a sail locker. After imploring, cursing
threatening, for five minutes, Joe at last got the mate to lug out a
sail; then he persuaded a lad who was more sober than the rest to come
on deck with a lantern. Now, it will be noticed that foreign seamen in
general are dreadfully afraid of taking to the boat. During this present
winter our fellows have saved four or five foreign crews, and in every
case the vessels had their own boats undamaged, but the men dursn't risk
the trip themselves, so our fishermen had to peril their lives. The
Spaniard's boat was lashed so that no mortal could get her clear, and
the little craft was used as a sort of lumber-closet. Glenn had noticed
some steel rails in the boat, and he guessed that these specimens of
railway plant were accidentally left out until the hatches had been
battened down.

He thanked God for the negligence.

Working with desperate speed, he rudely bent the spare sail to the spar;
then to the lower cloth of the sail he managed to fix two of the weighty
rails, and then commenced to lug the yard past the vessel's foremast. It
takes a long time to tell all this, but Joe was not long, though every
movement was made at the risk of his life. He hacked away two lengths of
rope measuring each about eighty feet; he made these into bridles,
knotting one end of each piece to the end of the spar, and taking the
other ends round the timber-heads. Two pieces of thin rope, hauled out
of the hamper aft, were made fast to the ends of the steel rails, and
then Joe made a frantic effort to get his apparatus over the side. No
good; he must humiliate himself again before those unspeakable aliens.
Drenched, agonised for lack of sleep, weak with exertion, and bleeding
from the hustling blows that he had received, the poor soul besought the
men to lend him a hand, and swore to save them. They understood him fast
enough, and one peculiarly drunken individual blundered up and obeyed
Glenn's signs. With a violent effort the spar was hoisted and dropped;
the steel rails sank, and there was an apparatus like an enormous
window-blind hanging in the water. The barque soon felt the pull of this
novel anchor; she swung round, with her head to the sea, and to Joe's
passionate delight she rode more softly, for the big spar broke every
sea, and very little water came on board afterwards. The vessel was
securely moored, for she could not drag that great expanse of canvas
through the seas.

When the grey lig