sending off their wives and
children and sweethearts and staying behind to drown out of a mistaken
notion of duty. She'd got it into her head that I was that kind of
captain and she'd hid so that she couldn't be sent away; but it was all
my fault really. If I'd hurried her on deck the minute I did find her
we'd have been in time to leave with the boats. But I stopped for
explanations and to give her a bit of a lecture; so when we got on deck
there were the boats swarming with Chinks slipping off to windward--and
there at our feet was Yir Massir, lying in his own blood and brains, a
wicked, long knife in his hand and the thread outpiece of a Chink's
pigtail between his teeth.

I like to think that he'd tried to make them wait for us, but I don't
know. Anyhow, there we were, alone on a sinking deck and all through
with earthly affairs as I reckoned it. But Ivy reckoned differently.

"Why are they rowing in that direction?" she says. "They won't get
anywhere."

"Why not?" says I.

She jerked her thumb to leeward.

"Don't you feel that it's over there?--the land?" she says. "Just over
there."

"Why, no, bless you!" says I. "I don't have any feeling about it.... Now
then, we've got to hustle around and find something that will float us.
We want to get out of this before the old _Boldero_ goes and sucks us
down after."

"There's the life-raft," says she; "they left that."

"Yes," says I; "if we can get it overboard. It weighs a ton. You make up
a bundle of food on the jump, Ivy, and I'll try to rig a tackle."

When the raft was floating quietly alongside I felt better. It looked
then as if we were to have a little more run for our money.

We worked like a couple of furies loading on food and water, Ivy
lowering and I lashing fast.

"There," says I at last; "she won't take any more. Come along. I can
help you down better from here."

"We've got to let the beasts loose," says she.

"Why?" says I.

"Oh, just to give 'em a chance," she says.

So I climbs back to where she was standing.

"It's rot!" I says. "But if you say so----"

"There's loads of time," says she--"we're not settling so fast. Besides,
even if I'm wrong about the land, they'll know. They'll show us which
way to go. Big Bahut, he knows."

"It don't matter," I says. "We can't work the raft any way but to
leeward--not one man can't."

"If the beasts go the other way," says she, "one man must try and one
woman."

"Oh, we'll try," says I, "