th his back to a stanchion dreamily
gazing at the starry sky. Chris was in a fever for Amos to sleep,
which his good friend soon did. Then a gray mouse scuttered along the
wainscot of the ship's passageways until it reached a good vantage
point from which to see the young sailor on deck. Chris had chosen
well; a mouse is used to the dark.

For several hours Zachary remained still and the mouse dozed, woke
with a start, twitched its ears, and waited. Then, long after midnight
when, alone of the entire ship's company, only the helmsman and night
watch were awake, Zachary very slowly slid his way to the ladder
leading to the hold. The mouse, scurrying forward, was able to follow
by means of a dangling rope and a leap into pitch-blackness at the
rope's end. The poor mouse hit something and ricocheted off. It lay
stunned for a moment or two a few inches from Zachary's feet as the
sailor stood at the foot of the ladder in the black heavy air of the
hold. Then Zachary lit a candle end he had brought in his pocket, and
lifted it up above his head to give the maximum amount of radiance.

The glow of the candle stub, like a yellow daisy in a cavern, spread
petals of light for only a short distance. By its sputtering, the
mouse looked up to the towering figure Zachary now made above it, and
hearing the sharp squeakings and furtive scratches that signaled rats,
the mouse thought it more prudent to adopt the shape of a fly. This
Chris did, and on Zachary's shoulder the fly's many-faceted eyes could
not only see everything, but see them several times over.

Zachary then put the candle on the corner of a packing case and from
under his shirt pulled out the coils of the fuse Chris had seen a few
days before. He took up the candle stub and began a long and patient
search, measuring with the length of fuse, and hunting for a secure
hiding place for the gunpowder. In the end he found a cramped space,
just big enough for him to slide into, made by the shifting of the
cargo which had seemingly rewedged itself firmly, forming a curious
little cave of barrel sides, crates, and heavy bales of cotton
overhead. Dangerous, thought Chris, should anything rock the
_Mirabelle_ in such a way that the cargo shifted back suddenly to its
original tight formation. The hold of the _Mirabelle_ was large, the
packing case cave was surrounded by hundreds of pounds of solid cargo.
It gave Chris a trapped feeling that he did not like, and he was
relieved wh