depending upon his keen eyes, his knowledge, and his judgment. A
man whose name is Luke FitzHenry.

The captain has gone below for a few minutes to thaw, leaving the
ship to FitzHenry. He does it with an easy conscience--as easy,
that is, as the maritime conscience can well be in a gale of wind,
with the Foreland lights ahead and infinite possibilities all
around. The captain drinks his whisky and hot water with a certain
slow appreciation of the merits of that reprehensible solution, and
glances at the aneroid barometer on the bulkhead of his cabin.

Overhead, on the spidery bridge, far up in the howling night, Luke
FitzHenry, returning from the enervating tropics, stares sternly
into the night, heedless of the elemental warfare. For Luke
FitzHenry has a grudge against the world, and people who have that
take a certain pleasure in evil weather.

"The finest sailor that ever stepped," reflects the captain of his
second officer--and he no mean mariner himself.

The Croonah had groped her way up Channel through a snowstorm of
three days' duration, and the brunt of it had fallen by right of
seniority on the captain and his second officer. Luke FitzHenry was
indefatigable, and, better still, he was without enthusiasm. Here
was the steady, unflinching combativeness which alone can master the
elements. Here was the true genius of the sea.

With his craft at his fingers' ends, Luke had that instinct of
navigation by which some men seem to find their way upon the
trackless waters. There are sailors who are no navigators just as