matter of handling their craft till the light came.

Meanwhile, though they did not then know it, they had drifted a very
considerable way towards their own homes, so that, rowing in turn and
constantly bailing out their boat they at length made the shore at the
little village of Wild Bight, only a few miles away from their own.
The good folk at once kindled fires, and bathed and chafed the
half-frozen limbs and chilled bodies of the exhausted crew.

Now the one anxiety of all hands was to get home as quickly as
possible for fear that some rumor of the disaster in the form of
wreckage from the schooner might carry to their loved ones news of the
accident, and lead them to be terrified over their apparent deaths. As
soon as possible after dawn of day, the skipper started for home,
having borrowed a small rodney, and the wind still keeping in the same
quarter. To his intense surprise a large trap-boat manned by several
men, seeing his little boat, hailed him loudly, and when on drawing
near it was discovered who they were, proceeded to congratulate him
heartily on his escape. Already the very thing that he had dreaded
might happen must surely have occurred.

"How on earth did you know so soon?" he enquired, annoyed.

"As we came along before t' wind we saw what us took to be a dead
whale. But her turned out to be a schooner upside down. We made out
she were t' Leading Light, and feared you must all have been drowned,
as there was no sign of any one on her upturned keel. So we were
hurrying to your house to find out t' truth."

"Don't say a word about it, boys," said the skipper. "One of you take
this skiff and row her back to Wild Bight, while I go with the others
and try and tow in the wreck before the wind shifts. But be sure not
to say anything about the business at home."

The wind still held fair, and by the aid of a stout line they were
able, after again finding the vessel, to tow her into their own
harbour and away to the very bottom of the Bight, where they stranded
her at high water on the tiny beach under the high crags which
shoulder out the ocean. By a clever system of pulleys and blocks from
the trunks of trees in the clefts of the cliff she was hauled upright,
and held while the water fell. Then the Leading Light was pumped out
and refloated on the following tide. On examination, she was
pronounced uninjured by her untimely adventure.

I owe it to John Bourne to say that the messenger forbidden to te