essary to collect the spruce gum and prepare it. Gum was
plentiful enough, and in half an hour they had collected enough to
half fill the frying-pan. To this was added a little lard, and the gum
and grease melted over the fire and thoroughly mixed.

"What you puttin' the grease in for?" asked Jamie curiously.

"So when we pours un in the cracks and she hardens she won't be
brittle and crack," David explained.

The hot mixture was now poured into the joints between the boards and
at all points where the new boards came into contact with the boat,
and into the holes where the lashings occurred. In a few minutes it
hardened, and the boys surveyed their work with pride and
satisfaction.

"Now we'll try un," said David, "and see if she leaks."

"She'll never leak where she's mended," asserted Andy.

They slipped the boat into the water and Andy's prediction proved
true. Not a drop of water oozed through the joints, and the boat was
as snug and tight and seaworthy as any boat that ever floated.

"'Tis too late to start to-night," said David, "but we'll be away at
crack o' dawn in the marnin', whatever. 'Tis fine they left the sail
and oars."

And at crack of dawn in the morning the boys were away. The day was
misty and disagreeable, but David and Andy knew the way as well as you
and I know our city streets. They rounded the Devil's Arm, a friendly
tide helped them through the narrows, and in mid-forenoon the low
white buildings of Fort Pelican appeared in misty outline through the
fog. A few minutes later they swung alongside the Fort Pelican jetty,
and there, to their amazement, firmly tied to the jetty, lay their own
big boat.

No one about the Post could explain whence the boat had come or how it
reached the jetty. The Post servants stated that they had not noticed
it until after the departure of the lumber steamer. They had
recognized it as Thomas Angus's boat, for in that country men know
each other's boats as our country folk know their neighbours' horses.

The lumber ship had arrived on the morning of the gale, and had
anchored in the harbour awaiting the arrival of one of the company's
officers on the mail boat. The mail boat had arrived the previous
morning, and both the mail boat and lumber ship had steamed away
shortly after the mail boat's arrival. Many lumbermen had been ashore.
If any of them had come in the boat they had mingled among the others
and had departed either on the lumber ship, which had