As a matter of fact, the pride of his few relations was not enlisted.
He had been made to feel that. He did not complain. He appreciated
their attitude. But that did not curb a high-hearted ambition to lift
his vocation to the ideals he had formulated concerning it--and the
future lay before him.

But he was not thinking of these things now. The face of the sea was
gray in sullen fury. From a blue horizon, dulled and almost
obliterated by long, jagged layers of steely clouds, came the ceaseless
rush of deep-chested waves, as even, as fascinating as the
vermiculations of a serpent. And the wind, tearing along the floor of
the sea, whipped off the wave crests and sent them shivering,
shimmering ahead, like the plumes of hard-riding cavalry.

The storm had passed. The effects remained, and Dan Merrithew shifted
his wheel several spokes east of north and took the brunt bow on. She
bore it well, did the stout _Fledgling_; she did that--she split the
waves or crashed through them, or laughed over them, as a stout tug
should when coaxed by hands of skill, guided by an iron will. The Long
Island coast lay to port, a narrow band of ochre, and all about lay the
heaving gray of mighty waters, in which the _Fledgling_ was a black
speck.

Dan's hat was off and his red-gold hair was flying wild; his teeth were
bared. He was always thus in a fight. This was one; a dandy--a
clinker! He gave the wheel another spoke and the _Fledgling_ slued
across a sea and smashed down hard. From below came a sliding rattle,
a great crash of crockery, and then a series of imprecations. The next
instant Arthur M'Gill, the steward, dashed up the companionway and
burst into the pilot-house.