Two chains there were, like double-leashes to a whippet’s throat.  The heave of the sea would get her and up she would ride, shaking, snapping, quivering to get her head.  Up, up she would go, and as she struggled up, up, Bowen, watching, would find himself crying out, “By the Lord, she’s parted them.”  But no—­Gr-r—­the iron chains would go, Kr-r the iron hawse-holes would echo, and, suddenly brought to, dead she would stop, shake herself, and again shake herself to get free; but always the savage chains would be there to her throat, and down she would fall trembling; and the white slaver would scatter a cable length from her jaws as she fell.

Bowen, with an arm hooked into a weather-stay, would stand out and watch her by the hour; and “Some fine night you’ll break loose,” he would say over and over to himself, “and then there’ll be the devil to pay around here,” and on returning to the cabin he would tell Nelson about it.

“No, no,” Nelson would shake his head, and after he had had time to think it over, he would smile at Bowen’s fears.  On nights like these, when he couldn’t have his little game because he couldn’t keep the checkers from hopping off the board, Nelson liked to lie in his bunk, within range of the big, square, sawdust-filled box which set just forward of the cheerful stove.  With eyes mostly on the oil-clothed floor, the light-keeper would smoke and yarn unhurriedly.  “No, no,” Nelson would repeat.  “For nineteen year now she ban here, yoost like you see now.  No drift for ol’ 67.  She ban too well trained.”

But the chafed-out chains gave way at last.  Christmas Eve it was, the night when Bowen had hoped to be through with his work.  It was also the third and worst night of the gale, and Bowen, restless, homesick, was on deck to see it.  She leaped and strained as she had leaped and strained ten thousand times before—­and then they writhed, those chains, like a stricken rattlesnake, for perhaps three seconds, and S-s-t!—­quick as that—­they went whistling into the boiling sea.  Off she sprang then—­Bowen could no more than have snapped his fingers ere she was off—­foolishly, wildly, and then, almost as suddenly as she had leaped, she fetched up.  It was as if she didn’t know just what to do in her new freedom.  And while she paused, the sea swept down and caught her one under the ear.  Broadside she broached and aboard her foamed the ceaseless sea, and the wind took her.  And whing! and bing! and Kr-r-r-k!—­that was the life-boat splintered and torn loose.  And sea, and wind, and tide, all working together on old 67, away she went before it.

Inshore, they knew, the high surf was booming; and they made sail then, and for a while thought they could weather it; but when the whistling devils caught the rotten, age-eaten, untested canvas—­whoosh! countless strips of dirty, rusty canvas were riding the clouded heavens like some unwashed witches.

[Illustration:  By and by he caught an answering call]