and queer all alone. Quite cheers a fellow up. Set down, both on
you."

"Thanks, no," said Fitz; "the ground's too wet."

"Nay, I don't mean on the ground. Feel just behind you. There aren't a
arm-chair, but a big bit of timber as has been cut down.--There, that's
better. May as well make one's miserable life happy, and I don't
suppose we shall have anybody sneaking round now.--Ah, yes, that there
Robinson Crusoe did have a fine time of it. Everything his own,
including a ship safely docked ashore full of stores, and nothing to do
but break her up and sort the bits. And there he'd got all the timbers,
keel-knees, planks, tree-nails, ropes, spars and yards, and plenty of
sheet-metal, I'll be bound, for copper bottoming. Why, with plenty of
time on his hands, he might have built anything, from a yawl to a
schooner. But he didn't seem to me to shine much in naval architecter.
Why, at first he hadn't a soul much above a raft."

"It was very useful, though," said Fitz.

"Nay; more trouble, sir, than it was worth. Better have built himself
some kind of a boat at once. Look at his raft! Always a-sinking, or
fouling, or shooting off its cargo, or trying to navigate itself. I
don't believe in rafts. They're no use unless you want to use one to
get washed ashore. For my part--Pst!"

The boys sprang up at the man's whispered signal, Fitz the more actively
from the fact that the carpenter's horny hand had suddenly gripped his
knee so forcibly that he had hard work to restrain a cry of pain.

"Somebody coming," whispered Poole, quite unnecessarily, for a loud
rustling through the bushes was announcing the approach of the expected
enemy.

"Stand by!" roared the carpenter, and his rifle flashed a line of light
through the darkness as he fired in the direction of the sounds. "Now,
my lads," he whispered, "double back into the ship."

As the words passed his lips a voice from out of the darkness shouted in
broken English, and with a very Spanish accent--

"Don't fire! Friends! Friends! Friends!"

The words checked the retreat on the hacienda, but they did not clear
away the watch's doubts.

"Yes," growled the carpenter, "so you says, but it's too dark to see
your faces." Then aloud, "Who are you? Give the word."

"Friends!" was shouted again.

"Well! Where's the word?--He don't say Sponson, Mr Poole," added the
carpenter, in a whisper.

"Captain Reed! Captain Reed!" cried the same voice, from whe