eacher!" I said.

Finding us still cheerful, the imps tried again.

"Jonathan--do you know--I do believe--my rowlock socket is working loose."

He cast a quick look over his shoulder without breaking stroke. Then he
said a few words, explicit and powerful, about the man who had
"overhauled" the boat. "He ought to be put out in it, in a sea like this,
and left to row himself home."

"Yes, of course, but instead, here we are. It won't last half an hour
longer."

It did not last ten minutes. There it hung, one screw pulled loose, the
other barely holding.

"Take my knife--you can get it out of my hip pocket--and try to set up that
screw with the big blade."

I did so, and pulled a few strokes. Then--"It's come out again. It's no
use."

"We make blamed poor headway with one pair of oars," said Jonathan.

He meditated.

"Where are the screw-eyes?" he said after a moment.

"Oh, good for you! They're in the metal box. I'll get them."

I drew in my useless oars, turned about and cautiously wriggled up into
the bow seat.

"Look out for yourself! Don't bullfrog out over the bow. I can't hold her
any steadier than this."

"Oh, I'm all right."

With one hand I gripped the gunwale, with the other I felt down into the
box and finally fished out the required treasures. I worked my way back
into my own seat and tried a screw-eye in the empty, rusted-out hole.

"Does it bite?"

"I don't know about biting, but it's going in beautifully--now it goes
hard."

"Perhaps I can give it a turn."

"Perhaps you can't! Don't you stop rowing. If this boat wasn't held
steady, she'd--I don't know what she wouldn't do."

"If you stick something through the eye you can turn it."

"Yes. I'll find something. Here's the can-opener. Grand! There! It's
solid. Now I'll do the other one the same way. Hurrah for the screw-eyes!"

"You thought of bringing them," said Jonathan magnanimously.

"You thought of using them," said I, not to be outdone.

* * * * *

And so again the imps were foiled. But they hung over us, they slapped us
with spray, they tossed the whitecaps, jeering, at our heads, over our
shoulders, into our laps. They put up the tides to tricks of eddies and
back-currents, so that they hindered instead of helping, as by calculation
they should have done. They laid invisible hands on our oars and dragged
them down, or held them up as the wave raced by, so that we missed a
stroke. Once,