And until he could straighten out in his mind just what that parting difficulty had been, and how much his temper had triumphed over his justice to Butts, and until he had figured out a little something in the line of diplomatic conciliation, he decided to squat for a time beside his own fire and ruminate.

For an hour he sat, his brow gloomy, and looked across to where Colonel Ward was talking to Butts, his arms revolving like the fans of a crazy windmill.

“Lord!  Cap’n Aaron,” blurted Hiram at last, “he’s pumpin’ lies into that shipmate of yourn till even from this distance I can see him swellin’ like a hop-toad under a mullein leaf.  I tell you, you’ve got to do something.  What if it should come calm and you ain’t got him talked over and they should take the boat and row over to the mainland?  Where’d you and your check be if he gets to the bank first?  You listen to my advice and grab in there or we might just as well never have got up that complicated plot to get even with the old son of a seco.”

“Hiram,” said the Cap’n, after a moment’s deliberation, the last hours of the Aurilla P. Dobson rankling still, “sence you and your gang mutinied on me and made me let a chartered schooner go to smash I ain’t had no especial confidence in your advice in crisises.  I’ve seen you hold your head level in crisises on shore—­away from salt water, but you don’t fit in ’board ship.  And this, here, comes near enough to bein’ ’board ship to cut you out.  I don’t take any more chances with you and the Smyrna fire department till I get inland at least fifty miles from tide-water.”

Hiram bent injured gaze on him.

“You’re turnin’ down a friend in a tight place,” he complained.  “I’ve talked it over with the boys and they stand ready to lick those dagos and take the boat, there, and row you ashore.”

But his wistful gaze quailed under the stare the Cap’n bent on him.  The mariner flapped discrediting hand at the pathetic half-dozen castaways poking among the rocks for mussels with which to stay their hunger.

“Me get in a boat again with that outfit?  Why, I wouldn’t ride acrost a duck pond in an ocean liner with ’em unless they were crated and battened below hatches.”  He smacked his hard fist into his palm.  “There they straddle, like crows on new-ploughed land, huntin’ for something to eat, and no thought above it, and there ain’t one of ‘em come to a reelizin’ sense yet that they committed a State Prison offence last night when they mutinied and locked me into my own cabin like a cat in a coop.  Now I don’t want to have any more trouble over it with you, Hiram, for we’ve been too good friends, and will try to continner so after this thing is over and done with, but if you or that gang of up-country sparrer-hawks stick your fingers or your noses into this business that I’m in now, I’ll give the lobsters and cunners round this island just six good hearty meals.  Now, that’s the business end, and it’s whittled pickid, and you want to let alone of it!”