The derrick gang was set to shifting a boom on to the
larger derrick, the concrete mixers picked up their
shovels, and I went to work on the pay-roll of the
week. This I always figured up in the little dry-
goods box of a room opening out of the galley in the
end of our board shanty, its window looking toward
Montauk.

As I leaned my arms on the sill for a glimpse of
the wide expanse of blue and silver, the cotton rag
that served as a curtain flapped in my face. I pushed
it aside and craned my neck north and south. The
curtain had acted as a weather vane,--the wind had
hauled to the east.

The sky, too, had dulled. Little lumpy clouds
showed near the horizon line, and, sailing above these,
hung a dirt spot of vapor, while aloft glowed some
prismatic sundogs, shimmering like opals. Etched
against the distance, with a tether line fastened to the
spar buoy, lay the Susie Ann. She had that moment
arrived and had made fast. Her sails were furled,
her boom swinging loose and ready, the smoke from
her hoister curling from the end of her smoke pipe
thrust up out of the forward hatch.

Then I looked closer in.

Below me, on the concrete platform, rested our
big air pump, and beside it stood Captain Joe. He