rbare-e-e_."

he sang. "We'll land in Valparaiso and we'll go every man his way;
and we'll sink the old _Laughing Lass_ so deep the mermaids can't
find her."

Thrackles piled on more wood and the fire leaped high.

"Let's get after 'em,' said he.

"To-morrow's jes' 's good," muttered Pulz. "Les' hav' 'nother drink."

"We'll stay here 'n see if our ol' frien' Percy don' show up," said
Handy Solomon. He threw back his head and roared forth a volume of
sound toward the dim stars.

"Broadside to broadside the gallant ships did lay,
_Blow high, blow low! What care we_?
'Til the jolly man-o'-war shot the pirate's mast away,
_Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e_."

I saw near me a live coal dislodged from the fire when Thrackles had
thrown on the armful of wood. An idea came to me. I hitched myself
to the spark, and laid across it the rope with which my wrists were
tied. This, behind my back, was not easy to accomplish, and twice I
burned my wrists before I succeeded.

Fortunately I was at the edge of illumination, and behind the group.
I turned over on my side so that my back was toward the fire. Then
rapidly I cast loose my ankle lashings. Thus I was free, and selecting
a moment when universal attention was turned toward the rum barrel,
I rolled over a sand dune, got to my hands and knees, and crept away.

Through the coarse grass I crept thus, to the very entrance of the
arroyo, then rose to my feet. In the middle distance the fire leaped
red. Its glow fell intermittently on the surges rolling in. The men
staggered or lay prone, either as gigantic silhouettes or as
tatterdemalions painted by the light. The keg stood solid and
substantial, the hub about which reeled the orgy. At the edge of the
wash I could make out something prone, dim, limp, thrown constantly
in new positions of weariness as the water ebbed and flowed beneath
it, now an arm thrown out, now cast back, as though Old Scrubs slept
feverishly. The drunkards were getting noisy. Handy Solomon still
reeled off the verses of, his song. The others joined in, frightfully
off the key; or punctuated the performance by wild staccato yells.

"Their coffin was their ship and their grave it was the sea,
_Blow high, blow low! What care we_?
And the quarter that we gave them was to sink them in the sea,
_Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e,_"

bellowed Handy Solomon.

I turned and plunged into the cool darkness of t