“That shows the right spirit out there,” vouchsafed Hiram, his eyes kindling as another rocket slashed the sky.  “Fireworks as soon as they’ve located us is the right spirit, I say!  The least we can do is to give ’em three cheers.”

But at this Cap’n Sproul staggered up, groaning as his old enemy, rheumatism, dug its claws into his flesh.  He made for the shore, his disgust too deep for words.

“Me—­me,” he grunted, “in with a gang that can’t tell the difference between a vessel goin’ to pieces and a fireworks celebration!  I don’t wonder that the Atlantic Ocean tasted of us and spit us ashore.  She couldn’t stand it to drown us!”

When the others straggled down and gabbled questions at him he refused to reply, but stood peering into the lifting dawn.  He got a glimpse of her rig before her masts went over.  She was a hermaphrodite brig, and old-fashioned at that.  She was old-fashioned enough to have a figure-head.  It came ashore at Cap’n Sproul’s feet as avant-coureur of the rest of the wreckage.  It led the procession because it was the first to suffer when the brig butted her nose against the Blue Cow Reef.  It came ashore intact, a full-sized woman carved from pine and painted white.  The Cap’n recognized the fatuous smile as the figure rolled its face up at him from the brine.

“The old Polyhymnia!” he muttered.

Far out there was a flutter of sail, and under his palm he descried a big yawl making off the coast.  She rode lightly, and he could see only two heads above her gunwale.

“That’s Cap Hart Tate, all right,” mused the Cap’n; “Cap Hart Tate gallantly engaged in winnin’ a medal by savin’ his own life.  But knowin’ Cap Hart Tate as well as I do, I don’t see how he ever so far forgot himself as to take along any one else.  It must be the first mate, and the first mate must have had a gun as a letter of recommendation!”

It may be said in passing that this was a distinctly shrewd guess, and the Cap’n promptly found something on the seas that clinched his belief.  Bobbing toward Cod Lead came an overloaded dingy.  There were six men in it, and they were making what shift they could to guide it into the cove between the outer rocks.  They came riding through safely on a roller, splattered across the cove with wildly waving oars, and landed on the sand with a bump that sent them tumbling heels over head out of the little boat.

“Four Portygee sailors, the cook, and the second mate,” elucidated Cap’n Sproul, oracularly, for his own information.

The second mate, a squat and burly sea-dog, was first up on his feet in the white water, but stumbled over a struggling sailor who was kicking his heels in an attempt to rise.  When the irate mate was up for the second time he knocked down this sailor and then strode ashore, his meek followers coming after on their hands and knees.

“Ahoy, there, Dunk Butts!” called Cap’n Sproul, heartily.