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14 wrath like two sails wing-and-wing; and the cane and square-toed shoes scrunched the gravel ominously.

As he bore down upon them, nautical similes fairly oozed from his paunchy blue figure, like pitch and oakum from the blistering seams of a ship in the tropics.

"I told you to keep clear o' my place, and here you are no sooner'n you reach port, alongside o' my gate," he boomed at Ben, "you sheer off …" The bombardment died in a spluttered chortle.

"But, Captain Fell. I"

"Stow your gab, sir!"

The girl's hand was pleadingly laid on her father's. He wasn't an awesome or impressive personage to her, just an unreasonable old man, a spoiled old man. She was angry, but of late a new note—apoplectic, threatening—had crept into that full roaring boom of his—and sometimes, what was more touching, a quaver.

"Father, Ben's my oldest friend and"

"Belay that, daughter, I'm skipper o' this ship, and on my own quarter-deck." And he drew her within the gate, closing it with a bang over-pettish for so dignified an officer, but a hint sufficiently explicit for Ben. He laughed disgustedly and turned towards the street as Sally marched, her shoulders up in what would have seemed mock obedience to any but the Captain's eyes. The old man planted his feet sturdily enough now, and the quaver wasn't at all apparent. The doctor had said that one of these fits might carry him off. Sally was beginning to doubt that doctor—there had been so many.