'My man,' said Herrick, with a sudden gleam of animosity, 'it is still

your watch on deck, and surely your wheel also?'

You come the 'eavy swell, don't you, ducky?' said Huish.

Stand away from that binnacle. Surely your w'eel, my man. Yah.'

He lit a cigar ostentatiously, and strolled into the waist with his

hands in his pockets.

In a surprisingly short time, the captain reappeared; he did not look at

Herrick, but called Huish back and sat down.

'Well,' he began, 'I've taken stock--roughly.' He paused as if for

somebody to help him out; and none doing so, both gazing on him instead

with manifest anxiety, he yet more heavily resumed. 'Well, it won't

fight. We can't do it; that's the bed rock. I'm as sorry as what you can

be, and sorrier. We can't look near Samoa. I don't know as we could get

to Peru.'

'Wot-ju mean?' asked Huish brutally.

'I can't 'most tell myself,' replied the captain. 'I drew it fine; I

said I did; but what's been going on here gets me! Appears as if the

devil had been around. That cook must be the holiest kind of fraud. Only

twelve days, too! Seems like craziness. I'll own up square to one thing:

I seem to have figured too fine upon the flour. But the rest--my land!

The Ebb-Tide