"Have you got it?" inquired Bob, after Dick had groped about for some
time, popping his head under water and coming up at intervals for
breath. "Have you got it?"

"'Ees," said he at length, lugging out the bucket, "I've got 'im!"

Then, they set to work, each using it alternately.

The exertion did them both good, too, standing up as they were to their
middles in water; for, it prevented them shivering with cold as they had
before done.

Bucketful after bucketful they emptied over the side; and, still they
did not appear to decrease the quantity the cutter contained to any
appreciable extent, bale they, as they baled, their hardest!

Gradually, however, the after-thwart became clear.

"Hooray!" exclaimed Bob. "We're gaining on it."

This inspired them with renewed strength; and, after nearly an hour's
hard work, they had so lessened the water that only a small portion now
remained washing about under the bottom boards of the boat, which,
recovering all her old buoyancy, floated again with a high freeboard,
light as a cork, above the surface of the sea, instead of being level
with it as before.

"That's a good job done!" said Dick. "I wish that theer murderin' shep
hadn't a-bruk our mast; fur, we'd soon been all right!"

"While you're about it, Dick," said Bob, "you might, just as well, wish
she hadn't carried the mast and boom away with her. I don't believe
they've left us anything!"

No, the colliding ship had made a "clean sweep" of all their spars and
rigging and everything; hardly a rope's-end remaining attached to the
cutter, beyond a part of the mainsheet and a bit of the forestay, which
latter was hanging down from the bowsprit, the only spar the yacht had
left.

Not a single thing of all her deck-fittings, either, had the little
vessel to the good; even her tiller had been wrenched off and the rudder
smashed.

Nor were there any oars left in the little craft; though, even if there
had been, the yacht was too heavy for boys like Bob and Dick to have
made her move at the most infinitesimal rate of speed.

It is true, there was the old gaff-topsail still in the fore-peak, as
well as a spare jib; but they had nothing to spread them out to the wind
with, or affix them to.

They were, in fact, oar-less, sail-less, helpless!

"I don't see what we can do," said Bob, when they had looked over all
the boat, in case something perchance might have escaped their notice.
"We can only hope and pray!