And the small craft of his brain suddenly awakened coolly above his
heat. Why, yes! Why hadn't he thought of it? He swung the stubby nose
of the _Marie_ more easterly in the hot, windless dusk. After a while
the black deckhand looked questioningly up at the master.

"We're takin' round," Tedge grunted, "outside Au Fer!"

The black stretched on the cattle-pen frame. Tedge was a master-hand
among the reefs and shoals, even if the flappaddle _Marie_ had no
business outside. But the sea was nothing but a star-set velvet ribbon
on which she crawled like a dirty insect. And no man questioned
Tedge's will.

Only, an hour later, the engineman came up and forward to stare into
the faster-flowing water. Even now he pointed to a hyacinth clump.

"Yeh!" the master growled. "I'll show yeh, Rogers! Worlds o' flowers!
Out o' the swamps and the tide'll send 'em back again on the reefs.
I'll show yeh 'em--dead, dried white like men's bones." Then he began
to whisper huskily to his engineer: "It's time fer it. Five hundred
fer yeh, Crump--a hundred fer the nigger, or I knock his head in. She
brushes the bar, and yer oil tank goes--yeh understand?" He watched a
red star in the south.

Crump looked about. No sail or light or coast guard about Au Fer--at
low tide not even a skiff could find the passages. He nodded
cunningly:

"She's old and fire-fitten. Tedge, I knowed yer mind--I was always
waitin' fer the word. It's a place fer it--and yeh say yeh carry seven