Tunis leaped away on his cousin’s trail.  The crowd parted to let them through, and then joined in a streaming, excited tail to their kite of progress.  Most of the spectators lived in Portygee Town.  Some of them had been members of the Seamew’s deserting crews.  They were afraid of Tunis Latham, but they had little sympathy for Orion.

The skipper caught up with him in the middle of the road and almost opposite the Pareta cottage.  Orion had picked up a cobblestone as he reached the street and, finding himself about to be overtaken, he turned and threw the missile at Tunis’ head.  The latter dodged it and, with a single, savage blow of the oar felled his cousin to the roadway.

“You unmitigated scoundrel!” Tunis roared.  “I ought to take your life.  Because of you I nearly lost my own to-day—­and the lives of two other men and my schooner into the bargain.  You villain!”

As Orion tried to scramble up, the skipper of the Seamew made another pass at him with the oar, and the fellow fell again.

“Don’t hit me!  Don’t hit me again, Tunis!  Remember I’m your cousin.  I—­I haven’t done a thing—­true an’ honest, I haven’t!”

The listeners gathered closer.  Tunis Latham’s face displayed such rage that the Portygees expected him to continue his attack with the oar.  But instead he shook it before their eyes—­and Orion’s.

“See it?” he demanded of the bystanders.  “That’s the scurvy trick the dog played me.  Found this broken oar in somebody’s woodpile, burned the name of the Marlin B. into the handle, and foisted it on a fool crew to prove that my schooner was once called by that name.  I ought to pound him to death!”

Suddenly a brilliant figure whirled into the midst of the crowd and reached the angry skipper and his victim.  Eunez, her black eyes ablaze, her face ruddy with anger, planted herself before Tunis Latham, hands on hips, confronting him boldly.  One glance at the prostrate Orion assured her that, although there was blood upon his face, he was not much hurt.  She tossed her head and snapped her fingers under the nose of the captain of the Seamew.

“So now, Tunis Latham!  It is that you have waked up!  Of a gr-r-reat smartness are you, eh?” she cried.  “You scorn us all, and tr-r-reat us as you would dogs.  Heh!  All you shipmasters are alike.

“But you—­we put the laugh on you, eh?  That oar in your hand—­ha, ha!  Do not lay the blame altogether upon your cousin. I burned those letters into that wood with my curling irons.  Fooled by a girl, eh, Tunis Latham?  Ah!  Learn your lesson, Captain Latham!  We Portygee women are not to be scorned by any schooner captain.  No!”

She snapped her fingers again in his face and turned away, swaying her hips and tossing her head as she disappeared into her father’s cottage.  When Tunis looked around for his cousin, he found that that facile young man, taking advantage of the girl’s intervention, had slipped away.