He called Joe for’ard to help stretch the mainsail by means of swinging on the peak and throat-halyards.  To lay out on the long bowsprit and put a single reef in the jib was a slight task compared with what had been already accomplished; so a few moments later they were again in the cockpit.  Under the other lad’s directions, Joe flattened down the jib-sheet, and, going into the cabin, let down a foot or so of centerboard.  The excitement of the struggle had chased all unpleasant thoughts from his mind.  Patterning after the other boy, he had retained his coolness.  He had executed his orders without fumbling, and at the same time without undue slowness.  Together they had exerted their puny strength in the face of violent nature, and together they had outwitted her.

He came back to where his companion stood at the tiller steering, and he felt proud of him and of himself; and when he read the unspoken praise in ’Frisco Kid’s eyes he blushed like a girl at her first compliment.  But the next instant the thought flashed across him that this boy was a thief, a common thief; and he instinctively recoiled.  His whole life had been sheltered from the harsher things of the world.  His reading, which had been of the best, had laid a premium upon honesty and uprightness, and he had learned to look with abhorrence upon the criminal classes.  So he drew a little away from ’Frisco Kid and remained silent.  But ’Frisco Kid, devoting all his energies to the handling of the sloop, had no time in which to remark this sudden change of feeling on the part of his companion.

But there was one thing Joe found in himself that surprised him.  While the thought of ’Frisco Kid being a thief was repulsive to him, ’Frisco Kid himself was not.  Instead of feeling an honest desire to shun him, he felt drawn toward him.  He could not help liking him, though he knew not why.  Had he been a little older he would have understood that it was the lad’s good qualities which appealed to him—­his coolness and self-reliance, his manliness and bravery, and a certain kindliness and sympathy in his nature.  As it was, he thought it his own natural badness which prevented him from disliking ’Frisco Kid; but, while he felt shame at his own weakness, he could not smother the warm regard which he felt growing up for this particular bay pirate.

“Take in two or three feet on the skiff’s painter,” commanded ’Frisco Kid, who had an eye for everything.

The skiff was towing with too long a painter, and was behaving very badly.  Every once in a while it would hold back till the tow-rope tautened, then come leaping ahead and sheering and dropping slack till it threatened to shove its nose under the huge whitecaps which roared so hungrily on every hand.  Joe climbed over the cockpit-rail to the slippery after-deck, and made his way to the bitt to which the skiff was fastened.

“Be careful,” ’Frisco Kid warned, as a heavy puff struck the Dazzler and careened her dangerously over on her side.  “Keep one turn round the bitt, and heave in on it when the painter slacks.”