“I cal’late you wouldn’t think she was Jonahed if the Seamew was yours, ’Rion,” snickered Andrew Roby.

“I wouldn’t even take her as a gift,” snarled Orion.

“Guess you won’t get her that way—­if any,” chuckled Joshua Jones.  “Tunis, he knows which side o’ the bread his butter’s on.  He’s doin’ well.  We cal’late—­pa and me—­to have all our freight come down from Boston on the Seamew.”

Orion glowered at him.

“You’d better have a care, Josh,” he growled.  “That schooner is hoodooed, as sure as sure!  She’ll stub her nose some night on Lighthouse Point Reef, if she don’t do worse.  You can’t scurcely steer her proper.”

“Nonsense, ’Rion!” spoke up Zebedee Pauling.  “I’d like to sail on her myself.”

“Perhaps,” Sheila interposed, rather flushed, and looking at Orion with unmistakable displeasure, “Orion will give up his berth to you, Zebedee.  He seems so very sure that the schooner is unlucky.  I came down from Boston in her, and I saw nothing about her save to admire.”

“And if you found her all right, Miss Bostwick,” struck in the gallant Joshua, “she’s good enough for me.  Of course, I heard tell some thought the Seamew had a bad reputation—­that she run under a fishing boat once and was haunted.  But I cal’late that’s all bosh.”

“Yah!” growled Orion.  “Have it your own way.  But after the dratted schooner is sunk and you lose a mess of freight, Josh Jones, I guess you’ll sing small.”

“I’ve heard,” said Andrew Roby gravely, “that it’s mighty bad manners to bite the hand that feeds you.  You never was overpolite, ’Rion Latham.”

“Not only that, but he’s clean reckless with his own livelihood,” added Zebedee Pauling.

CHAPTER XV

AN INVITATION ACCEPTED

It was a small incident, of course; scarcely to be noted at all when it was over.  Yet the impression left upon Sheila’s mind was that Orion Latham was deliberately endeavoring to injure his cousin’s business with the Seamew.  If he talked like this before the more or less superstitious Portygees, how long would Tunis manage to keep a crew to work the schooner?

Had she dared she would have taken Orion to task there and then for his unfaithfulness.  The fellow was, as Cap’n Ira had once observed, one of those yapping curs always envious of the braver dog’s bone.

To the girl’s disgust, too, Orion Latham showed plainly that he considered that he, as an older acquaintance of the girl, could presume upon that fact.  He clung to her throughout the evening like a mussel to duck grass.  Of all the Big Wreck Cove youth, he was the only one that she could not put in his place.

She did not think it wise to snub him so openly that Orion would take offense.  This course might do the captain of the Seamew harm.  She foresaw trouble in the offing for Tunis, in any case, and she did not wish to do anything that would spur Orion to further and more successful attempts to harm his cousin’s business.