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"You told him?" Williams's eye struck hard.

"Not a word!" said McGuire quickly, sensing trouble.

"He thinks all ships go to sea by being rowed out in the dark."

"You, you knowing he runs the risk of imprisonment—and worse!"

"But, skipper, time and again I've brought men aboard when we could use them. And I thought——"

"Not his kind!"

"If I had told him he would have come, anyhow. He isn't the kind that quits if——"

"If you had told me he would not have come."

"But you let Nada come, and——"

"That was to pay Penwenn in bitter coin. He loves her. With less than half the truth told, no court would hold her. But this boy——"

McGuire then told Paullen the truth—who the skipper was, the ship he was on, the risk he ran by being there; and Paullen accepted the circumstances, not with any degree of cheerfulness, but at least without a word of reproach. But McGuire every day increasingly felt that he had lost favour with Williams.

Then Paullen one day, jumping aloft in a squall—as he really had no business to do, being the greenest of sailors—had a fall that nearly knocked the life out of him, and which did fracture a rib or two. Though he was carefully stowed away in a bunk, with Nada to wait on him, Paullen did his best to sicken and die; and, being a stubborn young fellow, he nearly succeeded. At least, that was how it appeared to McGuire.