t a bit and get your wind, my lad.--Joe Cross! Ahoy!" he
yelled, as if his messmate were half-a-mile away.

"Right ho!" came from below. "Where's the boy?"

"Here, Joe--here!" shouted Rodd, the sound of the man's voice seeming to
send energy through him.

"Hah-h-h!" came from the sailor, and directly after from different parts
of the tree there was a cheer.

"Now then, what about you, matey?" shouted Briggs.

"Well, I dunno yet, my lad; I'm just going to try and shape it round. I
want to know where some of the others are, and whether if I let go I
couldn't manage to make a scramble and swim so as to join a mate."

"No, no, no!" came in chorus. "Don't try it, lad. Aren't you safe
where you are?"

"Well, I don't know about being safe," replied the sailor. "Mebbe I
could hold on, but here's the water up to my chesty; and don't make a
row, or you'll be letting some of those crocs know where I am. Look
here, Mr Rodd, sir; are you all right?"

"Yes, Joe; I can sit here as long as I like.--That is," he added to
himself, "if the branch doesn't break."

"Well, that's a comfort, sir. And what about you, Harry Briggs?"

"Well, I'm all right, mate; only a bit wet."

"Wet! You should feel me!" cried Cross, quite jocularly. "How about
the rest on you?"

"Oh, we are up aloft here in the dark, mate," said one of the men. "I
dunno as we should hurt so long as we didn't fall asleep."

"Oh, I wouldn't do that, mates," said Cross. "You might catch cold.
You hang yourselves out as wide as you can, so as to get dry."

"But look here, Joe Cross," shouted Rodd, who was rapidly recovering his
spirits, "you mustn't sit there in the water. Can't you manage to climb
up?"

"Oh yes, sir, I can climb up easy enough, only it don't seem to me as
there's anything to climb."

"But doesn't the branch you are sitting on go right up to the tree?"

"No, sir; it goes right down into it, and I'm sitting in a sort of fork,
like a dicky bird as has been picking out a handy place for its nest."

"Then what are you going to try to do?"

"Nothing, sir, but think."

"Think?"

"Yes, sir--about what I'm going to say to the skipper if ever we gets
back."

"Why, what can you say?"

"That's what I want to know, sir. I know what he'll say to me. He'll
say, Look here, my lad, you were coxswain; I want to know what you have
done with my gig."

"Ah, the boat!" said Rodd. "Do any of you know what's become of the
boat?"

"I don