Only Cap’n Sproul, at the wheel, was alert and awake.  With some misgivings he noted that the trawl fishers were skimming toward port in their Hampton boats.  A number of smackmen followed these.  Later he saw several deeply laden Scotiamen lumbering past on the starboard tack, all apparently intent on making harbor.

“Them fellers has smelt something outside that don’t smell good,” grunted the Cap’n.  But he still stood on his way.  “I reckon I’ve got softenin’ of the brain,” he muttered; “livin’ inshore has given it to me.  ‘Cause if I was in my right senses I’d be runnin’ a race with them fellers to see which would get inside Bug Light and to a safe anchorage first.  And yet I’m standin’ on with this old bailin’-dish because I’m afraid of what a landlubber will say to folks in Smyrna about my bein’ a coward, and with no way of my provin’ that I ain’t.  All that them hoss-marines has got a nose for is a b’iled dinner when it’s ready.  They couldn’t smell nasty weather even if ’twas daubed onto their mustaches.”

At the end of another hour, during which the crew of the Dobson had become thoroughly awake and aware of the fact that the coast-line was only a blue thread on the northern horizon, Cap’n Sproul had completely satisfied his suspicions as to a certain bunch of slaty cloud.

There was a blow in it—­a coming shift of wind preceded by flaws that made the Cap’n knot his eyebrows dubiously.

“There!” he blurted, turning his gaze on Hiram, perched on the grating.  “If you reckon you’ve got enough of a sail out of this, we’ll put about for harbor.  But I want it distinctly understood that I ain’t sayin’ the word ‘enough.’  I’d keep on sailin’ to the West Injies if we had grub a-plenty to last us.”

“There ain’t grub enough,” suggested Jackson Denslow, who came up from the waist with calm disregard of shipboard etiquette.  “The boys have all caught plenty of fish, and we want to get in before dark.  So gee her round, Cap’n.”

“Don’t you give off no orders to me!” roared the Cap’n.  “Go back for’ard where you belong.”

“That’s the sense of the boys, just the same,” retorted Denslow, retreating a couple of steps. “’Delphus Murray is seasick, and two or three of the boys are gettin’ so.  We ain’t enlisted for no seafarin’ trip.”

“Don’t you realize that we’re on the high seas now and that you’re talkin’ mutiny, and that mutiny’s a state-prison crime?” clamored the irate skipper.  “I’d have killed a Portygee for sayin’ a quarter as much.  I’d have killed him for settin’ foot abaft the gratin’—­killed him before he opened his mouth.”

“We ain’t Portygees,” rejoined Denslow, stubbornly.  “We ain’t no sailors.”

“Nor I ain’t liar enough to call you sailors,” the Cap’n cried, in scornful fury.

“If ye want to come right down to straight business,” said the refractory Denslow, “there ain’t any man got authority over us except Mr. Look there, as foreman of the Smyrna Ancients and Honer’bles.”