put it. "S'no deeper than a frying-pan. Breathe hard an' you blow her clean dry."

As soon as Yoshino saw the cloud line top the horizon, he sputtered for the engineer to crack on every pound of steam he had, and headed her for Lung Chou; and the old Ho Feng began to beat her cylinders out as she streaked it for the promontory. But before they got halfway the seas were toppling over abeam and she was showing her bilges at every roll. Still, they carried on, with the water all around a nasty yellow lather, until a very scared Jap put his head in the cabin door to report that a comber had just smashed the engine-room deadlights and that the machinery was "makee swim." "Good," grunted Bannister, and he dug a set of oilskins from a seat-lockerthey had been driven into the cabin. "Good. Got to buck it. No danger. Squall'll be over in two hours. You stay here. Hold tight when we turn."

He left them, and presently the watercarafes turned upside down as he headed her into it. Then things quieted down a bit. Forward, Yoshino and Bannister wrestled her straight into the seas, with the water all but washing them out, but the launch herself snored into it steadily, racked by her racing-screw, but with the deadly cross-buck a thing of the past. The women were even beginning to laugh at The Drottle's jokes, when the Ho Feng mounted a wave, poised herself on its top, waggled her old tail of a propeller in the air, and then fell off, swerving to port as, with the racket of all hell let loose, a connecting-rod broke under the strain.

Bannister automatically spun the wheel hard down and swore. Then the engineroom hatch opened and spewed forth a cloud of steam and a stream of shadowy figures that padded, barefooted, barebacked, in a panicky gallop to the gig that strained astern. The grizzle-haired lowdah ducked out from the pilot-house.

"Yoshino!" called Bannister. The captain stopped for an instant, half-turned his head, then yielded to the call of the sauve qui peut and shuffled aft. And then, beyond the steam-cloud, Bannister saw the nose of the gig poke out, the rowers' backs shining in the spray, and he knew that his crew was gone. He gave

the wheel one final turn, then fought his way aft to the cabin door, reeling as the Ho Feng reeled, and clinging to the taffrail as the toppling seas tried to lick him from the launch's side. With a last swing he lurched around the deck-house corner and thrust his dripping sou'wester into the cabin door.

"All you men on deck! No time for oilskins. Quick!" Then, as they cowered on the little patch of sheltered deck, safe from the women's ears: "Engine's gone to hell. Get out sea-anchor. Lee shore." And he drove them forward while the Ho Feng wallowed in the trough.

Down in the forecastle they broke up the heavy wooden bunks and dragged them up the slithering ladder. Crudely and tightly they bound them together around a punctured drum of oil that Bannister had dragged from the scalding engine-room. Over the side they dumped it all, at the end of a fifty-foot rope; and the Ho Feng slowly turned her nose to the wind and bobbed in the oil-smoothed sea.

Then, when the launch no longer burrowed into the seas, but rose and fell and jerked over the surges with an occasional kiss of spray coming aboard, Bannister led the other three into the wheel-house, closed the windows, produced a wellthumbed chart and held a council of war. That is, he let the others know his plans.

"Here's where we are." His thumb jabbed down in a nest of water depths. "There's the coast-it's about ten miles. See?" As the launch rose they caught a glimpse to leeward of a saffron cord between the gray that was the sea and the gray that was the sky. "We're driftin' down on it at about five knots. It'll get slower as we go in; there's a hell of an offset current from the point, here." The thumb shifted over a couple of miles to promontory-sheltered Lung Chou Bay. "That gives us, say, two hours to the fourmile curve. Maybe the blow'll have gone down enough by that time to anchor-it'd pull the bows out of the rotten old tub if we tried it now. If she's still blowin', the four miles'll give enough sea room to make the point in the dory, sure. No worry. Don't tell the women."

The two hours' wait began. The men herded back to the cabin and lent moral

make conversation with the older men, but his efforts broke down before the barrier of their stolidity. The habits of their three diverse lives had united in one result, the formation of a common stoicism. So they leaned against the wheelhouse walls, giving to the lurches of the craft, taking now and then a brief glance at the clouds to leeward and at the nearing coast, exchanging an occasional pipe-load or monosyllable. They had long since learned how to wait.

To the women in the cabin it was more of a nightmare. Nothing to be seen, their sensations were bounded by the Ho Feng's jerky rises and swooping descents; that and the breathing of the fetid cabin air. Ma was hopeless and complaining. Loudly she lamented the pass to which their gadding had brought her. Madge was huddled in a cushioned corner, emitting an occasional tired whimper. Only Mrs. Blake sat quiet, tight of lip and open-eyed. They were all too frightened to be sick. And so the two hours passed away, ticked off by the pendulum of the Ho Feng's rise and fall.

Finally, there came the jar of footsteps overhead and the heavy grating of the dory as it was pulled to the stern. Then there was solitude again. At last Bannister's head appeared in the door.

66

off.

Sorry. Have to take you No danger. Dory'll live through any sea. No danger, I say. Wrap up warm; it'll be wet."

As if herding a flock of chickens, he drove them out on the foreshortened poop. The two elder men, by virtue of their weight, were already in the stern of the dory that bucked and swerved in the twisting seas. The high-built deck-house, breaking the sweep of the wind, made a shouted conversation possible, and, with his verb

less exhortations, Bannister set about bullying them into the boat. Mary Blake got in dumbly, efficiently; with ma there was more difficulty.

"For God's sake, stiffen your knees! Jump on the rise. There! Miss Kerrigan!"

But Madge drew back.

"Why, there's only room for six," she called out, pointing to the dory. "There's only room for six!"

"Get in! Plenty of room! Get in!"

"But I say," broke in The Drottle, "this won't do at all. We can't leave you here." "Get in! Plenty of room, I tell you. Do ye want us all to drift on the coast? Get in if ye want to make the point. Sharp's the word!"

Madge backed against the cabin wall. The Drottle came close to Bannister.

"But we can't leave you here. We never

"Where would ye put me, then? Will ye take seven in a number six dory? Do I command here or no? Get in, the two of ye!"

"No one commands now. We're man and man." Suddenly he turned to Madge. "Madge, which of us shall go?"

The girl went pale and seemed to crumple against the door. Which? Her look flickered from one to the other. Which? And it seemed as if her eyes, her head, all of her, were dropping-down and down and down.

"Oh-don't! Don't! I don't know! I don't know!"

And even as she said it she knew; and a great surge of despair swept over her at the knowledge. She knew!

"Madge! Madge!" shrilled Mrs. Kerrigan from the dory.

"Which of us shall go, Madge?" "Don't! It's not fair! I can't; I can't!" She had turned her face to the cabin wall.

Then it was that The Drottle had an inspiration.

"Look here," he shouted. "I'll match you to see who stays." Bannister-he would have staked his soul on the turn of a card-half-closed his eyes, then smiled a smile that was all angles and fumbled through his oilskins to a trousers pocket. As if moved by an irresistible windlass, Madge turned and watched the men.

"Call!" shouted Bannister, and flipped the coin.

"My luck piece," he confided. "Looks bad for old John. Call." "Tails."

The piece flipped aloft and seemed to flutter down, to Madge's big, white eyes. She closed them. She must not see; she must not see! And then they sprang open again and she saw Bannister nodding friendlily to The Drottle.

"Congratulations, sir. Hope you're satisfied. Get in!" Then it was that Madge found her face against the sticky oilskins and felt the encrusted salt bite into her eyes, while a far-off voice, that she felt must be hers, cried:

"John! John! Don't leave me!

And then Madge knew why she had been born, and that it was not to desert this, her man. She looked up at him, and there, back of her eyes as she winked at the tears, burned a coal, a gleam, a flare the golden glow of victory.

"I'm damned if I go!" she shouted. There was a red streak in the air as she seized one of Bannister's cherished fireaxes and brought it down where the dory painter crossed the rail. And she mingled the salt of her tears with the salt of the sea on his oilskins, while the boat scudded off to leeward. And he, very illogically, held her close and was very glad at heart. Then slowly she became aware that he was calling her.

"Madge! Madge! Look! It's breaking!" Up she raised her head, with the yellow light still glowing in her eyes, and saw, some four miles off, the foam-fringed

sand. Between, she could at times make out the white handkerchief of the dory's sail against the yellow of the sea. And to the left she saw the glory of a sun shaft shining through the clouds like a pillar of golden gauze.

Evans stopped abruptly-as usual. He always halts at the ends of his stories, as if waiting to be disbelieved. Then, semi-apologetically, he went on:

"That's all. The Ho Feng pulled out one of Bannister's anchors, bitts and all, but the other held. Bishop Scott married 'em a month later, an' they've been happy ever since. Yes, very happy. No children; but then they haven't needed any other bonds. Yes-they're happy."

He tried to twist the thin, red ends of his mouth up into a smile, but they sagged miserably. Then his head followed them down and his cane rattled as it fell on the walk. There was a gnawing silence.

"But-but The Drottle- What became of The Drottle?"

"Oh, I was The Drottle." Wearily he lifted the mass of black hair from his left temple, disclosing a long scar glistening white. "Here's where Bannister hit me.'

He sagged into his dejection again. A full minute passed with us both motionless. Then he reached down, picked up the cane, and stood up very straight.

"Vamos, let's go over to the club an' lap up one."

But I, as once before, leaned back hard against the bench. It made the second time that day that I had seen the golden glow of victory.