to it."

"You come away," said the captain. "Quick, man! Here, every one lie
down at the far end of the saloon."

I was one of the first to run; but I came back with a can of water, and
held it to Mr Frewen.

"Can you do anything with that, sir?" I said.

"No, my lad. Quite impossible to reach it effectually."

I stood staring at the barricade and its openings for a few moments, and
then an idea struck me. I had often seen my father's gun cleaned, and
when the barrels were detached from the stack, taken them up to look
through them, binocular fashion, to see whether they were clean inside.

"Take off the barrels from that gun!" I said excitedly.

"What for?" cried Mr Frewen; but he did that which was asked all the
same, and handed the barrels to me.

"What are you going to do?" whispered the captain.

"One minute, sir, and I'll show you," I said. "Let me come there, Mr
Denning."

That gentleman altered his position a little, so that I could reach
through the opening and let the ends of the barrels rest upon the deck,
close to the powder, which I could just see scattered about the
flooring.

Directly after, I had raised my can and was carefully trickling the
water down through one of the barrels with such good effect that the
explosive grains were either saturated or borne away.

I had been sending the little stream through for some moments before it
was seen, and the first intimation we had of the mutineers noticing our
defence was the explosion of a pistol, and simultaneously a dull,
cracking sound as a bullet passed through the door and was buried in the
trunk behind it.

"That don't matter, Berriman," cried Jarette; "we have plenty of powder,
and you can't say the same about water."

I started at this, for it struck me that I had been pouring precious
drops away which might mean life. But I laughed directly after, as I
recalled the fact that we had only to drop a bucket out of the
stern-windows and haul up as much salt water as we liked.

Mr Frewen must have been thinking the same thing, for directly after he
and Mr Brymer attached pieces of new halyard to a couple of tin pails,
and threw them out of the window, and drew them up full, ready for the
next attempt to lay powder.

"No need to pour away the precious drops now," said Mr Frewen. "But we
must have down some of those chests so as to get at the powder easily."

The words had hardly left his lips when there was the sharp report of