On the morning after his return Jerry rose at an hour comfortably late, took a swim, shaved, and having finished his breakfast, sat down to write a short note to Jack. As the captain might put in an appearance at any moment now, Taberman did not wish to go away from Naples without leaving some explanation and a hint as to his whereabouts. He found the letter somewhat difficult to write, since to give Jack a satisfactory reason for his errand to PÆstum, especially in brief space, was no easy task. He had been more or less troubled ever since his preposterous promise to Mr. Wrenmarsh; but now that he was confronted with the difficulty of making his course appear rational to Jack, he felt himself so completely a fool that he groaned as he wrote, and then tore up the note, with a curse. On the whole, he decided to say no more than that he had gone to take a short run down the coast, as he was bored at Naples.

He went ashore with the note himself, and leaving the cutter at the quay to wait for him, he set out on foot for the HÔtel du Vesuve, where Jack was to report on his arrival. The morning was already well advanced, and the heat was becoming fervent; but Jerry, freshened by his recent swim, went blithely on his way. At the hotel he said to the porter that he wished to leave a letter for a gentleman who was soon to arrive, and produced his note. The official glanced at the superscription, and observed that the traveler was already there.

Jerry stared at him dumfounded.

"Arrived?" he gasped. "When?"

"He came on the night train from Rome," replied the porter, whose English was almost as good as that of Taberman. "He came on the train that gets in at half-past eight in the morning. He is escorting two ladies. They are now at breakfast."

Tab stood for a moment plunged in perplexity. This unexpected arrival of Jack made his scheme of aiding Wrenmarsh dreadfully difficult, and perhaps even impossible. He felt himself pledged, however, and he reflected that whatever were Jack's plans the captain would hardly hinder him from keeping a promise which he had made on the strength of the supposition that the Merle was to be in his hands a full month. Jack had come back before his time, but Tab said to himself that this would surely make no difference in his fulfilling his obligations to the archÆologist.

He asked for the breakfast party, and was shown into the carefully shaded dining-room where they were seated. Hearty greetings followed, and he sat and talked with them while they finished their repast.

All three looked a bit fagged. Even Mrs. Fairhew, accustomed as she was to European travel of all sorts, had dark circles under her keen eyes. She was dressed, not according to her wont in black, but in a soft gray which well set off her brilliant complexion, so that in spite of the look of fatigue she appeared much as she had when the travelers had met at Nice. Jack was clad in a suit of white linen, with a collarless jacket such as is worn by naval officers in hot climates. His hair had been recently cut, and in such a manner as to cause each separate spike along the parting to stand up in stiff defiance. Jerry politely told him he looked more like a criminal than usual, but Miss Marchfield protested rather indignantly. In Katrine Jerry seemed to detect more alteration than in the others. Her air had grown more sedate, as if the widening of her mental horizon had, even in these few weeks, given her a new maturity and self-poise. The heat had perhaps told on her more than on the others, but in spite of some appearance of fatigue she had an air of joyous alertness which showed her buoyant and happy.

"How is it that you are here so soon?" Taberman asked, after a minute of general talk. "I thought you'd be late, if anything."

"There was a good deal of sickness at Rome," Jack answered, "and when a man died of typhoid fever in the very hotel we were at, it seemed time to move on."

Mrs. Fairhew gave a little shudder.

"Only fancy," she said,—"we knew nothing about it until he had been dead an hour. They told us after breakfast yesterday morning. It was rather unpleasant, you'll grant."

"It must have been ghastly," agreed Tab, "but I hope you'll do better in Naples. It has at least the advantage of being on the sea."

"And of being one of the dirtiest places in Italy," she responded grimly. "However, I'm not one to borrow trouble, and we'll trust in the sea air."

"You're really becoming amphibious, Mr. Taberman," Katrine observed, with a smile. "I half fancy that if you were blindfolded you could smell your way to the water like a turtle."

"The man that piloted the Merle from North Haven to the Island said he went by smell," responded Jerry.

He caught Jack's eye as he spoke, and cast down his glance in confusion. Mrs. Fairhew regarded him curiously.

"How did Mr. Drake like that sort of a pilot?" she asked.

"He didn't hear the remark," Jack put in hastily. "Uncle Randolph wouldn't have approved of that sort of work, I rather fancy."

Jerry made a grimace, and echoed the sentiment, but he added that Dave was really an excellent sailor, and that personally he'd trust the fellow's sense of smell sooner than he would the skill of most pilots. The dangerous moment passed without further allusion to the President, and the talk turned to other matters.

"Is there any one here we know?" inquired Mrs. Fairhew. "I suppose it is hardly possible at this time of year."

"I don't believe there is," answered Tab, "unless," he added, a sudden thought striking him, "you know where PÆstum is?"

"Certainly. I've been looking forward with dread to dragging Katrine down there to see the temples, though really the time of year ought to excuse us."

"Well, there's a sort of Anglo-American lunatic archÆologist down there, named Wrenmarsh. Have you ever heard of him? He has relatives in Boston, I understood him."

Mrs. Fairhew set down the coffee-cup she was just raising to her lips, and looked at Jerry with a keen glance in which amusement and surprise seemed to be mingled.

"What is his Christian name?" she asked.

"Gordon."

"Gordon Wrenmarsh at PÆstum! Well, the world is small, and he might be anywhere,—at least anywhere where he was not expected to be. Did you never hear of him? But no, you wouldn't; you're too young. He is one of my contemporaries, and he has been on this side of the water for ever so long."

"Is it possible?" Jerry cried gallantly. "I shouldn't have suspected that he was so young!"

"Nobody can mistake you when you wish to pay a compliment," she said, with a smile that had in it a tinge of satire. "But did you really see Gordon Wrenmarsh? I haven't heard of him for years. What is he doing? At one time he was a friend of Mr. Fairhew; they were in the same class at Harvard."

She showed a genuine interest, Jerry thought; and at any rate this seemed to him a good time to prepare Jack for the plan evolved between him and the archÆologist, so he launched forth on the narrative of his visit to PÆstum. He did not particularize, but he did not hesitate to say that the archÆologist had chanced upon a rich find which he was guarding in the hope of running it safely out of the country.

"Why shouldn't he take it out of the country if he's bought it?" Katrine asked, with an air of interest.

"The Italian law says he shan't," Jack answered, with a smile.

"Why, if it's his, he has a right to do what he pleases, I should think," she responded.

"But there's a law against carrying works of art out of the country."

"What a horrid, unjust law!" she protested. "If they were mine, I'd take them out; you may be sure of that."

"I'd help you," Jack assured her lightly.

Jerry was secretly so pleased at this passage that he endeavored to keep the conversation in the same line by inquiring of Mrs. Fairhew further particulars about the strange creature with whom he had made tryst.

"Was Mr. Wrenmarsh always as peculiar as he is now?" he asked.

"I'm not able to tell you that," she returned, "as I have no means of knowing how much he has changed; but when I knew him he was the most extraordinary creature. He was always offended if people didn't notice his eccentricities, and if they did he jibed at their provincialism. He said he had to become an Englishman because our civilization was so crude, and he never forgave Bostonians for being so little concerned by his change of nationality."

"You seem to have picked up rather a choice acquaintance, Jerry," observed Jack good-naturedly.

"Oh, Mr. Wrenmarsh became utterly impossible," Mrs. Fairhew continued. "He really had a lot of ability, and I'm told that now he's done some remarkable things in getting antiques for the British Museum. His own people couldn't get on with him at all."

"What an extraordinary creature he must be!" commented Katrine. "Did you take him for a wild man, Mr. Taberman, when you found him wandering about among the ruins of PÆstum?"

"No," Jerry returned, rather regretting that he had continued the talk about Mr. Wrenmarsh. "He came into the little hovel of an inn there while I was trying to get something to eat."

"Well, anyway I hope he'll get his things safe," she added. "They're his, and the government has no right to interfere with him."

"I hope he may," Tab responded rather dispiritedly.

Breakfast being ended, the ladies betook themselves to their rooms to rest after the fatigues of their night of travel.

"If I were a billionaire," Mrs. Fairhew observed, "I would never go anywhere by night except on my own private car. All sleepers are an abomination, and I hate the thought of who may have been in the compartment when I have to sleep in it. I hope we shall see you at dinner, Mr. Taberman?"

"Thank you," Jerry answered, "but I have business to-night. I assure you I regret it tremendously."

"Well," the lady returned over her shoulder as she departed, "at least we shall expect to see you to-morrow; and I hope you'll leave us Mr. Castleport.

"Glad to," laughed Jerry, with a nod; and the men were left to themselves.

Jerry turned quickly to Jack the moment they were alone, with a look of earnestness and concern in his face.

"Cap'n," he said urgently, "come somewhere where we can talk, will you? We've got heaps to say, and my time's precious."

"Jerry," cried the other, catching him by the arm, "something has happened to the Merle!"

"Not a thing, Jacko. She is as right as a trivet, but I'm in a hurry. Come on!"

"Hurry?" echoed Jack, following him in evident disquiet; "what in the world's up? It can't be mutiny, and if the yacht's all right, I don't see"—

"I'll explain," Taberman responded. "I know a jolly little place just round the corner. Come on."

Jack suffered himself to be led to a small cafÉ which bore the rather incongruously ambitious name Albergo del Sole, and which displayed on the yellowish wall above its entrance a rising sun, blood-red and most magnificent as to its rays. At one of the little tables which covered the sidewalk before this establishment, the pair took their places. Tab produced his cigarette-case and ordered a glass of vermouth as he offered his friend a smoke. Jack, with a hardly perceptible compression of the lips which showed that he was controlling his impatience and waiting for Tab to speak, rolled his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger to loosen it, tapped it on the table-top, and lighted it with great deliberation. Jerry did the same, but with evident nervousness.

"Jack," said he, "I have been, and gone, and done it, for fair!"

"What?" inquired Jack in a tone mildly incisive.

"Well, you see—it's this way," Tab answered. "Of course I haven't really done anything yet, but I think I'm bound to, and if you don't think so—Well, you can see it'll be devilish hard on me as well as him."

Jack blew a smoke-ring, and looked at Jerry with a queer smile.

"It must be something pretty bad, Jerry," he said, "if you don't dare tell me what it is."

Jerry looked at him a minute, and then broke into a grin.

"Why," he said, more at his ease, "it's that damned archÆologist, that bedlamite Wrenmarsh I was talking about at the hotel. Well, not having anything else to do, I went down to PÆstum to see the temples and kill time, and I fell into his clutches. I had a lot of talk with him, or he did with me. He knows a pile about the temples, and he did the showman in great shape. Incidentally he told me all about his own affairs. I didn't ask him, mind you. He just did it off his own bat. I couldn't help that, now could I?"

"I don't see how you could," Jack assented; "and no more do I see why you should want to."

"Why, a chap down there—a Dago peasant, you know—has turned up a dreadful mess of stuff Wrenmarsh has bought. I told you all that at breakfast."

"Yes," Jack said imperturbably.

"You see, Wrenmarsh turned to and bought the whole slithering lot of it, and he's just crazy over it; but as I said at the hotel, he's up against the government, and he doesn't know how under the heavens he's going to get the loot out of Italy."

"Great Scott, Tab, did you undertake to run his things out of the country for him? In the Merle, too?" cried Jack, at last showing some consternation.

"It's not quite so bad as that," Jerry protested; "but I did tell him I'd help him out of PÆstum and up here. Naples is all I agreed to. That's all he asked."

Castleport smoked in silence a moment, looking decidedly grave.

"Jack, old man," Jerry said pleadingly, "I've been an awful ass, but the way that beastly Wrenmarsh snarled me up with his talk was perfectly inconceivable. He'd have talked the tail off a brass monkey. He kept appealing to my sense of honor and heaven knows what, until I felt that I'd be a perfect cad not to help him."

"That's all right, Tab," Jack answered thoughtfully. "It's only the Merle—I should hate awfully to get her into a mess."

"He assured me that nothing could happen to her, and I don't think he'd lie."

"Well, if that's so, there's no great harm done, old man. What are you worrying over?"

"I'm not worrying at all, Jacko, if you don't object to my keeping my word. Just continue my letters of marque until to-morrow. I promised him I'd go down this afternoon. You will be in command, of course, now you're here; but I'd hate to think of the poor wretch waiting down there in the marshes for me—it's an awful place for malaria!—and I not coming at all."

"Oh, I shan't interfere," Jack said quickly. "I had made up my mind to stay on shore one night more anyway, and I really gave you the yacht till the twentieth. You shall run this thing yourself; but, by Jove, to think of Uncle Randolph's Merle in business like that!"

"We started out to be pirates anyway," laughed Jerry, "and we haven't lived up to our reputation so far. Well, I'll try it. I shall be rid of the beggar by ten o'clock to-morrow, wind and weather permitting. It's awful good of you, old man. I thought you'd think I was a bally-ass to let myself be bamboozled that way; but when he was talking to me I felt as if he was being awfully bully-ragged, and I ought to help him out."

"Of course," was Jack's response. "Didn't you notice how Katrine had exactly the same feeling, just from your telling about it?"

Tab felt like winking to himself, but he preserved a grave countenance, and only asked,—

"What will you tell Mrs. Fairhew about the Merle's being away?"

"Oh, that 's simple enough. I'll tell her you wanted to visit PÆstum again, and you can say afterward that you ran across Wrenmarsh and brought him up to Naples. Twig it?"

"Clear as a bell. Come down and see me off."

He sprang from his chair with animation, greatly relieved that the captain had not prevented him from carrying out his plan. As Jack rose also, Jerry laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder.

"It's awfully good of you, old man," he said.

"Nonsense. It's a mighty little thing to do for you, when you came across the Atlantic for me."

"Oh, rats!" Tab rejoined inelegantly. "I came for the fun of it."

They paid the reckoning, and made their way to the quay, where for an hour and a half the boat had been waiting for Jerry. The men were lolling about in the stray corners of shade available, smoking and sleepily exchanging occasional remarks; but at the sight of the captain they woke up at once.

"Here's the skipper," cried one, jumping to his feet and saluting.

The others followed his example with alacrity, and Jack could not but be gratified by the unmistakable pleasure they showed at seeing him again.

"How are you, boys?" he said cheerily. "Glad to see you all. You seem to be in fighting trim, the whole lot of you."

"We're bang up, sir," responded Dave, with a grin. "'Tain't the kind o' weather we left home in, sir."

"Not exactly," Jack responded laughingly, as he took his place in the stern-sheets; "but I hope you don't miss the fog too much. Oars!"

Jack stayed on the Merle for an hour and a half, reading the log and exchanging with Jerry all the news that either could rake up. Gonzague made errands into the cabin evidently for the purpose of feasting his eyes on his master, and beamed with delight at every word Castleport spoke to him. When the old man found that the captain had not come to remain, he looked so doleful that Castleport rallied him about not liking Tab as a skipper.

"Eet ees not dat," Gonzague responded, with eloquent hands and shoulders; "he ees fine as de seelk, but—but Mistaire Taberman he ees not zee capataine you."

Jerry was anxious to make an early start for PÆstum, as the wind was light, so Jack took his leave with hearty wishes for a prosperous run. Jerry went with him to the steps.

"By the way, Jack," he asked in an undertone, as the captain was about to descend to take his place in the cutter, "are congratulations in order?"

Castleport looked away from his friend toward where, across the bay, in a dim haze of purple, stood Capri. Then he glanced quickly into Jerry's eyes.

"I—I haven't said anything to her," he answered simply.

He ran down the steps to the cutter. Gonzague himself had taken the boat-hook to hold the craft steady. Castleport put his hand kindly on the old man's shoulder.

"Good-by, Gonzague," he said. "I'm coming aboard for keeps to-morrow. Good-by, Jerry."

"Good-by, and—good luck," called Tab in reply, as the cutter started away.

It lacked a quarter of an hour to twelve that night when the Merle hove to a cable's length off PÆstum. The wind had freshened at sundown, and was blowing a smart breeze from the west. Jerry had the cutter lowered, and, leaving Gonzague in charge, with stringent orders to keep the yacht lying where she was, had himself pulled toward the shore. The men had no notion what was going on, but they obeyed orders with a prompt alacrity which showed that they felt that something of unusual import was in this business. When the cutter was within about a hundred feet of the shore, Tab ordered the men to lie on their oars, and keep watch for a light. In silence and utter darkness, for though the stars were shining there was no moon, they tossed about in the black troughs of the sea for twenty minutes. Then Dave uttered a guarded exclamation.

"There's a light, sir," he said. "See, there it is again."

"Lay her head for it, and pull!" commanded Jerry, feeling as if he were in a pirate novel. "No noise, mind!"

The light had appeared for an instant some two or three hundred feet up the shore from the point off which the cutter lay rolling. They pulled quietly for the spot, the oars sounding softly, the water lapping the bows of the boat, and the wind bringing to their ears the muffled rote as of a sand beach.

"Let her run," ordered Tab in an undertone. "Can you see the light?"

For a minute they rolled in darkness as before, and then again sighted the signal, this time straight in shore. Jerry felt his heart beat as he gave the order to run in, and a consciousness of romantic adventure, lawless and wild, was like a sweet and exhilarating flavor in his mouth. Such a deed on his native shores would have had an atmosphere of secret villany about it, but here, in alien waters, on a foreign coast, under the darkness of night, the romantic side was intensified a thousand-fold. A whimsical feeling flitted through the back of his head that he ought to be dressed differently for such an occasion; that he should have had a shaggy black beard, a red sash stuck full of pistols, and half a dozen cutlasses disposed promiscuously about his person. He was not without a fleeting consciousness that some time he might at home, to the old crowd of college boys, find a keen joy in telling of this night, and—But the light flashed out again, this time so near that the cutter lay full in the middle of the dark, fire-sprinkled path it illumined; and Jerry's entire mind was called back to the business in hand. He could in the light see the cheeks of the men in front of him as they swayed with their rowing, the brass rowlocks of the cutter, and the dripping blades of the oars. He strained his eyes toward the land, but was blinded by the glare into which he looked; and on the instant a voice, eager but subdued, hailed from the shore some twenty feet away.

"Hallo! Are you there, Mr. Taberman?"

"Here all right," answered Jerry. "Eyes in the boat!" he added sharply to the men, every one of whom except Dave had turned to look ashore. "Three good strokes now: Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!... Let her run!"

The nose of the cutter ground on a sand-beach; the bowsman sprang ashore with the painter and held her, while Jerry clambered forward, steadying himself with a hand on the shoulder of the rowers. On leaping to the land, he was confronted by Mr. Wrenmarsh. That gentleman shifted the lantern he held from his right hand to his left, and shook hands with Taberman fervently.

"You're just in time," he said hurriedly. "We haven't a second to lose. The boxes are right here on the edge of the grass. Come on with your men. It'll take four of them for that biggest box."

Jerry called the four men who were nearest, and telling the rest to stand by, he hurried up the beach. In the sand, by the light of the lantern with which the archÆologist came after him, he saw the print of wheels leading up to a pile of rude wooden cases. Three of them were of moderate size, but the fourth looked to Tab huge in the semi-darkness.

"How big is that thing?" he asked, touching it with his foot.

"Don't kick it!" Wrenmarsh responded quickly and sharply. "It's only about a metre square and half as deep. I couldn't make it any smaller."

Jerry whistled with dismay.

"We may lose it overboard on the way to the Merle," he remarked cruelly. Then without heeding the dismayed exclamation of the collector, he ordered the men to take that first. "Put it as far astern as you can," he said. "I'm afraid you'll have to wade in with it."

"For God's sake hurry," cried Wrenmarsh. "I know that beastly carter has put the custodi up to the job by this time. Only don't drop that case!" he added, running along by the side of the bearers with the lantern swinging wildly to and fro and bumping against his legs.

The case was evidently pretty heavy, and the men breathed deep as they carried it across the loose sand. By dint of the men's wading in beside the cutter the big box was safely deposited in the stern-sheets, and the sailors went back for a new load. A second box was stowed without trouble, but as the two others, which were fortunately the smallest, were being lifted by two men each, Wrenmarsh clutched Taberman by the arm.

"Look there!" he cried. "Look there! Quick, men! For God's sake, quick!"

Not more than a hundred yards away on the beach to the southward was an advancing lantern. Suddenly it stopped.

"What is it?" asked Tab.

The men, spurred on by Wrenmarsh, were fairly running across the sand, and Tab skurried along with them toward the boat.

"Hurry! Hurry!" was the breathless response of Wrenmarsh. "It's the custodi and the police—those cursed carabinieri! I told you the carter'd sell me out."

It was only a minute before the men had reached the boat, and hurriedly stowed the boxes they carried. Taberman and Wrenmarsh scrambled in, and Jerry, sitting in a distorted and cramped position behind the big box, got hold of the lines. The men pushed off, and got into their places anyhow. Just as Tab opened his lips to order the men to give way, a peremptory voice came to them from the shore to the south. The light had not advanced from where they had seen it stop, but it had gone waving wildly up and down the beach as if the bearers had encountered some impassable obstacle and sought in vain for a place which would allow a passage.

"Aspetta!" bawled the voice. "Aspetta nel nomme del Re!"

"What's that?" asked Jerry.

"They're calling us to stand—in the king's name," Mr. Wrenmarsh returned with sullen nervousness.

"Head the boat 'round," cried Tab. "Why the devil don't they come down if they want us?"

"I can't imagine," the collector answered.

"Perhaps they're afraid of us; but I don't think that can be it."

"Aspetta!" thundered the voice on shore more savagely. "Aspetta o tiriamo!"

"By Jove! The sands!" cried Wrenmarsh. "There's a brook there—the bottom's quicksand. They daren't try to cross."

"Quicksand?" echoed Tab. "How'd they come there, then?"

"They must have thought we were on the other side of the stream. They've come up on the wrong bank, and now they can't get over."

Bang! There was a quick, loud report, and Jerry heard the wht of a carbine ball close astern.

"Great Scott!" he shouted. "Douse that glim! Pull! Pull!"

Wrenmarsh seized the lantern and dipped it overboard, an effective if irregular way of quenching it.

Bang! Bang! Two more shots. One of the men, Hunter, pulling on the third thwart, afterward swore that he felt the wind of the second bullet.

Bang!

"Pull hard, men! Steady!" cried Jerry.

A man of race and training, while in a crisis of this sort he feels more excitement than his thicker-skinned fellows, displays more outward coolness. Social development means the power of self-control, especially when any sense of responsibility is involved. Taberman was inwardly wild with the stirring emotions of an experience such as he not only had never encountered but of which he had heard in a hundred ways which lent associations to heighten the effect; yet he did not lose for a moment his sense of having the men to care for. He kept his head, and called the stroke for the rowers. They showed by their tendency to pull wildly how near they were to demoralization, and Jerry urged them to steadiness with language of the most picturesque emphasis.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Three shots. At the third there was a sharp rap, as if the cutter had been hit by a pebble, and a queer little squeak of splintering wood. Tab started up, but instantly sat down again, catching at the yoke-line he had half let fall.

"Close call," Wrenmarsh said nervously.

"Yes," Jerry answered laconically. "Stroke! Stroke! Steady!"

At the instant he had heard the sound of the ball on the wood of the boat, he had felt a sharp twinge in his left arm, as if the muscle had been suddenly tweaked off the bone by a pair of white-hot pincers. The pain was exquisite, but he forced himself to keep calm, and beyond the first involuntary spring he gave no indication that he had been hit. In a sort of double consciousness he kept saying to himself that he wondered how severe the hurt was, and at the same time he seemed to be lifted by sheer will and excitement above even the physical feeling of the moment.

"Steady!" he said, and was queerly conscious of a sort of exultation that his voice was so strong and natural. "We're 'most out of range."

Other shots followed, but they splashed harmlessly astern. The darkness was a shelter, and although the carbines flashed again and again from the shore, no more damage was done on board the cutter. Ahead of them Tab, holding himself together grimly, saw the red and green sailing-lights of the Merle, and realized that at the sound of the firing Gonzague must have run the yacht in shore.

"Ahoy!" Jerry called.

Tears of pain suffused his eyes in spite of him, and made the colored lights big and blurry, as if they were the glaring orbs of some huge dragon.

"HollÁ!" came Gonzague's voice. "A'right, sair!" and with a deafening boom of canvas the schooner luffed up.

Jerry put his right arm behind him, his left hanging limply, and getting hold of the rudder-yoke he laid the cutter alongside the yacht. He and Wrenmarsh got up to the deck, a davit was turned out-board as a crane and the boxes hoisted, and then the boat slung up.

Faint and savage with pain, Jerry still fought with himself to keep up, and to fulfill his duties as commander. He remembered that his order for the Merle to lie to where she was had been disregarded; and though he was inwardly glad that the yacht had been brought to meet the cutter, he felt that discipline was discipline, and he was in no mood to let any infringement of orders go unnoted. He called Gonzague.

"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded fiercely. "Didn't I give orders to keep the yacht hove to till I came out?"

"Yes, sair," Gonzague answered contritely, stroking his stiff white mustache with nervous fingers, "bot I heer de shotin' ashore, an'"—

"That made no difference. I'm ashamed that an old seaman like you should disobey orders simply because he heard a row ashore. Go forward. I shall mark you in the log."

The old man took himself off without a word. However much he was likely to feel the sting of this reproof, he was not the man to fail to respect the mate for it, and of this Tab might be assured when he had the calmness to think things over.

Jerry gave the helmsman the course for Naples, and the Merle swung off on her return. Then he started to go below, but now that the need of immediate action was over he suddenly turned sick and dizzy. He put out his uninjured arm with a quick clutch at Mr. Wrenmarsh.

"Give me—your arm," he said weakly. "I'm—I'm hit, you know, and things go round."

"Hit!" echoed the collector. "Where? Is it serious?"

"Arm," answered Jerry. "Help me get below."

The archÆologist supported Jerry to the companion, and then almost carried him down the steps. He tried to place him on the transom, but Taberman stubbornly walked half the length of the cabin, and sank into a chair by the table. His lips seemed to him queerly stiff as he twisted them into a wry smile.

"Mustn't bleed on the cushions, y' know," he said feebly. "Call Gonzague."

Wrenmarsh shouted the name explosively, hovering solicitously over Jerry, and in a moment the ProvenÇal appeared. Jerry made a mighty effort to pull himself together.

"Here, Gonzague," he said, "get the medicine-chest, and strip my coat off. I've got to be fixed. I want some hot water and a b. and s. Beg your—pardon," he added, turning slowly to Mr. Wrenmarsh, and confusedly wishing that the cabin would not turn so much faster than he could. "I'm forgetting. This gentleman's to have Jack's—the captain's stateroom. Will you have anything to drink? 'Fraid I'm poor host, but"—

"No, no," cried the archÆologist. "That's all right. The brandy, Gonzague, quick!"

A brandy and soda put fresh life into Jerry, who still tried to be polite, and protested that the collector should not bother.

"You'll find me a first-class chirurgeon," responded the other. "Where's the medicine-chest, Gonzague?"

He proved remarkably ready and efficient and kindly withal. He stripped off Jerry's jacket and cut away the shirt-sleeve, to discover a two-inch sliver of African oak from the gunwale of the cutter stabbed into a jagged hole in the forearm. He probed and cut and trimmed with the skill of a trained surgeon, while Jerry, pale and with set teeth, bore it all with Spartan firmness until everything was over, and then, as he tried to rise when the last bandage was in place, fainted dead away.

When the plucky mate had been brought round and stowed away in his berth, Gonzague again took charge of the Merle, and dropped her anchor once more in the harbor of Naples at about eight o'clock in the morning.

Just before Mr. Wrenmarsh turned in for the night, he put his head into the door of Jerry's stateroom to ask if he could do anything for him.

"No, thank you," Jerry returned. "Much obliged; but the man by my door will hear if I want anything. I'm all right now. I'm jolly much obliged to you for fixing me up."

"'Pon my word, Table—Taberman, you're the most extraordinary man for a Bostonian I ever saw. Good-night."

"Good-night," Jerry responded. Then he chuckled, and added, "But Boston's full of better men than I am, if you'd only stayed there to see 'em."