All that day, against head winds and tides, Captain Briggs' schooner clawed her way around Staten Island. Nightfall found her making her way up the staked channel in Raritan Bay with a fair breeze, and the bibulous skipper was in good humor. He even condescended to joke and laugh with Ned, who stood glumly by the wheel, watching the clumsy handling of the broad-beamed old craft.

Ned had indulged in much speculation concerning Captain Briggs and his craft since he had become what he felt was virtually a prisoner on board her. He was puzzled to make out the vessel's mission. Captain Briggs waxed more and more mysterious as the contents of the bottle and the sun together grew lower. From time[Pg 208] to time he threw out hints, which only served the purpose of further mystification.

The Dreadnought Boy began to think that he was on board a smuggler. It was the only conclusion he could reach, although he was actually miles beside the mark in his guess.

As it grew dusk, the schooner was brought up opposite a sandy, desolate-looking stretch of ground on the Jersey shore. It was a brush-grown point with here and there steep, reddish-colored miniature cliffs, where landslides had occurred in the sandy earth.

On the summit of the point a tall, white semaphore, like some grotesque skeleton, spread its arms against the sky. A chill wind blew off shore. Ned felt that he had reached the last spot in civilization, even though off in the distance on the Staten Island shore the smoke from the factory chimneys of Tottenville could be seen like a dark and sooty pall.

Ned was wondering whether they were going[Pg 209] to anchor there, when his unspoken question was answered by the rattle of the schooner's hawser as the rusty mud-hook dropped into the yellow, turbid tide.

"Well, of all queer cruises, this is the queerest," mused Ned, as he leaned against the rail and watched Captain Briggs bringing his craft to an anchorage.

He could not forbear smiling at the captain's importance as he issued his orders. A rear admiral on his own quarter-deck could not have been a bit more pompous or consequential.

At last all was arranged to Captain Briggs' satisfaction, and the schooner, under bare poles, swung at anchor.

"What's coming now?" wondered Ned, as he saw the captain come sidling toward him like a red-nosed crab, if such a thing can be imagined.

He was not left long in doubt. The captain eyed him with an oddly embarrassed air for a few seconds and then he spoke.

[Pg 210]

"Seeing as how I'm looking to get a bit of money out of you, mate," he said at length, with a sidewise squint out of his red-rimmed eyes, "maybe what I'm agoin' to do ain't just right. But," and here the captain strengthened his resolution with a draft out of his bottle, "but," he resumed, wiping his lips with the back of his hand, "what's got to be has got to be, ain't it?"

"Certainly," said Ned, with a smile at the captain's rather obvious logic.

"And that bein' the case, it will be, I reckon?" pursued the captain with the air of one propounding a profound question.

Again Ned agreed. This time he signified his entire understanding of the ca............