MR. ROPESEND, the senior member of the firm of Snatchblock, Tackle & Co., sat in his office and drew forth his pocket-knife. Upon the desk before him lay a small wooden box which contained a patent taffrail log. After some deliberation he opened his knife and began to pry off the lid of the box, whistling softly as he did so. In doing this he awakened a strange-looking animal which lay at his feet. But the animal, which Mr. Ropesend called a “daschund,” after raising its long body upon four twisted and double-jointed legs until its belly barely cleared the floor, appeared overcome by the effort and flopped down again with its head towards its master and its hind legs trailing out behind on the floor.

Mr. Ropesend carefully removed the lid of the box and with considerable anxiety removed the instrument. Then he laid it carefully upon the table, while Gaff, his pet, looked lazily up with one eye, and then, not caring for logs, slowly closed it again.

Presently Mr. Ropesend appeared to have developed an idea. He rang the bell. A boy appeared almost instantly at the door leading into the main office.

“Tell Mr. Tackle to step here a moment, please,” said Mr. Ropesend in a soothing tone.

The boy vanished, and in a few minutes a man with red whiskers trimmed “dishonestly”—with bare chin—made his appearance.

“Good-morning, Mr. Tackle; here’s the patent log for Captain Green. What do you think of it?”

“H’m. Yes. H’m-m. I see. I don’t know as I’m any particular judge of logs, although I’ve been in this shipping house for twenty years. But it appears to me to be a very fine instrument. Very fine indeed, sir. Sort of screw-propeller that end affair, ain’t it?”

“That’s it, of course,” said Mr. Ropesend in a tone bordering on contemptuous; “sort of a fin-screw with long pitch. It says in order to regulate it you simply have to adjust the timber noggins. I should suppose a man who has been in a shipping house as long as you have would know all about a plain taffrail log and be able to regulate it so as to use it, if necessary.”

“Ah, yes, I see,” said Mr. Tackle instantly, without appearing to hear the last part of the senior’s remarks. “Eggzackly. Regulated by timber noggins, of course. I didn’t notice it, but any one might know it couldn’t be regulated without timber noggins. Let me see it closer. That new cord gave it a strange look.”

“I’m glad you like it and understand all about it,” said Mr. Ropesend in a tone of decision, “for I’m very busy, and you can just take it into your office and explain it to Captain Green when he comes for it. He will be here presently.”

So saying the senior quickly replaced the instrument in the box and had it in the astonished Tackle’s hands before he could get out an H’m-m. Then he commenced writing rapidly upon some important-looking papers before him, giving Mr. Tackle to understand that the incident had closed.

Mr. Tackle flushed, hesitated a moment, and then quickly retired into the outer office, and Mr. Ropesend, having rid himself of the log, smiled grimly to Gaff, turned half-way around in his chair, proceeded to light a cigar and puff the smoke at the dog’s face.

This provoked the animal to such an extent that he growled, snarled, and grew quite savage, much to Mr. Ropesend’s delight.

The dog finally grew frantic, and had just risen from the floor to find more congenial quarters, when the door opened suddenly and Captain Green stepped into the room with a hoarse roar of “Good-morning, Mr. Ropesend; I’ve come for that patent log.”

This sudden entrance of the loud-voiced skipper was too much for Gaff’s nerves, and he no sooner found himself attacked in the rear than he made a sudden turn, and grabbed the first thing that came within his reach.

This happened to be the calf of Captain Green’s left leg, which he held on to in a manner that showed he had a healthy appetite.

“Let go, you son of a sea cook!” bawled the skipper. “Let go, or I’ll stamp the burgoo out o’ you.”

“Let go, Gaff; that’s a good doggie,” said Mr. Ropesend in his mildest tone. “Let go, Gaff; you’ll hurt your teeth, doggie.”

“Let go, you son of a pirate!” roared the skipper. “Let go, or I’ll smash you!”

“Good heavens, Captain Green, you forget yourself. What, strike a poor dumb brute!” cried Mr. Ropesend. And he arose from his chair as if to ward oft a threatened blow.

Gaff at this juncture looked up, and apparently realized the energy stored within the skipper’s raised boot. He let go and waddled under his master’s desk, his long belly touching the ground amidships, as his legs were too short to raise it clear. From this safe retreat he sent forth peculiar sounds which were evidently intended by nature to terrify the enemy.

“Wouldn’t strike him, hey!” roared the skipper, rubbing his leg. “Well, maybe I wouldn’t, I don’t think. By Gorry, Mr. Ropesend, that’s a long-geared critter. I didn’t know but what he was a sort o’ walking snake or sea-sarpint. I felt as if a shark had me. It’s a good thing I had on these sea-boots.”

“Calm yourself. Calm yourself, captain,” said the senior. “Did he hurt you?”

“No, confound him, not to speak of. It’s a fine watch-dog he is when he bites his friends like this.—I came for that log you spoke of the other day.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Ropesend; “I’ve just given it to Mr. Tackle to give to you. He will explain it to you,—how it works and all that. Right in the front office,—yes, that door. Good-morning.” And the skipper went out cursing softly.

In the front office he met the boy with the box containing the log and a note from Mr. Tackle delivering the same to him, in which he excused himself from explaining the management of the instrument by the fact that he was called out suddenly. The note concluded, however, with the remark that “the instrument was quite easy to regulate by means of the timber noggins, and that he anticipated no difficulty with it.”

The captain took the box and carried it on board his ship, and locked it in the cabin. He was going to sea the next morning, and, as he had a good deal to attend to, he couldn’t stop to investigate further.

When the ship had crossed the bar, the next afternoon, and backed her main-yards in order to put the pilot off, the mate brought out the box containing the log, and proposed to put the instrument over the taffrail. The third mate happened to be standing near and noticed him.

The third mate’s name was Joseph, but being a very young man, and very bright, having a fine grammar-school education, he was familiarly called Joe by his superiors for fear that the handle of “Mister” to his name might trim him too much by the head. Joe despised his superiors with all the scornful feeling that a highly educated sailor has for the more ignorant officers above him, and it required more than ordinary tact on his part to keep from getting into trouble.

“Why, the skipper don’t know enough to be mate of a liner,” said he to the steward one day in a burst of confidence. “As for Gantline, he don’t know nothing. You just wait and see if I don’t get a shove up before we make another voyage around the Cape.”

He had waited, but Joseph was still in his old berth this voyage.

It was natural he should be a little more scornful than ever now, and as he watched the mate clumsily handling the patent log a strong desire to revenge himself for slighted genius came upon him.

When the ship’s yards were squared again the skipper took up the log and examined it.

“I suppose you know how to regulate the machine, Mr. Gantline,” said he, addressing the mate.

“Can’t say as I do. I never seen one like this before.”

“Why, blast you, all you’ve got to do is to twist them timber noggins till it goes right, and that does the whole business. Then you let her go.”

“Where’s any timber noggins hereabouts?” asked the mate.

“Why, on the tail of the log; see?” and the skipper took up the trailing-screw.

“Ah, yes, I see; but how about this clock machine that goes on the rail. Don’t seem to open exactly.”

The skipper took up this part and examined it carefully.

“That’s all right. It don’t open; you just keep on letting her twist, and add on to where you start from or subtract from where you are.”

“I see,” said the mate, and without further ado he dropped the trailing-screw overboard.

The third mate saw all this, and he determined to investigate the instrument during his watch that night.

When he went forward he stopped at the carpenter’s room.

“Chips,” said he, addressing his chum, “we’ve got a new log on board and the skipper and mate don’t know how to use it. Now, I’ll bet you they will have to get me to show them, and if I do, I’ll make them shove me up the next voyage. Why, I tell you, putting a good instrument like that in the hands of such men is like casting pearls before—before—Captain Green and Gantline. You just wait and see.”

That night there was very little wind, but the third mate wound the log up for about fifty miles more than the ship travelled.

“We don’t need any more sights for a while,” said the skipper the next morning. “Mr. Snatchblock said that the log was dead accurate, so we’ll let her run. Must have blown pretty stiff during the mid-watch, Mr. Gantline, eh?” he continued, as he looked at what the log registered.

“No, I can’t say as it did,” said the mate, scratching his head thoughtfully as he looked at the night’s run.

“’Pears to me as if we made an all-fired long run of it.”

“Well, I guess you were a little off your first night out. You’ll be sober in a day or so,” said the skipper, with a grin.

The next day it was dead calm and foggy, but in spite of this the log registered a good fifty-mile run, and, as the ship was to put into Norfolk to complete her cargo, she was headed more to the southward.

“I haven’t any faith in that log, captain,” said Mr. Gantline; “it don’t seem as if we were off shore enough to head the way we do.”

“Well, haul it in and let’s look at it,” said the skipper.

The third mate was standing close by and helped haul in the line. “Captain,” said he, as the screw came over the rail, “this log is not set right; and if we’ve been running by it, we are too close in to the beach.”

“Eh! what’s that? Too close in are we? How do you know the log ain’t all right?”

“Why, it’s just a matter of calculation of angles,” replied the third mate. “These fins that Mr. Tackle calls timber noggins are set at the wrong angle. You see the sine of the angle, at which this blade meets the water, must be in the same proportion to the cosine of the angle to which it is bent as its tangent is to its secant, see?”

“H’m-m, yes, I see,” growled the skipper; “but why didn’t you mention it before, if you knew it all this time, instead of waiting until we got way in here? Why didn’t you tell Mr. Gantline?” His voice rising with his anger. “Why didn’t you tell Mr. Gantline this when you knew he’d never seen a log like this before? What do you suppose you are here for, anyhow?” he fairly roared. “Go forward, sir; I won’t have such a man for a mate on my ship.”

“Mr. Gantline,” he said, after Joe had gone, “get the lead-line and make a few casts, sir, by yourself,—by yourself, sir,—and then come and tell me how much water we’ve got under us.”

The mate, without any unnecessary disturbance, got out the lead, and, as it was calm and the vessel had no motion, he had no difficulty in making a deep-sea sounding. He was also materially aided by the startling effect of the lead, when he hove it over the side with fifty fathoms of coiled line to follow it. To his great amazement the line suddenly ceased running out after the five-fathom mark had passed over, and it became necessary to heave the remaining forty-five fathoms of coiled line after it, in order not to transmit this startling fact to any one that might be looking on. Then, with a great deal of exertion, he laboriously hauled the forty-five fathoms in again, and then called to Joe to haul in and coil down the rest, and then put the lead away. After this he went quickly aft to the skipper and whispered something in his ear that sounded to the man at the wheel like “Shoal—Barnegat.” The man at the wheel might have been mistaken, and it is only fair to presume that he was, but in a very short time the ship was headed due east again.

As night came on, a slight breeze came through the fog and the ship gathered headway. The captain, who had been walking fore and aft on the quarter in his shirt-sleeves, mopping great beads of perspiration from his forehead, now seemed to be aware of the chilliness of the air and forthwith went below.

The ship made a very quick voyage around Cape Horn, and a year later, when she returned, Mr. Ropesend met Captain Green in his office the morning he arrived.

“How did you like the patent log, captain?” said Mr. Ropesend.

“Mr. Ropesend,” said the captain, in a deep voice that made Gaff look up and recognize his old friend,—“Mr. Ropesend, I don’t believe in these new-fangled logs what’s regulated by timber noggins, no more’n I do in these worthless third mates that’s only good for teaching school.”