o the very deepest water-hole on the face of
the whole earth."

"Didn't you have any boats?" asked the young lady.

"We hadn't any," said John. "We had sold all of them about two months
before to a British merchantman who had lost her boats in a cyclone. One
of the things our captain wanted to get to St. Thomas for was to buy
some more boats. He heard he could get some cheap ones there.

"Well, we pumped and sailed as well as we could, but we hadn't got
anywhere near that sandy island the captain was making for, when, one
morning after breakfast, our brig, which was pretty low in the water by
this time, gave a little hitch and a grind, and stuck fast on something;
and if we hadn't been lively in taking in all sail there would have been
trouble. But the weather was fine, and the sea was smooth, and when we
had time to think about what had happened we were resting on the surface
of the sea, just as quiet and tranquil as if we had been a toy ship in a
shop-window.

"What we had stuck on was a puzzle indeed! As I said before, our captain
knew all about that part of the sea, and, although he knew we were in
shallow soundings, he was certain that there wasn't any shoal or rock
thereabout that we could get stuck on.

"We sounded all around the brig, and found lots of water at the stern,
but not so much forward. We were stuck fast on something, but nobody
could imagine what it was. However, we were not sinking any deeper, and
that was a comfort; and the captain he believed that if we had had boats
we could row to St. Thomas; but we didn't have any boats, so we had to
make the best of it. He put up a flag of distress, and waited till some
craft should come along and take us off.

"The captain and the crew didn't seem to be much troubled about what
had happened, for so long as the sea did not get up they could make
themselves very comfortable as they were. But there were two men on
board who didn't take things easy. They wanted to know what had
happened, and they wanted to know what was likely to happen next. I was
one of these men, and a stock-broker from New York was the other. He was
an awful nervous, fidgety, meddling sort of a man, who was on this
cruise for the benefit of his health, which must have been pretty well
worn out with howling, and yelling, and trying to catch profits like a
lively boy catches flies. He was always poking his nose into all sorts
of things that didn't concern him, and spent about half of his