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the waves. I couldn't die away from them either. I'd be like a deep sea-fish washed clean ashore. How them landlubbers live with everything dead and dull around them, I don't see. I ain't been out of sight of deep water since I shipped as cabin boy in the 'Lady Jane' nigh onto sixty years ago. I've been aloft in her rigging with the sea beating over the deck and the wind whistling so loud ye couldn't hear the cuss words the old man was a-roaring through his trumpet below. I've held her wheel through many a black night when no mortal man could tell shore from sea. I stood by her when she struck on this here reef, ripped open from stem to stern; and I'm standing by her now, 'cording to the old Captain's orders, yet."

"Ye may be right," said Brother Bart, reflectively. "It's not for me to judge ye, Jeroboam." (Brother Bart never shortened that Scriptural title.) "But I bless the Lord day and night that I was not called to the sea.--What is it the boys are after now!" he added, with an anxious glance at the boat in which laddie and Dan had ventured out beyond his call.

"Lobsters," replied Captain Jeb. "Them's Neb's lobster pots bobbing up thar, and they've got a catch that will give us a dinner fit for a king."

"It's all to your taste," said Brother Bart. "Barrin' fast days, of which I say nothing, I wouldn't give a good Irish stew for all the fish that ever swam the seas. But laddie is thrivin' on the food here, I must say. There's a red in his cheeks I haven't seen for months; but what with the rocks and the seas and the Devil's Jaw foreninst them, it will be the mercy of God if I get the four boys safe home."

"You needn't fear," was the cheering assurance. "They are fine, strapping fellows, and a touch of sailor life won't harm them; though it's plain them two big chaps and little Polly's boys are used to softer quarters. But for a long voyage I'd ship Mate Danny before any of them."

"Ye would?" asked Brother Bart.

"Aye," answered Captain Jeb, decisively. "Don't fly no false colors, sticks to his job, ready to take hold of anything from a lobster pot to a sheet anchor,--honest grit straight through. Lord, what a ship captain he would make! But they don't teach navigation at your school."

"I don't know," answered Brother Bart. "I'm not book-learned, as I've told ye; but there's little that isn't taught at St. Andrew's that Christian lads ought to know; to say nothing of God's holy law, which is best of all; but of navigation I never hear tell. I'm thinking it can't be much good."

"No good!" repeated the Captain, staring. "Navigation no good! Lord! You're off your reckoning thar sure, Padre. Do you know what navigation means? It means standing on your quarter-deck and making your ship take its way over three thousand miles of ocean straight as a bird flies to its nest; it means holding her in that ar way with the waves a-swelling mountain high and the wind a-bellowing in your rigging, and a rocky shore with all its teeth set to grind her in your lee; it means knowing how to look to the sun and the stars when they're shining, and how to steer without, them when the night is too black to see. Where would you and I be now, Padre, if a navigator that no landlubbers could down had not struck out without map or chart to find this here America of ours hundreds of years ago?"

"I'm sure I don't know," answered Brother Bart. "But there seems to be sense and truth in what you say. It's a pity you haven't the light of Faith."

"What would it do for me!" asked Captain Jeb, briefly.

"What would it do for you?" repeated Brother Bart. "Sure it's in the black darkness you are, my man, or ye wouldn't ask. It's sailing on the sea of life ye are without sun or stars, and how ye are to find the way to heaven I don't know. Do ye ever say a prayer, Jeroboam?"

"No," was the gruff answer. "That's your business, Padre. The Lord don't expect no praying from rough old salts like me."

"Sure and He does,--He does," said Brother Bart, roused into simple earnestness. "What is high or low to Him? Isn't He the Lord and Maker of the land and sea? Doesn't He give ye life and breath and strength and health and all that ye have? And to stand up like a dumb brute under His eye and never give Him a word of praise or thanks! I wonder at ye, Jeroboam,--I do indeed! Sure ye'd be more dacent to any mortal man that gave ye a bit and sup; but what ye're not taught, poor man, ye can't know. Listen now: ye're to take us to church to-morrow according to your bargain."

"Yes," said the Captain, gruffly; "but thar warn't no bargain about preaching and praying and singing."

"Sure I don't ask it,", said Brother Bart, sadly. "You're in haythen darkness, Jeroboam, and I haven't the wisdom or the knowledge or the holiness to lade ye out; but there's one prayer can be said in darkness as well as in light. All I ask ye to do is to stand for a moment within the church and turn your eyes to the lamp that swings like a beacon light before the altar and whisper the words of that honest man in the Bible that didn't dare to go beyant the holy door, 'O God, be merciful to me a sinner!' Will ye do that?"

"Wal, since that's all ye ask of me, Padre," said Captain Jeb, reflectively, "I can't say no. I've thought them words many a time when the winds was a-howling and the seas a-raging, and it looked as if I was bound for Davy Jones' Locker before day; but I never knew that was a fair-weather prayer. But I'll say it as you ask; and I'll avow, Padre, that, for talking and praying straight to the point, you beat any preacher or parson I ever heard yet."

"Preach, is it!" exclaimed Brother Bart. "Sure I never preached in my life, and never will. But I'll hold ye to your word, Jeroboam; and, with God's blessing, we'll be off betimes to-morrow morning.--Here come the boys: and, Holy Mother, look at the boatful of clawing craythurs they have with them!"

"Lobsters, Brother Bart!" shouted Freddy, triumphantly. "Lobsters, Captain Jeb! Fine big fellows. I'm hungry as three bears."


XIII.--AT BEACH CLIFF.


Brother Bart and his boys were up betimes for their Sunday journey. Breakfast was soon dispatched, and four sunburned youngsters were ready for their trip to town. Dud and Jim, who had been lounging around Killykinick in sweaters and middies, were spruced up into young gentlemen again. Freddy's rosy cheeks were set off by a natty little sailor suit and cap; while Dan scarcely recognized himself in one of the rigs presented by Brother Francis, that bore the stamp of a stylish tailor, and that had been sponged and pressed and mended by the kind old wardrobian until it was quite as good as new.

The day was bright and beautiful, sky and sea seemed smiling on each other most amicably. The "Sary Ann" was in the best of spirits, and the wind in the friendliest of moods.

"Sit steady, boys, and don't be philandering!" warned Brother Bart, anxiously. "It looks fair and aisy enough, but you can drown in sun as well as storm. Keep still there, laddie, or ye'll be over the edge of the boat. Sure it's an awful thing to think that there's only a board between ye and the judgment-seat of God."

And Brother Bart shook his head, and relapsed into meditation befitting the peril of his way; while the "Sary Ann" swept on, past rock and reef and shoal, out into the wide blue open, where the sunlit waves were swelling in joyous freedom, until the rocks and spires of Beech Cliff rose dimly on the horizon; white-winged sails began to flutter into sight; wharves and boat-houses came into view, and the travellers were back in the busy world of men again.

"It feels good to be on God's own earth again," said Brother Bart, as he set foot on the solid pier, gay just now with a holiday crowd; for the morning boat was in, and the "Cliff Dwellers," as the residents of the old town were called at livelier seaside resorts, were out in force to welcome the new arrivals.

"This is something fine!" said Dud to Jim, as they made their way through the chatting, laughing throng, and caught the lilt of the music on the beach beyond, where bathers, reckless of the church bells' call, were disporting themselves in the sunlit waves. "It's tough, with a place like this so near, to be shut up on a desert island for a whole vacation. I say, Jim, let's look up the Fosters after Mass, and see if we can't get a bid to their house for a day or two. We'll have some fun there."

"I don't know," answered easy Jim. "Killykinick is good enough for me. You have to do so much fussing and fixing when you are with girls. Still, now we are here, we might as well look around us."

So when Mass in the pretty little church was over, and Brother Bart, glad to be back under his well-loved altar light, lingered at his prayers, the boys, who had learned from Captain Jeb that they had a couple of hours still on their hands, proceeded to explore the quaint old town, with its steep, narrow streets, where no traffic policemen were needed; for neither street cars nor automobiles were allowed to intrude.

In the far long ago, Beach Cliff had been a busy and prosperous seaport town. The great sailing vessels of those days, after long and perilous voyage, made harbor there; the old shipmasters built solid homes on the island shores; its merchants grew rich on the whaling vessels, that went forth to hunt for these monsters of the great deep, and came back laden with oil and blubber and whalebone and ambergris. But all this was changed now. Steam had come to supplant the white wings that had borne the old ships on their wide ocean ways. As Captain Jeb said, "the airth had taken to spouting up ile," and made the long whale hunts needless and unprofitable. But, though it had died to the busy world of commerce and trade, the quaint old island town had kept a charm all its own, that drew summer guests from far and near.

Dud and Jim made for the resident streets, where old Colonial mansions stood amid velvety lawns, and queer little low-roofed houses were buried in vines and flowers. But Dan and Freddy kept to the shore and the cliff, where the old fishermen had their homes, and things were rough and interesting. They stopped at an old weather-beaten house that had in its low windows all sorts of curious things--models of ships and boats, odd bits of pottery, rude carvings, old brasses and mirrors,--the flotsam and jetsam from broken homes and broken lives that had drifted into this little eddy.

The proprietor, a bent and grizzled old man, who stood smoking at the door, noticed the young strangers.

"Don't do business on Sundays; but you can step in, young gentlemen, and look about you. 'Twon't cost you a cent: and I've things you won't see
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