all tightly
in their places. Then a rope was made fast, the word given to those on
deck, and the chest was run up in no time.

Five minutes later Oliver was equipped in light flannel jacket and sun
helmet, his gun over his shoulder and all ready fur action.

"Going for a stroll?" said Mr Rimmer, as they stepped down from the
deck to where he was superintending the planking of the lugger, whose
framework had been slid down on a kind of cradle, where it now stood
parallel with the brig, it having been found advisable to get her down
from the deck for several reasons, notably her rapidly increasing weight
and her being so much in the way.

"But suppose the enemy comes and finds her alongside? They might burn
her."

"They'd burn or bake us if we kept her up here," said the mate, shortly,
"for we should not have room to move."

So there it was, down alongside, rapidly approaching completion, the men
having toiled away with a will, feeling how necessary it was to have a
way open for escape, and working so well that most of them soon began to
grow into respectable shipyard labourers, one or two, under the guidance
of the ship's carpenter, promising to develop soon into builders.

The mate was very busy with a caulking hammer in one hand, a wedge in
the other, driving tar-soaked oakum between the planks so as to make a
water-tight seam, and as the young men came up he wiped his steamy brow
with his arm, and looked at all with good-humoured satisfaction.

"Yes, we're going to inspect a discovery I have made," said Panton,
importantly. "Like to join us?"

"Well, I should like," replied the mate, "and I think I--no: resolution
for ever. Not a step will I take till I've got the _Little Planet_
finished. She's rough, but I believe she'll go."

"When you get her to the sea."

"Ye-es," said Mr Rimmer, with a comically perplexed look in his bluff
English countenance, "when we get her to the sea. You don't think
she'll stick fast, do you, Mr Lane?"

"Well, I hope not," said Oliver, "but when I get thinking about how big
you are making her, I can't help having doubts."

"Doubts?" said the mate, sadly, as if he had plenty of his own.

"Yes--no," cried Oliver, "I will not have any. We will get her down to
the sea somehow. Englishmen have done bigger things than that."

"And will again, eh, sir?" cried the mate. "Come, that's encouraging.
You've done me no end of good, sir, that you have. There, off with you,
and