“Then ye’re goin’ to let ’em do it, be ye?” huskily asked Hiram.  “Goin’ to let him get to the bank and stop payment on that check?  I tell you the boys can get that boat away from ’em!  It better be smashed than used to carry Gid Ward off’m this island.”

But Cap’n Sproul did not interrupt his bitter ruminations to reply.  He merely shot disdainful glance at the Smyrna men, still busy among the mussels.

It was apparent that Mr. Butts had decided that he would feel more at ease upon his pinnacle until the hour arrived for embarkation.  In the game of stone-throwing, should Cap’n Sproul accept that gage of battle, the beach was too vulnerable a fortress, and, like a prudent commander, Mr. Butts had sent a forlorn hope onto the firing-line to test conditions.  This was all clear to Cap’n Sproul.  As to Mr. Butts’s exact intentions relative to the process of getting safely away, the Cap’n was not so clear.

“Portygees!” he muttered over and over.  “There’s men that knows winds, tides, rocks, shoals, currents, compass, and riggin’ that don’t know Portygees.  It takes a master mariner to know Portygees.  It takes Portygees to know a master mariner.  They know the language.  They know the style.  They get the idee by the way he looks at ’em.  It’s what he says and the way he says it.  Second mates ain’t got it.  P’r’aps I ain’t got it, after bein’ on shore among clodhoppers for two years.  But, by Judas Iscarrot, I’m goin’ to start in and find out!  Portygees!  There’s Portygees!  Here’s me that has handled ’em—­batted brains into ’em as they’ve come over the side, one by one, and started ’em goin’ like I’d wind up a watch!  And a belayin’-pin is the key!”

He arose with great decision, buttoned his jacket, cocked his cap to an angle of authority on his gray hair, and started down the hill toward the boat.

“He’s goin’ to call in his bunko-men and take that boat,” bleated Mr. Butts to Colonel Ward.

“Wild hosses couldn’t drag him into a boat again with those human toadstools, and I’ve heard him swear round here enough to know it,” scoffed the Colonel.  “He’s just goin’ down to try to wheedle your sailors like he tried to wheedle you, and they’re your men and he can’t do it.”

And in the face of this authority and confidence in the situation Mr. Butts subsided, thankful for an excuse to keep at a respectful distance from Cap’n Aaron Sproul.

That doughty expert on “Portygees” strode past the awed crew with an air that they instinctively recognized as belonging to the quarter-deck.  Their meek eyes followed him as he stumped into the swash and kicked up two belaying-pins floating in the debris.  He took one in each hand, came back at them on the trot, opening the flood-gates of his language.  And they instinctively recognized that as quarter-deck, too.  They knew that no mere mate could possess that quality of utterance and redundancy of speech.