teously
declined my effort to help him by me as he crossed the boat, stepped
round on the gunwale behind me as I sat, and then, either in a lurch or
in some misstep, caught his foot in the tiller as his father held it
firm, and pitched down directly behind Battista himself, and, as I
thought, into the sea. I sprang to leeward to throw something after him,
and found him in the sea indeed, but hanging by both hands to the
gunwale, safe enough, and in a minute, with Battista's help and mine, on
board again. I remember how pleased I was that his father did not swear
at him, but only laughed prettily, and bade him be quick, and step
forward; and then, turning to the helm, which he had left free for the
moment, he did not swear indeed, but he did cry "Santa Madre!" when he
found there was no tiller there. The boy's foot had fairly wrenched it,
not only from his father's hand, but from the rudder-head,--and it was
gone!

We held the old fellow firmly by his feet and legs, as he lay over the
stern of the boat, head down, examining the condition of the
rudder-head. The report was not favorable. I renewed the investigation
myself in the same uncomfortable attitude. The phosphorescence of the
sea was but an unsteady light, but light enough there was to reveal what
daylight made hardly more certain,--that the wrench which had been given
to the rotten old fixtures, shaky enough at best, had split the head of
the rudder, so that the pintle hung but loosely in its bed, and that
there was nothing available for us to rig a jury-tiller on. This
discovery, as it became more and more clear to each of us four in
succession, abated successively the volleys of advice which we were
offering, and sent us back to our more quiet "Santa Madres" or to
meditations on "what was next to best."

Meanwhile the boat was flying, under the sail she had before, straight
before the wind, up the Gulf of Tarentum.

If you cannot have what you like, it is best, in a finite world, to like
what you have. And while the old man brought up from the cuddy his
wretched and worthless stock of staves, rope-ends, and bits of iron, and
contemplated them ruefully, as if asking them which would like to assume
the shape of a rudder-head and tiller, if his fairy godmother would
appear on the top of the mast for a moment, I was plying the boys with
questions,--what would happen to us if we held on at this tearing rate,
and rushed up the bay to the head thereof. The boys kne