ng hawser, saw the ends which had been cut
through strand by strand, and with a grasp of the situation that had
been better applied earlier, he ran aft, shouting to his crew as he ran:

"Loose a jib and hoist it! Lively! You, Blunt, give her a sheer with the
wheel--across the river--that's you."

Sarcastic mirth murmured aboard the schooner, once more fading into a
blur; but Jerry Rolfe had his plan, and as the forward canvas rattled
up the stay, and the vessel slued across the current, drawing in for the
farther shore, he shook his fist at the _Padang_ and growled:

"Cut me adrift and scuttle me, will ye? And, by Hokey, you stay where
you are until this ship's afloat again!"

That was his plan, and it worked like a charm. When she had left the
schooner a hundred yards up the river, the _Barang_ stuck her nose into
the soft mud, slid greasily forward, shuddered and stopped; and every
minute she sank deeper, until in ten minutes she stood upright and firm,
planted snugly in the river bottom, fair across the channel, leaving no
passage fore or aft for anything of bigger craft than a canoe or ship's
boat. And after a silence that might almost be felt, uneasy voices began
to sound aboard the schooner, until a chorus of furious howlings
announced the discovery of a sad miscarriage of an unseamanly trick.

"That's where they get theirs!" chuckled Rolfe, listening rapturously,
forgetting for the moment his own sorry plight.

"My respecks, sir. You 'm all the mustard in the sangwidge!" Bill Blunt
rumbled in grinning admiration.

The decks were almost awash, and the holds and cabins were full of muddy
water, but aboard the _Barang_ there was gratification mixed with the
mate's anger, for without a doubt the schooner was shut in as
completely as if she were in dry-dock with the gates closed at low tide.
In truth it was but fair reprisal for the trick played on Leyden's
vessel by Barry in Surabaya; but Jerry Rolfe had not been aware of that
exploit, and this last coup was to him simply a piece of bald
wickedness, swiftly turned against the perpetrators.

The pumps were tried once more--they had been going, of course, while
the brigantine kept afloat--but with all brakes working full force, and
both mates lending a hand, the water came in faster than it went out,
and by the time the moon bounded up over the trees, the situation was
accepted as demanding measures beyond mere pumping. And Rolfe stood
glaring over at the now c