so I thought he'd fall overboard.
"'What's that?' he shouts.
"'Why, that girl you're engaged to,' says I. 'Miss--' and I yelled her name, and how she'd gone abroad with his folks, and all.
"'Shut up!' he whispers, waving his hands, frantic. 'Don't stop to lie. Hurry up!'
"''Tain't a lie. Oh, I know about it!' I hollers, as if he was deef. I meant to be heard--by him and anybody else that might be interested. I give a whole lot more partic'lars, too. He fairly shoved me into the skiff, after a spell.
"'Now,' he says, so mad he could hardly speak, 'stop your lying and row, will you!'
"I was willing to row then. I cal'lated I'd done some missionary work by this time. Allie's guns was spiked, if I knew Barbara Saunders. I p'inted the skiff the way she'd ought to go and laid to the oars.
"My plan had been to get him aboard the skiff and row somewheres--ashore, if I could. But 'twas otherwise laid out for me. The wind was blowing pretty fresh, and the skiff was down by the stern, so's the waves kept knocking her nose round. 'Twas dark'n a pocket, too. I couldn't tell where I WAS going.
"Allie got more fidgety every minute. 'Ain't we 'most there?' he asks. And then he gives a screech. 'What's that ahead?'
"I turned to see, and as I done it the skiff's bow slid up on something. I give an awful yank at the port oar; she slewed and tilted; a wave caught her underneath, and the next thing I knew me and Allie and the skiff was under water, bound for the bottom. We'd run acrost one of the guy-ropes of my fish-weir.
"This wa'n't in the program. I hit sand with a bump and pawed up for air. When I got my head out I see a water-wheel doing business close along-side of me. It was Allie.
"'Help!' he howls. 'Help! I'm drowning!'
"I got him by the collar, took one stroke and bumped against the weir-nets. You know what a fish-weir's like, don't you, Mr. Brown?--a kind of pound, made of nets hung on ropes between poles.
"'Help!' yells Allie, clawing the nets. 'I can't swim in rough water!'
"You might have known he couldn't. It looked sort of dubious for a jiffy. Then I had an idee. I dragged him to the nighest weir-pole. 'Climb!' I hollers in his ear. 'Climb that pole.'
"He done it, somehow, digging his toes into the net and going up like a cat up a tree. When he got to the top he hung acrost the rope and shook.
"'Hang on there!' says I. 'I'm going after the boat.' And I struck out. He yelled to me not to leave him, but the weir had give me my bearings, and I was bound for my power-boat. 'Twas a tough swim, but I made it, and climbed aboard, not feeling any too happy. Losing a good skiff was more'n I'd figgered on.
"Soon's I got some breath I hauled anchor, started up my engine and headed back for the weir. I run along-side of it, keeping a good lookout for guy-ropes, and when I got abreast of that particular pole I looked for Allie. He was setting on the rope, a-straddle of the pole, and hanging onto the top of it like it owed him money. He looked a good deal more comfortable than I was when he and Prince had treed me. And the remembrance of that time come back to me, and one of them things they call inspiration come with it. He was four feet above water, 'twas full tide then, and if he set still he was safe as a church.
"So instead of running in after him, I slowed 'way down and backed off.
"'Come here!' he yells. 'Come here, you fool, and take me aboard.'
"'Oh, I don't know,' says I. 'You're safe there, and, even if the yacht folks don't come hunting for you by and by--which I cal'late they will--the tide'll be low enough in five hours or so, so's you can walk ashore.'
"'What--what do you mean?' he says. 'Ain't you goin' to take me off?'
"'I was,' says I, 'but I've changed my plans. And, Mr. Allie Vander-what's-your-name Davidson, there's other things--low-down, mean things--planned for this night that ain't going to come off, either. Understand that, do you?'
"He understood, I guess. He didn't answer at all. Only gurgled, like he'd swallered something the wrong way.
"Then the beautiful tit for tat of the whole business come to me, and I couldn't help rubbing it in a little. 'As a sartin acquaintance of mine once said to me,' I says, 'you look a good deal handsomer up there than you do in a boat.'
"'You--you--etcetery and so forth, continued in our next!' says he, or words to that effect.
"'That's all right,' says I, putting on the power. 'You've got no kick coming. I allow you to--er--ornament my weir-pole, and 'tain't every dude I'd let do that.'
"And I went away and, as the Fifth Reader used to say, 'let him alone in his glory.'
"I went back to the launch, pulled up her anchor and took her in tow. I towed her in to her pier, made her fast and then left her for a while. When I come back the little cabin-door was open and the girl's jacket was gone.
"Then I walked up the path to the Saunders house and it done me good to see a light in Barbara's window. I set on the steps of that house until morning keeping watch. And in the morning the yacht was gone and the weir-pole was vacant, and Cap'n Eben Saunders come on the first train.
"So's that's all there is of it. Allie hasn't come back to Bayport sence, and the last I heard he'd married that Newport girl; she has my sympathy, if that's any comfort to her.
"And Barbara? Well, for a long time she'd turn white every time I met her. But, of course, I kept my mouth shut, and she went to sea next v'yage with her dad. And now I hear she's engaged to a nice feller up to Boston.
"Oh, yes--one thing more. When I got back to my shanty that morning I wiped the chalkmark off the door. I kind of figgered that I'd paid that debt, with back interest added."
THE LOVE OF LOBELIA 'ANKINS
Obed's yarn being done, and friend Davidson done too, and brown at that, Peter T. passed around another relay of cigars and we lit up. 'Twas Cap'n Eri that spoke first.
"Love's a queer disease, anyway," says he. "Ain't it, now? 'Twould puzzle you and me to figger out what that Saunders girl see to like in the Davidson critter. It must be a dreadful responsible thing to be so fascinating. I never felt that responsibleness but once--except when I got married, of course--and that was a good many years ago, when I was going to sea on long v'yages, and was cruising around the East Indies, in the latitude of our new troubles, the Philippines.
"I put in about three months on one of them little coral islands off that way once. Hottest corner in the Lord's creation, I cal'late, and the laziest and sleepiest hole ever I struck. All a feller feels like doing in them islands is just to lay on his back under a palm tree all day and eat custard-apples, and such truck.
"Way I come to be there was like this: I was fo'mast hand on a Boston hooker bound to Singapore after rice. The skipper's name was Perkins, Malachi C. Perkins, and he was the meanest man that ever wore a sou'-wester. I've had the pleasure of telling him so sence--'twas in Surinam 'long in '72. Well, anyhow, Perkins fed us on spiled salt junk and wormy hard-tack all the way out, and if a feller dast to hint that the same wa'n't precisely what you'd call Parker House fare, why the skipper would knock him down with a marline-spike and the first mate would kick him up and down the deck. 'Twan't a pretty performance to look at, but it beat the world for taking the craving for fancy cooking out of a man.
"Well, when I got to Singapore I was nothing but skin and bone, and considerable of the skin had been knocked off by the marline-spike and the mate's boots. I'd shipped for the v'yage out and back, but the first night in port I slipped over the side, swum ashore, and never set eyes on old Perkins again till that time in Surinam, years afterward.
"I knocked round them Singapore docks for much as a month, hoping to get a berth on