ight of the mainsheet still in his hand,
was exclaiming:

"Gott-fer-dang! Wind he go! Rain he no come!"

He felt Jerry's cool nose against his bare calf, heard his joyous sniff,
and bent and caressed him. In the darkness he could not see, but his
heart warmed with knowledge that Jerry's tail was surely bobbing.

Many of the frightened return boys had crowded on deck, and their
plaintive, querulous voices sounded like the sleepy noises of a roost of
birds. Borckman came and stood by Van Horn's shoulder, and both men,
strung to their tones in the tenseness of apprehension, strove to
penetrate the surrounding blackness with their eyes, while they listened
with all their ears for any message of the elements from sea and air.

"Where's the rain?" Borckman demanded peevishly. "Always wind first, the
rain follows and kills the wind. There is no rain."

Van Horn still stared and listened, and made no answer.

The anxiety of the two men was sensed by Jerry, who, too, was on his
toes. He pressed his cool nose to Skipper's leg, and the rose-kiss of
his tongue brought him the salt taste of sea-water.

Skipper bent suddenly, rolled Jerry with quick toughness into the
blanket, and deposited him in the hollow between two sacks of yams lashed
on deck aft of the mizzenmast. As an afterthought, he fastened the
blanket with a piece of rope yarn, so that Jerry was as if tied in a
sack.

Scarcely was this finished when the spanker smashed across overhead, the
headsails thundered with a sudden filling, and the great mainsail, with
all the scope in the boom-tackle caused by Van Horn's giving of the
sheet, came across and fetched up to tautness on the tackle with a crash
that shook the vessel and heeled her violently to port. This second
knock-down had come from the opposite direction, and it was mightier than
the first.

Jerry heard Skipper's voice ring out, first, to the mate: "Stand by main-
halyards! Throw off the turns! I'll take care of the tackle!"; and,
next, to some of the boat's crew: "Batto! you fella slack spanker tackle
quick fella! Ranga! you fella let go spanker sheet!"

Here Van Horn was swept off his legs by an avalanche of return boys who
had cluttered the deck with the first squall. The squirming mass, of
which he was part, slid down into the barbed wire of the port rail
beneath the surface of the sea.

Jerry was so secure in his nook that he did not roll away. But when he
heard Skipper's commands