one in the fo'cas'le would listen any longer to his
tales of structural efficiency. There was no spar-making in the Union
Ironworks at 'Frisco. Joe had to shut up, and let Martin and the
bo'sun instruct the ship's company in the art of masting and
rigging--illustrated by match-sticks and pipe-stems!

There were pleasant intervals to our work on board--days when we rowed
the big boat through the Narrows to Port Stanley and idled about the
'town,' while the Old Man and Mr. Fordyce were transacting business
(under good conditions) in the bar-parlour of the Stanley Arms. We
made many friends on these excursions. The Falklanders have warm
hearts, and down there the Doric is the famous passport. We were
welcome everywhere, though Munro and I had to do most of the talking.
It was something for the Islanders to learn how the northern Scottish
crops had fared (eighteen months ago), or 'whatna'' catch of herrings
fell to the Loch Fyne boats (last season but one).

There was no great commercial activity in the 'town.' The '_Great
Britian_' hulk, storehouse for the wool, was light and high in the
water. The sawmill hulks were idle for want of lumber to be dressed.
It was the slack time, they told us; the slack time before the rush of
the wool-shearing. In a week, or a month at the most, the sheep would
be ready for the shears. Then--ah, then!--Wully Ramsey (who had a head
for figures) would be brought forward, and, while his wind held out,
would hurl figures and figures at us, all proving that 'Little
Scotland,' for its size, was a 'ferr wunner' at wool production.

The work of the moment was mostly at breaking up the wreck of the
_Glenisla_, a fine four-masted barque that had come in 'with the flames
as high as th' foreyard,' and had been abandoned as a total wreck. Her
burnt-out shell lay beached in the harbour, and the plates were being
drifted out, piece by piece, to make sheep tanks and bridge work. It
was here that the Old Man--'at a moderate cost, mind ye'--picked up a
shell-plate and knees and boom irons to make good our wants. A spar,
too (charred, but sound), that we tested by all the canons of
carpentry--tasting, smelling, twanging a steel at one end and listening
for the true, sound note at the other. It was ours, after hard
bargaining, and Mason, the foreman wrecker, looked ill-pleased with his
price when we rolled the timber down to tide mark, launched, and towed
it away.

Pleasant times! But with t