compelled to tow her one whaleboat
astern on long double painters, and by the time the mate had it hauled in
under the stern, Van Horn was back. He was undeterred by the barbed
wire, lifting boy after boy of the boat's crew over it and dropping them
sprawling into the boat, following himself, as the last, by swinging over
on the spanker boom, and calling his last instructions as the painters
were cast off.

"Get a riding light on deck, Borckman. Keep her hove to. Don't hoist
the mainsail. Clean up the decks and bend the watch tackle on the main
boom."

He took the steering-sweep and encouraged the rowers with:
"Washee-washee, good fella, washee-washee!"--which is the beche-de-mer
for "row hard."

As he steered, he kept flashing the torch on the boat compass so that he
could keep headed north-east by east a quarter east. Then he remembered
that the boat compass, on such course, deviated two whole points from the
_Arangi's_ compass, and altered his own course accordingly.

Occasionally he bade the rowers cease, while he listened and called for
Jerry. He had them row in circles, and work back and forth, up to
windward and down to leeward, over the area of dark sea that he reasoned
must contain the puppy.

"Now you fella boy listen ear belong you," he said, toward the first.
"Maybe one fella boy hear 'm pickaninny dog sing out, I give 'm that
fella boy five fathom calico, two ten sticks tobacco."

At the end of half an hour he was offering "Two ten fathoms calico and
ten ten sticks tobacco" to the boy who first heard "pickaninny dog sing
out."

* * * * *

Jerry was in bad shape. Not accustomed to swimming, strangled by the
salt water that lapped into his open mouth, he was getting loggy when
first he chanced to see the flash of the captain's torch. This, however,
he did not connect with Skipper, and so took no more notice of it than he
did of the first stars showing in the sky. It never entered his mind
that it might be a star nor even that it might not be a star. He
continued to wail and to strangle with more salt water. But when he at
length heard Skipper's voice he went immediately wild. He attempted to
stand up and to rest his forepaws on Skipper's voice coming out of the
darkness, as he would have rested his forepaws on Skipper's leg had he
been near. The result was disastrous. Out of the horizontal, he sank
down and under, coming up with a new spasm of strangling.

This lasted for a short tim