she had done when we started in the morning,
the whole day having been consumed in cutting out and putting together
the several pieces of timber which were subsequently to be worked into
her hull. Nevertheless, patience and perseverance worked wonders, and
by and by, after we had been steadily at work for close upon six months,
a day came when we were able to stand and gaze admiringly at the
completed skeleton of as smart a little vessel as I ever set eyes upon.
If she possessed a fault in my eyes it was that she presented altogether
too smart an appearance, being, in model, nothing less than an
exceedingly beautiful little yacht; and according to my merchant
seaman's view of the matter a forty-foot yacht was not precisely the
kind of craft best adapted to navigate the thousands of miles of ocean
that lay between ourselves and home. Yet when Cunningham challenged me
to point out what I regarded as faults, I was met at every turn by
arguments which seemed quite unanswerable, so that at last I was driven
to take refuge in the adage that the proof of the pudding is in the
eating, and to acknowledge that if the vessel only behaved half as well
as her designer asserted she would, I should be more than satisfied.

Now, although there were five of us--all young and in the very pink of
condition--engaged upon the work of building the schooner, there were
times when the united strength of all hands scarcely sufficed to
accomplish some particular task, such as the setting up of a pair of
frames, or the bending and fastening of a stringer; consequently we
welcomed, almost literally with open arms, the arrival of two
able-bodied assistants, who came to us under somewhat singular
circumstances.

From the day of the wreck, when we found ourselves castaways, up to the
moment when, as I have said above, we were able to gaze upon the
complete skeleton of our new schooner, we had enjoyed an uninterrupted
continuance of perfect weather; but a few days after the date referred
to the Trade wind died away, and all the indications pointed toward the
approach of another hurricane. And indeed we were allowed barely
sufficient time to make everything about the shipyard secure when our
anticipations were realised by the outburst of a hurricane which, if it
was not as violent as the one that had shipwrecked us, was more than
sufficiently so to compel us completely to suspend our building
operations for two whole days. These we spent in the c