"What's that?" frowned Smith. "That sounds like Yankee smartness to me--seems to make a great deal more sense than it really does."

"Anyway, I don't want to rat on you fellows, just because Malone left me in charge for a day or so."

Caradoc made no answer, but stared after the rowboat which was just rounding into the tug. "If I'd played up to that officer a bit," he smiled dourly, "I could have had the mate's berth, Madden."

The American glanced up. The Englishman's smile recalled the look Leonard had seen under the bracket lamp.

"Well, there's very little in it for anyone, I'm thinking."

"Certainly, certainly," Smith shrugged a broad shoulder and the subject was dismissed.

The blustery weather increased steadily, and by lunch time the wind was blowing half a gale. Regiments of waves marched against the dock and snapped spray high up the red sides. Their constant blows rang through the big iron structure. A feeling of security came to Madden as he saw the gray-green waves break white, and yet not shake the huge barge sufficiently to tip the paint from the men's buckets. Certainly the dock was monstrous.

The sea grew rougher as evening wore on and finally the boy went to the mate's cabin to pick out his men for the night's work. After his own cramped quarters, Malone's room proved delightful. Three glass ports admitted light. A table in the center of the room spread over with a Mercator's projection showed that Malone dutifully pricked the _Vulcan's_ course on the chart, although it was not required of him. A sextant and quadrant told the American that the stolid Briton worked out his own reckonings. The sight of these things filled the boy with a respect for the uncouth fellow. He understood how doggedly Malone must have labored to acquire mastery over the instruments of navigation.

Beyond this there were a number of flaring chromos on the walls, a decanter of wine and glasses in a chest. He found what he was looking for in the desk drawer, a roll of men checked off for watches. The coming night was arranged for, but for morning, the names of Heck Mulcher, Ben Galton and Caradoc Smith stood in order. Madden was just marking these men when there was a tap at the door.

Upon call, Gaskin, the cook, entered, bearing a big tray of dishes, "Yer dinner, sir," he said, very respectfully.

Madden had not anticipated having the mate's meals served to him, and for a moment he came near asking the cook if he had not made a mistake; but the steaming tray and the pleasant odors kept the question unspoken.

Only with this diet before him did he realize that he had been fairly starving on the poor ship's rations.

When Gaskin placed the soup on the table, Madden became aware that the dock was rolling rather heavily, for the liquid spilled over the side of the plate, while dishes and tureens went coasting up and down the boards.

"Getting rough outside," remarked the lad to the servant, who was lighting a lamp.

"A bit 'eavier, sir," replied Gaskin self effacingly.

Madden held the soup plate in his hand for steadiness, and sipped the hot, satisfying liquid while the great dock rose and fell. The fact that he was really in command of the vast iron fabric put the American in a serious humor. He ate dinner slowly, listening to the heavy clang of the waves against the iron hull, and to the wind whining and sobbing over the great metal sides.

When he had finished his meal, the youth arose with the intention of going to the sailors' mess house to see about the watches. He had no sooner stuck his head out of the door, however, than a whisk of spray leaped at him out of the darkness and drove him inside. He was preparing to venture out again, when Gaskin opened a locker and brought out an oilskin.

"Hit'll 'elp you keep dry, sir," holding up the garment.

Swathed in its folds, Madden made a new start and walked out on the heaving, shifting pontoon.

Outside a renewed noise smote his ears. The air was full of flying spume that whipped in through the stern of the dock. Malone had planked up this open gateway to a height of thirty feet, which made it forty-two feet above the salt water line, but the spray already leaped this barrier and pelted throughout the dark heavy iron canyon.

The dock was made in three huge sections, in order that it might be self-docking when fouled. Now in the darkness, the groaning of these joints smote the blustering gale in a sort of vast distress. The many iron stanchions for the shoring of vessels began thrumming a devil's tattoo against the high iron walls, like a myriad giant fingers.

In the corners of the bow pontoon, Madden could see the signal lights heaving and dropping with the motion of the vast fabric. Now and then he caught a glimmer of the tug's light, and its erratic motions told how the staunch little vessel fared.

There was a faint radiance around the shut door of the mess hall, and Madden walked toward it rather unsteadily, with the spumy brine dashing into his face.

A signal lantern was attached to one of the shoring stanchions near the mess hall, and as Madden moved into its dull glow, another bundled form entered from the other side. The figure stopped and saluted.

"If you please, sor," he bawled in Madden's ear, "th' nixt watch is sick."

"Sick! The whole watch sick? What do you mean, Mike?"

The Irishman grinned in the dim light, "Yis, sor, they're in their bunks wishin' to die. They've niver been in a blow before. It's say-sick they ar-re."

Both men were holding to the stanchion.

"Seasick!" ejaculated Madden. "How about Heck Mulcher and Ben Galton?"

he recalled the names on the list.

"The whole sit of navvies, sor, ar-re down on their backs, not carin' at all, at all, whether we float, sink, swim, or go to Davy Jones' locker."

"Well, Caradoc's next--come with me."

They took hold of each other and went sliding and slipping along the iron deck, now skating down hill, now climbing a sharp tilt, shoulders hunched against the gusty spume, until they reached Smith's little cabin past the mess hall. Here they paused and rapped on the door. As this could not have been heard inside for the wind and the waves and the groaning of the dock, they pushed open the shutter.

Madden no sooner entered than his nostrils caught a pervading odor of alcohol. The Englishman's long figure lounged fully dressed on a bunk; a demijohn was jammed behind his kit bag to keep it from rolling.

"Smith!" called Madden, "I'll have to ask you to stand watch to-night; nearly all the navvies are sick."

Caradoc lifted his head from the bunk and blinked at the two men in the door. "What?" he asked vacantly.

"You're to stand watch to-night," Madden raised his voice.

"Stand watch!" cried the Englishman, sitting up, his face flushing darkly under the bracket lamp. "You _have_ turned master, haven't you--bootlicker ordering me to stand watch!"

"It's your turn on the list!" commanded Madden brusquely, with ill-concealed disgust that Smith should be maudlin just when needed.

"My turn--Bah! I'd have been mate myself if I had toadied and flattered that upstart Malone as you did!" He laughed sarcastically. "Then I could have had decent dinners, been wearing the mate's sou'wester, been--"

"Cut it out!" snapped Madden. "Will you do your duty or not?"

The dock gave a great lurch that flattened both men against the door, juggled Caradoc in his berth and sent kit bag and demijohn sliding toward the visitors.

"Not!" bawled Smith. "I, Caradoc Smith-Wentworth, can't think of going to stand watch for a gang of siz-seasick navvies an' a t-toady American Yankee--Not!" he reiterated and laughed in tipsy irony.

A flush of anger went over Madden. He reached down suddenly and caught up the demijohn.

"You--you bet' not drink th-that, y-you little bossy Yankee; it-it'll m-make _you_ d-drunk."

"You sot!" trembled Madden. "Whiskey will not be your excuse next time!"

He caught the Irishman's arm, "Come on!" And before Smith realized what had happened, the two men and his liquor were out of the door and gone.

Madden slammed the shutter viciously, and the tilt of a wave helped give it a loud bang. Then he gave the jug a wrathful swing and smashed it against the nearest stanchion.

"Smith'll have some sense when he can't get any more," he shouted in Hogan's ear. Then after a moment, "Is there nobody else to take the watch?"

"There's Dashalong, sir," bellowed Mike, "but he stood last night."

"How about you?" inquired Leonard.

"All roight." The Celt was about to turn for the high bridge at the stern, when Madden stopped him.