“Well, they done it all right—­and they done it pretty slick, so far as I could see,” interjected Hiram.

“Done it!” sneered the Cap’n.  “Eased sheets here in this puddle, in a breeze about stiff enough to winnow oats!  Supposin’ it was a blow, with a gallopin’ sea!  Me runnin’ around this deck taggin’ gool on halyards, lifts, sheets, and downhauls, and them hoss-marines follerin’ me up.  Davy Jones would die laughin’, unless some one pounded him on the back to help him get his breath.”

Now that his mariner’s nose was turned toward the sea once again after his two years of landsman’s hebetude, all his seaman’s instinct, all his seaman’s caution, revived.  His nose snuffed the air, his eyes studied the whirls of the floating clouds.  There was nothing especially ominous in sight.

The autumn sun was warm.  The wind was sprightly but not heavy.  And yet his mariner’s sense sniffed something untoward.

The Dobson, little topmast hooker, age-worn and long before relegated to the use of Sunday fishing-parties “down the bay,” had for barometer only a broken affair that had been issued to advertise the virtues of a certain baking-powder.  It was roiled permanently to the degree marked “Tornado.”

“Yes,” remarked Hiram, nestling down once more under the bulwark, after viewing the display of amateur activity, “of course, if you’re afraid to tackle a little deep water once more, just for the sake of an outin’, then I’ve no more to say.  I’ve heard of railro’d engineers and sea-capt’ns losin’ their nerve.  I didn’t know but it had happened to you.”

“Well, it ain’t,” snapped the Cap’n, indignantly.  And yet his sailor instinct scented menace.  He couldn’t explain it to that cynical old circus-man, intent on a day’s outing.  Had it not been for Hiram’s presence and his taunt, Cap’n Sproul would have promptly turned tail to the Atlantic and taken his safe and certain way along the reaches and under shelter of the islands.  But reflecting that Hiram Look, back in Smyrna, might circulate good-natured derogation of his mariner’s courage, Cap’n Sproul set the Dobson’s blunt nose to the heave of the sea, and would not have quailed before a tidal wave.

The Smyrna contingent hailed this adventuring into greater depths as a guarantee of bigger fish for the salt-barrel at home, and proceeded to cut bait with vigor and pleased anticipation.

Only the Cap’n was saturnine, and even lost his interest in the animated figures on distant Cod Lead Nubble, though Hiram could not drag his eyes from them, seeing in their frantic gestures the denouement of his plot.

Shortly after noon they were well out to sea, still on the port tack, the swells swinging underneath in a way that soothed the men of Smyrna rather than worried them.  So steady was the lift and sweep of the long roll that they gave over fishing and snored wholesomely in the sun on deck.  Hiram dozed over his cigar, having paid zestful attention to the dinner that Jackson Denslow had spread in the galley.