Cap'n Ira preened himself like the proud old gander he was. He
heaved himself out of the chair by the aid of his cane, a present
from one grateful group of passengers that had sailed in his charge,
on the _Susan Gatskill_.

"Well, well!" he said. "Let's think of it. Let's see, where's my
glass? Here 'tis."

He seized the old-fashioned collapsible spyglass, which he favored
rather than the newer binoculars, and started off to "pace the
quarter," as he called the path from the back door to the grassy
cart track which joined the road at the lower corner of the Ball
premises. This highway wandered down from the Head into the fishing
village along the inner beach of Big Wreck Cove. Prudence watched
Ira with fond but comprehending eyes. She saw how broken he was, how
stumbling his feet when he first started off, and the swaying
locomotion that betrayed that feebleness of both brain and body that
can never be denied.

Somewhere on the Head in the old days the wreckers had kept their
outlook for ships in distress. Those harpies of the coast had
fattened on the bones of storm-racked craft. It was one of those
battered freighters that, nearly two centuries before, had been
driven into the cove itself, to become embalmed in Cape history as
"the big wreck."

The Balls and the Lathams, the Honeys and the Coffins of that
ancient day had "wracked" the stranded craft most thoroughly. But
they had not overlooked the salvation of her ship's company of