoaler. And it was getting shoaler all the time.

Oddie threw up his hands. "They're going! To-night will see her and them buried in the sand." He turned to his crew, standing in subdued groups about the Delia's deck. "I want a man to go with me in the Maybe we c'n get them off."

dory.

66

There were plenty ready to go. But he wanted only one. 'No," he said to one, "you've got a wife," and to another, "you'll be missed, too. I want somebody nobody gives a damn about-like myself!" and took a young fellow-there is nearly one such in every crew of fishermen that swore he hadn't mother, father, brother, sister, or a blessed soul on earth that cared whether he ever came home or was lost. And doubtless he was telling the truth, for he certainly acted up to it. A hard case he was, but a good fisherman. And courage? He had courage. He laughed-no affected cackle, but a good round laugh-when he leaped over the side and into the dory with Patsie Oddie.

"If I don't come back," he called to his bunk-mate, "you c'n have that diddy-box you've been so crazy to get—the diddy-box and all's in it. For the rest, you c'n all have a raffle and give the money to the widow's and orphan's fund, back in Gloucester."

"Malachi-boy, but you're a man after my own heart," said Oddie, as the dory lifted on to the seas and away from the shelter of the Delia's side. And Malachi laughed at that. There was what he lived for-where Patsie Oddie praised one must have been a man.

A dory is the safest small boat that the craft of man has yet devised for living in troubled waters. Handled properly, it will live where ships will founder. And yet, though in Patsie Oddie and Malachi Jennings there were the two men to the oars, it was too much even for the dory in that sea, and over she went before they were half-way to the Eldorado. The crew of the Delia, seeing them bob up, and for the time safely clinging to a plug-strap, whisked another dory to the rail and ready, but their skipper waved them back, and at last they could hear him calling out:

"Pay out an empty dory!" came the voice above the wind's opposition. Which they did, and speedily, and Patsie and Malachi got into it, and with great care, the two men lying in the bottom of it were hauled alongside the Delia and helped

aboard.

"No man can row a dory this day," was Patsie's first word. "And a man with big boots and oilskins overboard in that seatoo small a chance. But put a longer line on that same dory and pay it out again."

Which they did also, and in that way began to take the gang off the Eldorado.

Five trips of the dory were made, two of the Eldorado's crew coming back each trip, one crouched in the stern and the other lying flat on the bottom amidships. It was the roughest kind of a passage, and even when the dory would come alongside the Delia the carefullest of handling was needed to get them safely aboard.

Orcutt, of course, was the last man to come aboard. Bad as he was, he could do no less than that-stand by his vessel to the last. When he came alongside the Delia, he rose from the bottom of the dory, his companion having safely boarded the Delia, and lunged for the rail. Never a quick man on his feet, nor quick to think and act, and now trembling with anxiety, he made a mess of boarding. He had to stop long enough, too, to look up at Oddie and think what a fool of a man Oddie was altogether a mind like a child! So, in the middle of it all, he did not get the rise of the dory to throw him into the air. He waited just that instant too long it took nerve— and then he had to hurry, and the uprise of the dory was not there to throw him into the air and on to the Delia's rail. Clothes soaked in brine and heavy boots, a man is not a buoyant thing in the water, and this was a heavy sea. So Orcutt falling between dory and vessel went down-deep down-and when he came up it was where the tide swept down under the vessel's quarter.

Patsie Oddie, standing almost above him, caught the appeal of Orcutt's eyes, and then saw him go under again. "If he comes up again 'twill be clear astern," thought Oddie, “and the third time with all that gear on him he'll never come up— and if 'tisn't Providence, then what is it?” And this was a cold winter's day and Oddie himself was soaked in sea-water. "And if he don't come up," thought Oddie, “if he don't come up--Lord God, must I do more than I've done already for a man I don't like—a man that I know is no good-for a a man in my way-a man, too, that would no more go overboard for me, even on the calmest day, than he'd cut his own throat?" And there was that queer smile that Orcutt had thrown at him as he stood up in the dory-Oddie didn't forget that. And then he saw Orcutt's sou'-wester on the water and the man himself beneath it.

"Eighteen fathom and goin' into it straight's ever a vessel could go," said Oddie. "Wicked 'tis, but the one thing'll make me laugh when we go

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No more thought of that-overboard ter gale and a winter sea, and the strongest went Oddie with all his own weight of of tides against them! clothes, oilskins, woollens and big boots, while quick-witted men hove the bight of the main-sheet after him. And Oddie, grappling with the smothering and frightened Orcutt, smashed him full in the face. "Blast you, Artie Orcutt, there's fun in beating you even here," and hooked on to the collar of Orcutt's oil jacket with one hand and grabbed the main-sheet just before the tide would have carried them out of reach.

Safe on the deck of the Delia, Orcutt offered his hand to Oddie, who didn't seem to notice, but said, "If you go below, Captain Orcutt, you'll find a change of dry clothes in my room and you c'n turn in there and rest yourself."

"But I want to thank you," said Orcutt, overwhelmed.

"Take your thanks to the divil," said Oddie to that. ""Twas for no love of you I stood by. You c'n have the best on this vessel, but my hand-no. Go below or I'll throw you below." And Orcutt went below without any delay.

It was late in the afternoon then. Even while they were hoisting that last dory over the rail Oddie had given his orders to drive out. At first all thought she would come clear, but in a little while they began to doubt, and doubt turned to misgiving, and misgiving to certainty. Sea and wind were too much for them now. In saving the Eldorado's crew they had waited too long the tide was now against them also-and now it was no use. It was Oddie himself who said so at last and went aloft before it was too dark to take a look at the surf they were falling into.

He stayed aloft for about ten minutes, and when he came down all hands knew it was to be desperate work that night.

"Put her about," was his first order, and "Take a sounding, Martin," his second.

She came about in the settling blackness and started for shoal water.

"You might's well put her sidelights up," he said next. "Nobody'll get in our road to-night-nor we in anybody else's but we'll go ship-shape. And what do you get?" he asked of Martin, when the lead

came up.

"Eighteen fathom," was the word from Martin. Eighteen fathom, and this a win

"Sixteen fathom!" from Martin. "Sixteen? She's sure shoaling

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Oddie was at the wheel himself then and the Delia was beginning to feel the pounding. They couldn't see the sky at all, it was that black, but all around they could see the combers breaking white-so white that they made a kind of light of their own. And then it was, with the Lord knows how much wind behind them and seas masthead high and the little vessel taking it fair abeam, that the crew of the Delia and the crew of the Eldorado guessed what was running in Patsie Oddie's mind. He was to drive her across the bar! With all the sail in the Delia on her, to let her take the full force of it and bang her across the shoals, where soon there would not be enough water to let her set up on an even keel!

Martin Carr was heaving the lead all the time, and all noted how he made himself heard when it came to ten fathom.

"Ten fathom!" repeated the crew, and murmured it over till one got courage to ask: "Is it going to drown us you are, Captain Oddie?"

"I'm trying to save you, boys," he answered, and his voice was as tender as could be and yet be heard above a roaring gale.

"Nine and a half," and then, "Nine fathom!" came from Martin Carr, barely able to hold his place by the rail, the vessel was pitching so.

It was at eight fathoms that Artie Orcutt raised a cry of protest, and, hearing that, Oddie ordered Martin to sound no more. "Just bring the lead here, Martin," took a big bait knife he always kept on the house and with one stroke cut the lead-line off short. Then he opened the slide of the cabin companionway and hove the lead on to the cabin floor with a "There now, maybe we are goin' to be lost. I think myself that maybe we will, but some of ye mayn't die of fright now, anyway."

She was fair into it then, making wild work of it, with Oddie himself to the wheel, and all his great strength needed to hold her. He called one of his men to help him

once, and he, feeling the full force of it, now and again would start to ease her up a little, but the moment a spoke went down so much as a hair's breadth Patsie Oddie's big arms would work the other way. "Maybe you think this is a place to tack ship," Oddie said once, and the wheel stayed up and she took it full force.

How Oddie ever expected to save the Delia nobody ever knew, beyond trying to lift her across with the sheer weight of the wind to her sails. And that would be sheer luck, such luck as had never befallen a vessel in their plight before. Other men of courage with stout vessels must have tried that, they knew, and none of them had ever got over, nor come back to tell how close they came to it.

And that was all there was to it sheer luck-Oddie would have told them, had they asked him. And yet it was not luck altogether. True, he knew no channel across-there was no channel across and yet he knew there were little gullies scooped out here and there on the sandridges. And if a man could make one now and one again, jumping over the almost dry beach, as it were, between them-who knows?-it might be done. On a black night like this nobody could see the gullies, or on any kind of a night, for that matter, but then there was that something, he did not know what to call it, inside of him that told him the things he could not hear or see or feel. And then again, let a vessel alone and she will naturally shy for the deep water. Force her with the rudder, and she will go where the rudder sends her. Oddie forced her, but only to make her take the full weight of the wind. 'Twas necessary to drive her over if ever she was to get over at all. That something inside told him when her nose was nearing the high shoals—it came to him as if her quivering planks carried the message—there it was, put her off now, and now again, now hold her that the wind may have its lifting effect, now let her go and she'll find the way, That was the way of it-bang, bang, bang, on her side mostly, with her planks smashing against the bare bottom as she drove over the sand ridges-her stem rushing through at an awful clip when she found a gully a little deeper than usual.

The great seas broached over her, and it became dangerous to remain on deck. So

Oddie ordered all hands below and the slides drawn tight after them, fore and aft.

"I don't see the difference whether we're washed off up here or drowned below," said one. "Go below, just the same," said Oddie, and below they all went, while Oddie, lashing himself hard and fast, prepared for what further fury wind and sea had in store for himself and the Delia.

It was a sea to batter a lighthouse down. It takes shoal water for big seas, and this certainly was shoal water, with the sand off bottom swirling around deck. A noble vessel was the Delia, but when the sea took charge that night everything was swept clean from her decks. Dories first-herown eight and the four of the Eldorado's that had been picked up, twelve in all-went with one smash. Oddie allowed himself a little pang as he watched them, heard the crash. It was too dark to see them clearly, but he knew how they looked-floating off in the white combers in kindling wood. The booby-hatches went next, and after them the gurry-kids-match-wood all. Everything that wasn't bolted went. The very rails went at last, crackling from the stanchions as if they were cigar-box sides when they did go.

""Twill be the house next," muttered Oddie. "And then her planks will come wide apart-and then" He rolled it between his teeth. "Well, then we'll all go together. But"-he locked his jaws again -" drive her you must, Patsie Oddie,” and bang, bang, smash, bang, and smash again he held her to it.

And in the morning she came clearstill an awful sea on and wind to tear the heart out of the ocean itself, but clear water

beautiful, clear water. By the morning light he saw what he could not see in the dark night, that her port anchor was gone from her bow-scraped off against the bottom—and that her decks were covered with the sand off the bottom also, but she herself

his darling Delia-was all right. There was nothing gone that couldn't be replaced

maybe a bit loose in the seams, perhaps, but, Lord, Gloucester was full of good calkers-and now they had the beautiful clear water. God be praised! And, after all, if never a woman in all the world smiled on him again, 'twas worth while saving men's lives.

Oddie drew the slide back from the cabin

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