e care of the ship,
should we even manage to get her into deep water again?"

"Well, that is not so soon answered, Mr. Woolston," returned Bob. "We're
both on us stout, and healthy, and of good courage, Mr. Mark; but
'twould be a desperate long way for two hands to carry a wessel of four
hundred tons, to take the old 'Cocus from this here anchorage, all the
way to the coast of America; and short of the coast there's no ra'al
hope for us. Howsever, sir, _that_ is a subject that need give us no
consarn."

"I do not see that, Bob; we shall have to do it, unless we fall in with
something at sea, could we only once get the vessel; out from among
these reefs."

"Ay, ay, sir--could' we get her out from among these reefs, indeed!
There's the rub, Mr. Woolston; but I fear 't will never be 'rub and
_go_.'"

"You think, then, we are too fairly in for it, ever to get the ship
clear?"

"Such is just my notion, Mr. Woolston, on that subject, and I've no wish
to keep it a secret. In my judgment, was poor Captain Crutchely alive
and back at his post, and all hands just as they was this time
twenty-four hours since, and the ship where she is now, that _here_ she
would have to stay. Nothing short of kedging can ever take the wessel
clear of the reefs to windward on us, and man-of-war kedging could
hardly do it, then."

"I am sorry to hear you say this," answered Mark, gloomily, "though I
feared as much myself."

"Men is men, sir, and you can get no more out on 'em than is in 'em. I
looked well at these reefs, sir, when aloft, and they're what I call as
hopeless affairs as ever I laid eyes on. If they lay in any sort of way,
a body might have some little chance of getting through 'em, but they
don't lay, no how. 'T would be 'luff' and 'keep her away' every half
minute or so, should we attempt to beat up among 'em; and who is there
aboard here to brace up, and haul aft, and ease off, and to swing yards
sich as our'n?"

"I was not altogether without the hope, Bob, of getting the ship into
clear water: though I have thought it would be done with difficulty, I
am still of opinion we had better try it, for the alternative is a very
serious matter."

"I don't exactly understand what you mean by attorneytives, Mr. Mark;
though it's little harm, or little good that any attorney can do the old
'Cocus, now! But, as for getting this craft through them reefs, to
windward, and into clear water, it surpasses the power of man. Did you
just