ee how I fix 'em."

When everything was prepared in this way it made the boys nervous to
wait, for minutes passed and nothing happened. All the while they were
imagining the enemy creeping up the sides of the old hulk, grimly bent
on doing them injury.

Ned passed from one point to another, trying to discover just what kind
of peril it might be that menaced them. Did the miners have some way of
springing on board at a given signal, so that they might attack from all
sides at once?

When a full hour had gone and still there was no attack, Ned began to
wonder if after all any assault had been intended. Surely these men knew
by now that those on board the wreck were well armed, and that they
could hardly hope to carry the fort by assault. Perhaps they had come to
the wise conclusion that there was a far better means at their disposal
than bloodshed. Famine could accomplish what violence failed to do.
All they had to figure on was keeping the scouts there just so long,
when, lacking food and fresh water, they must give in.

After the chances for another desperate charge through the breach had
begun to grow fainter, Ned started to figuring again how he might get
his comrades and himself out of so uncomfortable a scrape.

As Jimmy had said, since they had no airship, they could not fly in that
way; and lacking boats, the sea offered no solution to the puzzle. All
that was left then, apparently, was the land, with those fierce foes
lying in wait to attack them the minute they quitted their fortress.

Ned believed that he had the most difficult problem to solve that had
come his way this many a day. From every side he viewed it, the puzzle
seemed as unanswerable as ever. If only they could manage to slip away
along about an hour or so after midnight, when the darkness was densest;
but there was only the one way to leave, and that was evidently watched
closely, if those silent figures flitting hither and thither on the
beach stood for anything.

But was the breach the only means for leaving? Ned remembered that those
three men had climbed aboard through the aid of a dangling rope. What
was sauce for the goose might be sauce for the gander, too; and if only
they could discover more rope they might also slide down it to safety.

He moved over to where Jimmy was squatted like a big toad, with his gun
resting on his knee, and aimed straight at the frowning breach in the
stern.

"You told us about those three men climbing a