“Well, it beats goin’ to law,” grinned Hiram.  “Here you be, so afraid of lawyers—­and with good reason—­that you’d have let him get away with his plunder before you’d have gone to law—­and he knew it when he done you.  You’ve taken back what’s your own, in your own way, without havin’ to give law-shysters the biggest part for gettin’ it.  Shake!” And chief plotter and the benefited clasped fists with radiant good-nature.  The Cap’n broke his grip in order to twirl the wheel, it being necessary to take a red buoy to port.

“We’re goin’ to slide out of sight of ’em in a few minutes,” he said, looking back over his shoulder regretfully.  “I wisht I had a crew!  I could stand straight out through that passage on a long tack to port, fetch Half-way Rock, and slide into Portland on the starboard tack, and stay in sight of ’em pretty nigh all day.  It would keep ‘em busy thinkin’ if we stayed in sight.”

“Stand out,” advised Hiram, eagerly.  “We ain’t in any hurry.  Let’s rub it into ’em.  Stand out.”

“With them pea-bean pullers to work ship?” He pointed to the devoted band of Smyrna fire-fighters, who were joyously gathering in with varying luck a supply of tomcod and haddock to furnish the larder inshore.  “When I go huntin’ for trouble it won’t be with a gang of hoss-marines like that.”

Hiram, as foreman of the Ancients, felt piqued at this slighting reference to his men, and showed it.

“They can pull ropes when you tell ’em to,” he said.  “Leastways, when it comes to brains, I reckon they’ll stack up better’n them Portygees you used to have.”

“I never pretended that them Portygees had any brains at all,” said the Cap’n, grimly.  “They come aboard without brains, and I took a belayin’-pin and batted brains into ’em.  I can’t do that to these critters here.  It would be just like ’em to misunderstand the whole thing and go home and get me mixed into a lot of law for assaultin’ ’em.”

“Oh, if you’re afraid to go outside, say so!” sneered Hiram.  “But you’ve talked so much of deep water, and weatherin’ Cape Horn, and—­”

“Afraid?  Me afraid?” roared the Cap’n, spatting his broad hand on his breast.  “Me, that kicked my dunnage-bag down the fo’c’s’le-hatch at fifteen years old?  I’ll show you whether I’m afraid or not.”

He knotted a hitch around the spokes of the wheel and scuffed hastily forward.

“Here!” he bawled, cuffing the taut sheets to point his meaning, “when I get back to the wheel and holler ‘Ease away!’ you fellers get hold of these ropes, untie ’em, and let out slow till I tell you stop.  And then tie ’em just as you find ’em.”

They did so clumsily, Cap’n Sproul swearing under his breath, and at last the Dobson got away on the port tack.

“Just think of me—­master of a four-sticker at twenty-seven—­havin’ to stand here in the face and eyes of the old Atlantic Ocean and yell about untyin’ ropes and tyin’ ’em up like I was givin’ off orders in a cow-barn!”