on't hold us all.'

"'You go to the dickens!' he answered. 'What are you doing in my cabin?
Didn't I tell you to keep out of it?'

"'Go yourself!' I yelled. Then I said to the men with me: 'Raid the
steward's storeroom and fill your pockets with what you can find. Pack
the inside of your shirts.'

"They could find nothing eatable except soda biscuits, and they cleaned
out the locker. But there was no water aft.

"Meanwhile the bark was getting lower and lower, and the rhino, to
escape the wash, had drifted farther forward. I had wasted twelve
bullets by this time, and had but three left. It was best, of course,
to kill him before the bark foundered, so that we could get into that
port boat and induce the rest to pass over some grub and water. But
this was not to be.

"I killed him, all right, but only after we had rushed out at the death
flurry of the old craft, floundered forward, seizing handspikes from
the racks on the way, and gained the vicinity of the house. Here that
murder-minded rhino met us, and I jammed the muzzle into one eye.

"The bullet touched some part of his brain, for he sagged down and grew
quiet. And while we mounted the house, the asses and zebras were
hee-hawing, the wolf was barking, and the mad elephant, waving his
trunk up through the hatch, was trumpeting like a high-pressure
exhaust.

"We were just in time. The others had got into the starboard boat, and
we bundled into the port. There was no time for a decent launching over
the rail, but there was time to sing out for grub and water. The
skipper and mate consigned us to the infernal regions.

"'There's not enough to go round,' he declared. 'Take your chance. It's
better that part should starve than all.'

"I still had the gun, and had there been time I could have coerced
them; but there was no time. In a minute the water had reached the top
of the house.

"Then, as the boats floated in the creamy turmoil, we pushed with the
oars, and, though half swamped, managed to clear the fore-braces as
they went under. There was a mighty roaring of water, and a mighty
suction, but the two boats floated, though half full.

"Then we saw that blooming old hippo rise out of the depths and head
for us. We shipped the oars and pulled like mad, but we'd gone a
quarter of a mile through that heavy sea before we dropped him.

"We couldn't have helped him; he'd have swamped us in a jiffy if he'd
got his nose and forepaws over the gunwale. We chewed