But instead of going to the seamen’s employment offices, Tunis had to turn to himself, while the heavier pieces of freight were lowered down the hatchway of the schooner.  It was near evening when the hatch was battened down and a small tug snaked them out of the dock and from among the greater shipping, and gave them a whistled blessing in midstream.

All hands and the skipper tailed on to the sheets and got her canvas spread.  Then the skipper went below to the galley and prepared supper.  Tunis Latham could be no stickler for quarter-deck etiquette on this voyage, that was sure.

But although the hands growled, and even Horry looked sour, Tunis seemed strangely excited; indeed, he looked less woebegone than he had for many a day.  Something seemed to have given him a new zest in life.  He even spoke to the hands cheerfully, and they were a trio of as surly dogs as ever quarreled with their food and a ship’s officers.

“I’ll lay up at the cove until I get a decent crew this time, if I lose all my existing contracts,” Tunis said to Zebedee.  “I’ll find a bunch of men who are not afraid of their shadows.  Huh!  Hoodooed, is she?  I’ll show ’em that she can sail, even if Davy Jones himself sits on her bowsprit!”

There was wind enough, in all good conscience.  They discovered that before they were out of the bay.  It had shifted into the northeast, and the Seamew went roaring away on her course under reefed canvas, heeling over to it like a racing yacht.

But the long tacks to seaward which the gale enforced made it impossible for the schooner to beat back to Hollis where the first of her freight must be discharged until after breakfast the next morning.  By that time the three foremast hands who had been obliged to work double watches were fairly stewing in their own rage.

Tunis had to see his consignees while the freight was being discharged; when he got back to the wharf there was nobody aboard the schooner save Horry and Zebedee.  The latter had a broken oar in his hand and he and the ancient seaman seemed to be in a condition of utter amazement.

“What’s to do now?” demanded the skipper.

“They’ve gone, Cap’n Latham,” stammered Zebedee.  “Say they won’t put foot on the Seamew’s deck again.  That—­that confounded ’Rion—­”

“What’s the matter with Orion now?” exclaimed Tunis.  “I hoped I was well rid of him.  Has he turned up here at Hollis?”

“Look at this,” said Zebedee, shaking the broken oar.  “Here’s what it seems ’Rion found in the hold two trips back.  So those fellows say.  He left it with ’em.  And they say the schooner is a murder ship and they won’t try to work her no further.”

Tunis seized the piece of oar.  Along one side was a streak of faint blue paint.  He knew immediately where he had seen that broken oar before—­leaning against the door frame of Pareta’s cottage in Portygee Town, when he had last talked with the old man’s daughter.