Up to this time not a word had been spoken by anybody since the two men entered. Men who live together so closely dispense with "How d'yes" and "Good-bys." I was not enough of a stranger to have the rule modified on my account after the first salutations.
Captain Shortrode looked up from his report and broke the silence.
"That sluice-way cuttin' in any, Jerry?"
Jerry nodded his head and replied between puffs of smoke:
"'Bout fifty feet, I guess."
The grizzled Captain took off his eye-glasses—he only used them in making up his report—laid them carefully beside his sheet of paper, stretched his long legs, lifting his body to the perpendicular, dragged a chair to my side of the room, and said with a dry chuckle:
"I've got to laugh every time I think of that sluice-way. Last month— Warn't it last month, Jerry?" Jerry nodded, and sent a curl of smoke through his ragged mustache, accompanied by the remark, "Yes—last month."
The Captain continued:
"Last month, I say, we were havin' some almighty high tides, and when they git to cuttin' round that sluice-way it makes it bad for our beach-cart, 'specially when we've got to keep abreast of a wreck that ain't grounded so we can git a line to her; so I went down after supper to see how the sluice-way was comin' on. It was foggy, and a heavy sea runnin'—the surf showin' white, but everythin' else black as pitch. Fust thing I knew I heared somethin' like the rattle of an oar-lock, or a tally-block, and then a cheer come just outside the breakers. I run down to the swash and listened, and then I seen her comin' bow on, big as a house; four men in her holdin' on to the gunnels, hollerin' for all they was worth. I got to her just as the surf struck her and rolled her over bottom-side up."
"Were you alone?" I interrupted.