about. The tiller was shifted to bring it
close aboard and soon Captain Bonnet exclaimed that it was, indeed, a
merman a-cruising with a cask!

Jack Cockrell scampered to the heel of the bowsprit to investigate this
ocean prodigy. And as the cask drifted nearer he saw that Joe Hawkridge
was clinging to it. There was no mistaking that dauntless grin and the
mop of carroty hair. A handy seaman tossed a bight of line over his
shoulders as he bobbed past the forefoot of the brig and he was yanked
bodily over the bulwark like a strange species of fish. Flopping on deck
he waved a skinny arm in greeting and then Jack Cockrell rushed at him,
lifted him bodily, and dragged him to the cabin.

"What ho, comrade!" said the dripping merman. "Blast my eyes, but I was
sick with worry for you. I left you in that swamp----"

"And I thought you dead, Joe. For the love o' heaven, tell me how you
fared and what----"

Captain Bonnet interfered to say:

"I treated you more courteously than this, Jack. Let us make him
comfortable."

Accepting the rebuke, Jack bustled his amazing friend into a change of
clothes and saw that he was well fed. Little the worse for his watery
pilgrimage, Joe Hawkridge explained at his leisure:

"Ned Rackham took the others away in the snow, as I tell ye, Cap'n
Bonnet, and there was I in the doleful dumps. Prayers get answered and
miracles do happen, for next day there come a-floatin' to the beach a
cask full of grub and water. Good Peter Tobey, the carpenter's mate, had
a hand in launchin' it, no doubt, but the Lord hisself steered the
blessed cask. Well, while I set a-giving thanks and thinkin' one thing
an' another, I figgered that when I'd ate all the grub and swigged the
water, I was no further along."

"And so you thought you would trust the Lord again," suggested Captain
Bonnet.

"Aye, sir, that was it. By watchin' the tides I reckoned I might drift
to another island and so work to the coast, taking my provisions with
me. There was some small line in the cask that Peter Tobey had wrapped
the stores in, and I knotted a harness about the cask that I could slip
an arm in, and off I goes when the tide sets right. But some kind of a
dratted cross-current ketched me and I'm sailin' out to sea, I finds,
without compass or cross-staff. Bound to get to London River, eh, Jack,
same as we started out on the silly little raft."

"Whew, this adventure was bad enough," cried Jack, "but when you saw Ned
Rackh