ead was
right and wind and tide were sweeping her on. She might be piled up on
either shore at the mouth of the inlet; but from the start I believed
she would be shot through the outlet of the harbor into the open sea.

In the cuddy up forward, with my provisions, there were a saw and
hammer, and other tools. I could no more get at them than I could get
out of the cabin. And although I might be able to do nothing to help
myself or my boat if I was free from my prison, I would have felt a
whole lot safer just then to have been upon her deck!

The door being nailed so fast, and the deck-hatch bolted tight, it was
plain that I would have to smash something in order to get out of the
cabin. Had I had anything to use as a battering ram, I would have begun
on the door. But there seemed nothing to hand that would help me in that
way. I examined the crack where the top of the door and the deck-hatch
came together. Had I something to pry with I might tear the bolts
holding the hatch out of the wood.

Such a thing as a bar was out of the question. But after a few minutes'
cogitation, I remembered that my bunks on either side of the cabin could
be turned up against the bulkhead, and at each end of the bunks was a
flat piece of steel fifteen or eighteen inches long which held the
berth-bench when it was let down. Two screws at each end held these
steel straps in place.

I had no screw driver; but I had the knife that I had taken away from my
cousin when he attacked me the evening before. I thrust the point of its
heavy blade into a crack and snapped the steel square off. It made a
fairly usable screw-driver, and I quickly had one of the steel straps
out of its fastenings.

The piece of steel was stiff and made as good a bar for prying as I
could have found. With some difficulty I thrust one end up between the
top of the cabin door and the edge of the hatch, close to one side. I
slipped the closed knife up between the bar and the door for a block
against which to prize, caught the end of the bar with both hands, and
threw all my force against it. The hatch squeaked; there was a
splintering sound of wood. I was badly marring the top of the door, but
the bolt which held the hatch at that side was giving.

I repeated the process at the other side of the hatch, and gradually, by
working first at one side, and then the other, I splintered the woodwork
around the bolts, and bent the bolts themselves, so that the hatch
began to shov