ut trouble, the rest of you can follow. We must clear away
the boats, for there is no saving this ship.'

"So saying, he gripped the mizzen-stay and slid down it to where it
ended at a band on the main-mast just above the fife-rail. From there
he dropped to the deck and made a bee-line for the starboard side of
the house to avoid the rhino, who was forward on the port side.

"But the rhino saw him coming down the stay and lumbered aft into the
washing-water to investigate, rounding the port corner of the house
just as the skipper reached the starboard. From there he charged; and
you cannot imagine the velocity of a rhino's charge. It is like that of
a locomotive. The skipper scrambled on top of a water-tank alongside
the house just in time to escape that tusk, and from there he got to
the top, where he sat down to recover himself.

"He was a badly scared man. The rhino grunted and snorted at him and
tried to climb the tank, but failed to get a grip on the smooth-painted
staves. So he stood guard abaft the house, looking up.

"There were two other roads to the deck--the port and starboard mizzen
rigging, I still had in mind that rifle of the skipper's, and as the
second mate, a young fellow just out of the forecastle, made no
objections, I slid down the after-swifter of the port rigging and got
into the cabin before the skipper or the rhino noticed me.

"I found the cabin flooded, and waded waist-deep to the skipper's room,
where I found his Winchester hanging to the bulkhead. Making sure that
the magazine was full, I scrambled to the forward companion, where
there was a window that gave me a good view of the deck. The skipper
was calling the men on the main to come down by the maintopmast stay to
the top of the house, and to those on the fore to come down by the
backstays to the rail, and then to jump to the water-tanks; and the men
were coming down, one by one, even though the rigging swarmed with big
monkeys and the corners and hollow spots possibly held poisonous
snakes.

"A yell from the mizzen called my attention to one of these, a big
fellow of four feet in length whom the skipper had frightened out of
his hiding-place on the fife-rail, and he was climbing the mizzen-stay.
He rested about six feet up, but completely blocked this path to the
deck for the men in the mizzen. However, when I had cleared the deck of
the rhino, they could come down my way. I cocked the gun, took careful
aim at the big brute's left