stepped into it. The heat was singeing their faces by now.

"Pull off," grunted the skipper, "around east'ard. This bar sticks
clean out o' water off there, and you lay around it, Hogjaw. They
won't be no sea 'til the breeze lifts at sunup."

The big black heaved on the short oars. The skiff was a hundred yards
out on the glassy sea when Crump spoke cunningly, "I knowed
something----"

"Yeh?" Tedge turned from his bow seat to look past the oarsman's head
at the engineman. "Yeh knowed----"

"This Rogers, he was tryin' to get off the burnin' wreck and he fell,
somehow or----"

"The oil tank blew, and a piece o' pipe took him," grunted Tedge. "I
tried to drag him out o' the fire--Gawd knows I did, didn't I, Crump?"

Crump nodded scaredly. The black oarsman's eyes narrowed and he
crouched dumbly as he rowed. Tedge was behind him--Tedge of the _Marie
Louise_ who could kill with his fists. No, Hogjaw knew nothing--he
never would know anything.

"I jest took him on out o' kindness," mumbled Tedge. "I got no license
fer passenger business. Jest a bum I took on to go and see his swamp
girl up Des Amoureaux. Well, it ain't no use sayin' anything, is it
now?"

A mile away the wreck of the _Marie Louise_ appeared as a yellow-red