“God’s providence ye may call it,” answered the Captain, shaking the Goodman’s hand as if he were pumping out the hold of a sinking ship, “and I ’ll not gainsay it.  The truth is I overhauled these small craft floundering around in the tide-wash with water over their scuppers ‘n’ all but wrecked, so I took ’em in tow and brought ’em ashore!”

Their mother, meanwhile, had not waited for explanations.  Seeing how chilled they were, she had hurried the children to the loft above the one room of the cabin and was already giving them a rub-down and getting out dry clean clothes while they told her their adventure.

“Thank God you are safe,” she said, clasping them both in her arms, when the tale was told.

“Thank Captain Sanders as well, Mother,” said Daniel.  “Had it not been for him, I doubt if we could have reached the shore.”

“Let this be a lesson to you, then,” said the Goodwife, loosening her clasp and picking up the wet clothing.  “You know well about the tide!  Nancy, child, why art thou so wild and reckless?  Thou art the cause of much anxiety.”

At her mother’s reproof, gentle though it was, poor Nancy flopped over on her stomach, and, burying her face in her hands, gave way to tears.

“It ’s all because I am so wicked,” she moaned.  “My sins are as scarlet!  Oh, Mother, dost think God will cause the lightning to strike us dead to punish me?” She shuddered with fear as a flash shone through the chinks of the logs and for an instant lighted the dim loft.

Her mother put down the wet clothes and, lifting her little daughter tenderly in her arms, laid her on her bed.  “God maketh the rain to fall on both the just and the unjust,” she said soothingly.  “Rest here while I go down and get supper.”

She covered her warmly with a homespun blanket, and, accompanied by Dan, made her way down the ladder.  She found her husband putting fresh logs on the fire and stirring the coals to a blaze, while the Captain hung his coat on the corner of the mantel-shelf to dry.  She went up to him and held out her hand.  “Captain Sanders,” she said, “but for thee this might be a desolate household indeed this night.”

The Captain’s red face turned a deeper shade, and he fidgeted with embarrassment, as he took her hand in his great red paw, then dropped it suddenly as if it were hot.  “Oh, stow it, ma’am, stow it,” he begged.  “That is, I mean to say—­why, by jolly, ma’am, a pirate could do no less when he see a fine bit of cargo like that going to the bottom!”

To the Captain’s great relief the lobsters at this moment created a diversion.  He had dropped them on the hearth when he came in, and they were now clattering briskly about the room, butting into anything that came in their way in an effort to escape.  He made a sudden dash after them and held them out toward Goodwife Pepperell.

“Here they be, ma’am,” he said.  “I ’d saved them for my supper, and I ’d take it kindly if ye ’d cook them for me, and help eat them, too.  It ’s raining cats and dogs, and if I was to start out now, I ’d have a hard time finding the Lucy Ann.  Ye can’t see a rod ahead of ye in such a downpour.”