“What in thunder!”

He had turned it over and saw the straggling letters burned into the wood:  MARLIN B. Newbegin looked at Tunis with an expression which betrayed a great perturbation of soul.  The old man could scarcely show pallor under the mahogany of his face, but it was plain that superstition had him by the throat.

“So this is the thing that rotten ’Rion played them with, is it?” Tunis demanded.  “Trying to make them think my beautiful Seamew was once the Marlin B.?  Why, the poor fools, this broken oar came out of Mike Pareta’s woodpile, or I’m a dog-fish!  See that blue streak?  I saw this broken oar at Pareta’s house.  Bet you anything Eunez had something to do with it, too.  Though why she should want to harm me, who never said a cross word to her, I can’t see.”

“She and your cousin are mighty thick,” Zebedee said reflectively.  “That’s a fact.”

“Thicker than they ought to be for the girl’s good, I guess,” agreed Tunis.  Then he said to Horry:  “What’s the matter with you, old man?  Do you want to desert me, too, all along of a broken oar with some silly letters burned into it?”

The ancient mariner had got a grip upon himself.  The simple explanation that punctured the bubble of superstition so convincingly might not have altogether satisfied Horry.  But he was a true and just man.

“I never deserted your father, Cap’n Randall Latham, not even when his ship sunk under him,” the old man declared.  “I was saved from that wreck by chance, not because I tried to be.  And I ain’t likely to desert his son.”

“How about you, Zebedee?” demanded the captain of the Seamew.

“I am not afraid of any foolish talk, anyway, Captain Latham.  Had I been I wouldn’t have applied for the berth.  I had heard enough about it.  Eunez Pareta, I believe, talked too much to the Portygees, and that is why you couldn’t keep them.  But I’m not a Portygee.”

“I’ll say you’re not,” agreed Tunis.  “But we’re left in something of a fix.  This freight for Josh Jones and his father is needed.  Some other stuff consigned to Big Wreck Cove ought to be there by to-night.  And I can’t get a man for love or money here to help us out.  I tried while I was uptown.”

Zeb showed no hesitation.  He shrugged his blue-jerseyed shoulders.

“Don’t you cal’late we can beat down there under a reefed mainsail and jib?  It’ll take time, but she’s the sweetest sailing craft I was ever in in my life,” he said.

“She’s certainly all right, ’cept for that pull to sta’bbo’d,” muttered Horry.

“Humph!  Three men to sail a schooner of this tonnage.  And this isn’t any capsize wind at that,” murmured the captain of the Seamew.  “But it’s got to be done.  Come!  Will you risk it with me?”