r she had used up many tons of coal, she
had strained her tubes, and, worse than all, her officers and crew had
been hurried. Every one on the Haliotis was arrested and rearrested
several times, as each officer came aboard; then they were told by what
they esteemed to be the equivalent of a midshipman that they were to
consider themselves prisoners, and finally were put under arrest.

"It's not the least good," said the skipper, suavely. "You'd much better
send us a tow--"

"Be still--you are arrest!" was the reply.

"Where the devil do you expect we are going to escape to? We're
helpless. You've got to tow us into somewhere, and explain why you fired
on us. Mr. Wardrop, we're helpless, aren't we?"

"Ruined from end to end," said the man of machinery. "If she rolls, the
forward cylinder will come down and go through her bottom. Both columns
are clean cut through. There's nothing to hold anything up."

The council of war clanked off to see if Mr. Wardrop's words were true.
He warned them that it was as much as a man's life was worth to enter
the engine-room, and they contented themselves with a distant inspection
through the thinning steam. The Haliotis lifted to the long, easy swell,
and the starboard supporting-column ground a trifle, as a man grits
his teeth under the knife. The forward cylinder was depending on that
unknown force men call the pertinacity of materials, which now and then
balances that other heartbreaking power, the perversity of inanimate
things.

"You see!" said Mr. Wardrop, hurrying them away. "The engines aren't
worth their price as old iron."

"We tow," was the answer. "Afterwards we shall confiscate."

The man-of-war was short-handed, and did not see the necessity for
putting a prize-crew aboard the Haliotis. So she sent one sublieutenant,
whom the skipper kept very drunk, for he did not wish to make the tow
too easy, and, moreover, he had an inconspicuous little rope hanging
from the stem of his ship.

Then they began to tow at an average speed of four knots an hour. The
Haliotis was very hard to move, and the gunnery-lieutenant, who had
fired the five-inch shell, had leisure to think upon consequences.
Mr. Wardrop was the busy man. He borrowed all the crew to shore up the
cylinders with spars and blocks from the bottom and sides of the ship.
It was a day's risky work; but anything was better than drowning at the
end of a tow-rope; and if the forward cylinder had fallen, it would have