alive, my man. Run to your house, and get a pair of oars and a bucket."

It was the boat, the last surviving boat of all that hailed from
Bruntsea. That monstrous billow had tossed it up like a school-boy's
kite, and dropped it whole, with an upright keel, in the inland sea,
though nearly half full of water. Driven on by wind and wave, it labored
heavily toward us; and more than once it seemed certain to sink as it
broached to and shipped seas again. But half a dozen bold fishermen
rushed with a rope into the short angry surf--to which the polled
shingle bank still acted as a powerful breakwater, else all Bruntsea had
collapsed--and they hauled up the boat with a hearty cheer, and ran her
up straight with, "Yo--heave--oh!" and turned her on her side to drain,
and then launched her again, with a bucket and a man to bail out the
rest of the water, and a pair of heavy oars brought down by Barnes, and
nobody knows what other things.

"Naught to steer with. Rudder gone!" cried one of the men, as the
furious gale drove the boat, athwart the street, back again.

"Wants another oar," said Barnes. "What a fool I were to bring only
two!"

"Here you are!" shouted Major Hockin. "One of you help me to pull up
this pole."

Through a shattered gate they waded into a little garden, which had been
the pride of the season at Bruntsea; and there from the ground they tore
up a pole, with a board at the top nailed across it, and the following
not rare legend: "Lodgings to let. Inquire within. First floor front,
and back parlors."

"Fust-rate thing to steer with! Would never have believed you had the
sense!" So shouted Barnes--a rough man, roughened by the stress of storm
and fright. "Get into starn-sheets if so liketh. Ye know, ye may be
useful."

"I defy you to push off without my sanction. Useful, indeed! I am the
captain of this boat. All the ground under it is mine. Did you think,
you set of salted radicals, that I meant to let you go without me? And
all among my own houses!"

"Look sharp, governor, if you has the pluck, then. Mind, we are more
like to be swamped than not."

As the boat swung about, Major Hockin jumped in, and so, on the spur of
the moment, did I. We staggered all about with the heave and roll,
and both would have fallen on the planks, or out over, if we had not
tumbled, with opposite impetus, into the arms of each other. Then a
great wave burst and soaked us both, and we fell into sitting on a
slippery seat