n."

"Saw a pile o' empty oil drums behind the stockade," rumbled Jerry
Rolfe, avoiding the skipper's eye as if expecting to hear some scathing
comment on the ship's situation.

"How many?" Bill Blunt demanded, without waiting for Barry to speak. "Be
they big uns? Is ther' plenty of 'em? Holy Sailor! Beg pardon, Cap'n,
but them's what we want, ain't they, now?"

"What can you do with them, Blunt? You'd need a thousand to raise the
_Barang_ a foot. And how will you fasten them? Can't get lines under the
keel."

"Beg pardon, sir, fer a-shovin' in me oar," returned Bill, with a
grotesque tug at his forelock. "I seen som'at o' the sort done once,
though, an' if so be as you ses so, I'll do me best, sir."

"Oh, go ahead, Blunt. Go right ahead. I suppose whatever you do won't
put her in any worse a pickle. No doubt she'll come up herself when the
holes are plugged and the pumps get going again."

They pulled aboard the _Barang_, and while the boats were sent ashore to
bring down all the empty drums, Bill Blunt assumed a comical air of
study and thought out his plan. He first asked about the holes and what
had been done with them. By this time the tide had risen a foot, and the
plugs were almost ready to be driven in. Barry watched the old fellow
with a grin, and when Bill began to count laboriously on his gnarled
fingers, stepping from the bulwarks to the hatch and back again, peering
over the side and down the hold, the skipper said with mock apology:

"I suppose you're wondering why we're going to drive in the plugs from
inside, hey?"

"No, sir. I never wonders at what my skipper does. It's allus right.
That's what you be skipper fer, I take it. No, sir. I sees as it ain't
easy to drive plugs into holes as you can't reach, and them holes seems
to be away below the mud outside. Course, some clever sharks as I knows
on might say as you was wrong, and that the water outside 'ud drive them
plugs back into the belly o' the wessel. But 'tain't so. No, sir." The
ancient mariner maintained his bearlike pacing to and from the hatch,
and his speech was astonishingly longwinded for him; still he kept on
chattering, and presently Barry began to listen with real interest, and
Little and Gordon, waiting for the plugs, stared at the sailor in awed
admiration.

"No, sir," went on Bill, "them plugs has to be druv from inside; an'
makin' free, genelmen, I'd make 'em twice as long as them you have
ready."

"Twice as long?" snorte