."

"You hold your mouth," said Big Jem. "I'll show you. You shall see
what you shall see. Here, lay hold of the rope and make a hitch round
that killick. See?"

The other boy evidently did see, for he knelt down and began to edge a
big oval boulder stone from where it lay in company with three more for
ballast amidship, worked it right forward into the bows, and then lifted
it on to the locker, when he took hold of the boat's painter at the end
furthest from the ring-bolt, to which it was secured, and fastened the
hempen cord round the boulder with a nautical knot.

By the time this was done and the boy looked round for orders he caught
sight of something moving at the shore end of the pier.

"Here comes the sailors back to their boat," he said. "They'll see us."

"Over with the killick, then--easy. Don't splash."

Big Jem drew in his oar, with which he had been making the boat progress
by means of a fishtail movement, laid it along the thwarts, and then, as
the other boy lifted the stone over the bows into the water, which it
kissed without disturbance, it was let go and sank with a wavy movement,
sending up a long train of glittering bubbles, running the rope out fast
till bottom was reached and the boat swung from its stone anchor.

"Now, then, down with you," said Big Jem, and the next minute the two
boys lay in the bottom, each with a great boulder for pillow, quite out
of sight, unless their presence had been suspected, when a bit of coarse
blue-covered body might have been seen, but then only to be taken for
some idle fisher making up for last night's fishing with a nap.

Hence it was that when Tom Bodger swept the pier from where he sat in
Aleck's boat lying by the steps in the harbour, he saw nothing but the
top of the pier, and his eyes fell again upon the sloop's beautifully
clean boat, which he again compared with the one he occupied, with such
unfavourable effect to the latter that he muttered to himself a little,
took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves over his tattooed arms, and
went in for a general clean up.

Tom was as busy as a bee and, to judge from the latter's usually
contented hum, just as much satisfied, for his efforts certainly vastly
improved the aspect of Aleck's boat; and he was still hard at work
swabbing and drying and laying ropes in coils, when a remark from one of
the sailors in the adjacent boat made the midshipman spring up out of a
doze in the hot sunshine and give