“Nobody is kicking much but you,” said the older man.

“That’s all right.  I’ve got pluck enough not to stand being imposed upon.  Them Portygees—­well, there’s no figuring on what they will do.”

“I can see you are bent on making them do something that will raise trouble,” Newbegin said, shaking his head once more.

“What do you expect?  You know the Seamew is hoodooed.  Huh! Seamew!  That ain’t no more her rightful name than it is mine.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

“I would!” snapped ‘Rion.  “She’s the Marlin B., out o’ Salem.  No matter what he says, or anybody else.  She’s the murder ship.  If he sailed her over that place outside o’ Salem Harbor where those poor fellows was drowned, they’d rise again and curse the schooner and all aboard her.”

The old man shuddered.  He turned his face away and spat reflectively over the rail.  The tug of the steering chains to starboard was even then thrilling the cords of his hands and arms with an almost electric shock.  ’Rion watched him slyly.  He knew the impression he was making on the old man’s superstitious mind.  He played upon it as he did upon the childish minds of some of the Portygee seamen.

So Captain Tunis Latham did not arrive in Boston in a very calm frame of mind.  Although he had no words with ’Rion, and really no trouble with the crew in general, he felt that trouble was brewing.  And the worst of it was, it was trouble which he did not know how to avert.

It was not so easy to fill the empty berth in the forecastle, even from the offscourings of the docks.  It was a time when dock labor was at a premium.  And short voyages never did interest good sailormen.  In addition, knowing that the Seamew sailed from her home port, decent seafarers wanted to know what was the matter with her that the captain could not fill his forecastle at that end.

These men wondered about Captain Latham, too.  They judged that infirmities of temper must be the reason his men did not stay with the schooner.  He was, perhaps, a driver—­too quick with his fist or the toe of his boot.  Questions along this line were bound to breed answers—­and answers from those members of the Seamew’s crew who were not friendly to the skipper.

In some little den off Commercial Street ’Rion Latham had forgathered with certain dock loiterers, and, after that, word went to and fro that the Seamew was haunted.  If she ever sailed off Great Misery Island, the crew of a run-under Salem fishing smack would rise up to curse the schooner’s company.  And that curse would follow those who sailed aboard her—­either for’ard or in the afterguard—­for all time.  In consequence of this the only man who applied for the empty berth aboard the Seamew was more than a little drunk and so dirty that Captain Latham would not let him come over the rail.