While the young man had been running toward the ridge of sand, the avalanche bearing Cap’n Ira and the Queen of Sheba on its bosom swept down the slope of the huge windrow, but not altogether along its spine.  The mass slid over one pitch of the ridge, and suddenly, following on the heels of Cap’n Ira’s final question, the old man was shot to the beach, several tons of loose sand and the snorting mare almost on top of him.

In fact, he would have been overwhelmed, and perhaps seriously hurt, had not Tunis Latham arrived at the spot at just the time Cap’n Ira did, and suddenly pulled out the old man.

“What are you doing?  Trying to run a race with Queenie?” demanded the captain of the Seamew.

The mare had come down right side up, more by good luck than by good management.  She stood deep in the sand, her naturally surprised expression vastly enhanced.  In all her twenty-two years Queenie had never before gone through such an experience.

“I swan!” ejaculated Cap’n Ira.  “Ain’t this the beatenest you ever heard of, Tunis?”

Tunis stared from the old mare to the old mariner, especially at the cocked revolver in the captain’s hand.  He pointed at the tightly gripped weapon.

“What’s that for, Cap’n Ira?” he asked.

“I—­I—­well, I swan!” stammered Cap’n Ira, now looking, himself, at the old seven-chambered revolver as though he had never seen it before.  “I cal’late it does look sort o’ funny to you, Tunis, to see me come sailing down this way, armed like a pirate.”

“I wouldn’t call it exactly funny.  But it is surprising,” admitted Tunis.  “And Queenie looks as surprised as anybody.”

“Yes, she does, for a fact,” agreed Cap’n Ira, squinting across the heap of loose sand at the gray mare.  “I kind o’ wonder what she’s thinking about.”

“I’m wondering hard enough myself,” put in Tunis pointedly.

“I swan!” murmured Cap’n Ira reflectively.

He carefully lowered the hammer of the pistol, his cane stuck upright in the sand before him.  Then he put the weapon back in the inside pocket of his coat.  He tapped the knob of his cane for a pinch of snuff before he said another word.  His mighty “A-choon!” startled the Queen of Sheba almost as it startled Prudence.

“Avast!” exclaimed Cap’n Ira.  “Did you ever see such a scary old lubber, Tunis?”

“But what’s it all about?” again demanded the younger man, seizing the rope halter and aiding the mare to flounder out upon the firmer sand below high-water mark.  “What are you doing up so early?  And what were you going to do with Queenie?”

“I swan!” groaned Cap’n Ira again.  “I don’t wonder that you ask me that.  It don’t really seem reasonable that a sane man would get in such a jam, does it?  Me and the Queen of Sheby sailin’ down that sand pile.  Tunis!  We’ll never be able to get up it in this world.”

“No.  You must come along to our road, and get up that way,” his young friend told him.  “It is longer, but easier.  But tell me how you came down that gully, you and Queenie?”