words to Mayo's thoughts.

"I have been feeling like a bug under a thimble for some little time,"
stated Otie, whacking his chisel sturdily.

"Her bottom can't be awash with all this lumber in her. If we can only
get a little speck of a hole through the outside planking right now,
we'd better do it," suggested Candage.

"That's just what I have been doing," declared Mr. Speed. "I'm right
after the job, gents, when I get started on a thing. Helpful and
enterprising, that's my motto!"

The next moment, before Mayo, his thoughts busy with his new danger of
suffocation, could voice warning or had grasped the full import of the
dialogue, the chisel's edge plugged through the planking. Instantly
there was a hiss like escaping steam. Mayo yelled an oath and set his
hands against the mate, pushing him violently away. The industrious Mr.
Speed had been devoting his attention to the planking instead of to the
sawed beam.

Wan light filtered through the crevice made by the chisel and Mayo
planted his palm against the crack. The pressure held his hand as if it
were clamped against the planks, and the hissing ceased.

The schooner, as she lay, upside down in the sea, was practically a
diving-bell; with that hole in her shell their safety was in jeopardy.
The girl seemed to understand the situation before the duller minds of
her father and his mates had begun to work. She frenziedly sought for
Mayo's disengaged hand and thrust some kind of fabric into it.

"It's from my petticoat," she gasped. "Can you calk with it?"

"Hand me the chisel," he entreated.

As soon as she had given the tool to him he worked his hand free from
the crack and instantly drove the fabric into the crevice, crowding it
fold by fold with the edge of the chisel.

"Hope I didn't do anything wrong, trying to be helpful," apologized Mr.
Speed.

"I'll do the rest of this job without any such help," growled the
captain.

"But what are you stopping the air for when it's rushing in to liven us
up?" asked Dolph, plaintively.

"It was rushing out, fool! Rushing out so fast that this lumber would
have flattened us against the bottom of this hull in a little while."

"I would have figgered it just t'other way," stated Mr. Speed, humbly.
"Outside air, being fresh, ought nat'rally to rush in to fill the holes
we have breathed out of this air."

Mayo was in no mood to lecture on natural phenomena. He investigated the
cut which had been made by the incautio