ces was from the
southwest, and that fact promised wind enough to invite shipping to
spread canvas.

Only the oval of the schooner's broad bilge showed above water, and the
old Polly was so flat and tubby that their floating islet afforded only
scant freeboard.

Mayo shoved his arm down into the hole through which they had escaped.
After the air had been forced out the lumber was within reach from the
schooner's bottom. He fumbled about and found the ax. Some of the short
bits of lumber which they had used as battering-rams were in the jaws
of the hole. He busied himself with hewing these ends of planks into big
wedges and he drove them into cracks between the planks near the keel.

"It may come to be a bit sloppy when this sou'wester gets its gait on,"
he suggested to the skipper. "We'll have something to hang on to."

Captain Candage's first thankfulness had shown a radiant gloss. But
he was a sailorman, he was cautious, he was naturally apprehensive
regarding all matters of the sea, and that gloss was now dulled a bit by
his second thought.

"We may have to hang on to something longer 'n we reckon on. We're too
far off for the coasters and too far in for the big fellers. And unless
something comes pretty clost to us we can't be seen no more 'n as if we
was mussels on a tide reef. We'd ought to have something to stick up."

"If we could only work out one of those long joists it would make a
little show." Captain Mayo shoved his arm down the hole again. "But they
are wedged across too solidly."

"I think there's a piece of lumber floating over there," cried the girl.
She was clinging to one of the wedges, and the composure which she felt,
or had assumed, stirred Mayo's admiration. The plump hand which she held
against her forehead to shield her eyes did not tremble. From the little
Dutch cap, under the edge of which stray locks peeped, down over her
attire to her toes, she seemed to be still trim and trig, in spite of
her experiences below in the darkness and the wet. With a sort of mild
interest in her, he reflected that her up-country beau would be very
properly proud of her if he could see her there on that schooner's keel.

"What a picture you would make, Miss Candage, just as you are!" he
blurted. She took down her hand, and the look she gave him did not
encourage compliments. "Just as you are, and call it 'The Wreck,'"
he added.

"Do I look as badly as all that, Captain Mayo?"

"You look--" he expostu