He stood at the one space that was kept cleared on his counter, hairy fists on the brown, hacked plank—­the notches of the yard-stick and fathom-stick cut with a jackknife on its edge—­his pale eyes sparkling as he talked.

“There she wallered,” went on the narrator of maritime disaster, “her cargo held together by rotting sheathing and straining ribs.  She was wrung by the seas like a dishrag in a woman’s hands.  She no longer mounted the waves; she bored through ’em.  ’Twas a serious time—­to hear Cap’n Am’zon tell it.”

“I guess it must ha’ been, Abe,” Milt Baker put in hastily.  “Gimme a piece o’ that Brown Mule chewin’ tobacker.”

“I’ll sell it to ye, Milt,” the storekeeper said gently, with his hand on the slide of the cigar and tobacco showcase.

“That’s what I mean,” rejoined Milt boldly, fishing in his pocket for the required nickel.

“For fourteen days while the Posy Lass was drivin’ off shore before an easterly gale, Cap’n Am’zon an’ two others, lashed to the stump o’ the fo’mast, ex-isted in a smother of foam an’ spume, with the waves picklin’ ’em ev’ry few minutes.  And five raw potaters was all they had to eat in all that endurin’ time!”

“Five potatoes?” Lawford Tapp cried.  “For three men?  And for fourteen days?  Good-night!”

Cap’n Abe stared at him for a moment, his eyes holding sparks of indignation.  “Young man,” he said tartly, “you should hear Cap’n Am’zon himself tell it.  You wouldn’t cast no doubts upon his statement.”

Cap’n Joab snorted and turned his back again.  Young Tapp felt somewhat abashed.

“Yes, sir!” proceeded Cap’n Abe who seldom lost the thread of one of his stories, “they was lashed to that stump of a mast and they lived on them potaters—­scraping ’em fine with their sheath-knives, and husbandin’ ’em like they was jewels.  One of ’em went mad.”

“One o’ the potaters?” gasped Amiel Perdue.

“Who went crazy—­your brother, Cap’n Abe?” Milt asked cheerfully.  He had squandered a nickel in trying to head off the flow of the storekeeper’s story, and felt that he was entitled to something besides the Brown Mule.

Cap’n Abe kept to his course apparently unruffled:  “Cap’n Am’zon an’ the other feller lashed the poor chap—­han’s an’ feet—­and so kep’ him from goin’ overboard.  But mebbe ’twarn’t a marciful act after all.  When they was rescued from the Posy Lass, her decks awash and her slowly breakin’ up, there warn’t nothing could be done for the feller that had lost his mind.  He was put straightaway into a crazy-house when they got to port.

“Now, them fellers saved from the Gilbert Gaunt didn’t go through nothin’ like that, it stands to reason.  Cap’n Am’zon——­”

Lawford Tapp was gazing out of the door beside Cap’n Joab, whose deeply tanned, whisker-fringed countenance wore an expression of disgust.