Cap’n Sproul made no reply.  He sat before his fire buried in thought, the gale whipping past his ears.

Colonel Ward, after ordering the returned and communicative Bodge to shut up, was equally thoughtful as he gazed into his fire.  Ludelphus Murray, after trying long and in vain to light a soggy pipeful of tobacco, gazed into the fire-lit faces of his comrades of the Ancients and Honorables of Smyrna and said, with a sickly grin: 

“I wisht I knew Robinson Crusoe’s address.  He might like to run out and spend the rest of the fall with us.”

But the jest did not cheer the gloom of the marooned on Cod Lead Nubble.

XXIII

Cap’n Aaron Sproul had forgotten his troubles for a time.  He had been dozing.  The shrewish night wind of autumn whistled over the ledges of Cod Lead Nubble and scattered upon his gray beard the black ashes from the bonfire that the shivering men of Smyrna still plied with fuel.  The Cap’n sat upright, his arms clasping his doubled knees, his head bent forward.

Hiram Look, faithful friend that he was, had curled himself at his back and was snoring peacefully.  He had the appearance of a corsair, with his head wrapped in the huge handkerchief that had replaced the plug hat lost in the stress and storm that had destroyed the Aurilla P. Dobson.  The elephant, Imogene, was bulked dimly in the first gray of a soppy dawn.

“If this is goin’ to sea,” said Jackson Denslow, continuing the sour mutterings of the night, “I’m glad I never saw salt water before I got pulled into this trip.”

“It ain’t goin’ to sea,” remarked another of the Smyrna amateur mariners.  “It’s goin’ ashore!” He waved a disconsolate gesture toward the cove where the remains of the Dobson swashed in the breakers.

“If any one ever gets me navigatin’ again onto anything desp’ritter than a stone-bo’t on Smyrna bog,” said Denslow, “I hope my relatives will have me put into a insane horsepittle.”

“Look at that!” shouted Ludelphus Murray.  “This is a thunderation nice kind of a night to have a celebration on!”

This yelp, sounding above the somniferous monotone of grumbling, stirred Cap’n Sproul from his dozing.  He snapped his head up from his knees.  A rocket was streaking across the sky and popped with a sprinkling of colored fires.  Another and another followed with desperate haste, and a Greek fire shed baleful light across the waters.

“Yes, sir,” repeated Murray, indignantly sarcastic, “it’s a nice night and a nice time of night to be celebratin’ when other folks is cold and sufferin’ and hungry.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Hiram, stirring in his turn.

The Cap’n was prompt with biting reply.

“One of your Smyrna ’cyclopedys of things that ain’t so is open at the page headed ‘idjit,’ with a chaw of tobacker for a book-mark.  If the United States Government don’t scoop in the whole of us for maintainin’ false beacons on a dangerous coast in a storm, then I miss my cal’lations, that’s all!”