od start, and I want to say here in
the hearing of all interested friends that you're the smartest cuss I
ever saw afloat."

"I hope you will forgive father," pleaded Polly of the _Polly_. He felt
her breath on his cheek. She was so near that her voice nearly jumped
him. "I don't mean to get in your way, Captain Mayo, but somehow I feel
safer if I'm close to you."

"And I guess all of us do," admitted Captain Candage.

Mayo stopped sawing for a moment. "What say, men? Let's be Yankee
sailors from this time on! We'll be the right sort, eh? We'll put this
brave little girl where she belongs--on God's solid ground!"

"Amen!" boomed Mr. Speed. "I have woke up. I must have been out of my
mind. I showed you my nature when I first met you, Captain Mayo, and I
reckon you found it was helpful and enterprising. I'll be the same from
now on, even if you order me to play goat and try to butt the bottom out
of her with my head." "Me, too!" said Smut-nosed Dolph.

IX ~ A MAN'S JOB

O Nancy Dawson, hi--o!
Cheer'ly man! She's got a notion, hi--o!
Cheer'ly manl For our old bo'sun, hi--o!
Cheer'ly man! O hauley hi--o!
Cheer'ly man!
--Hauling Song.

Boyd Mayo soon found that his ancestors had put no scrub timber into the
_Polly_. The old oak rib was tough as well as bulky. The task of sawing
with merely the tip of the blade in play required both muscle and
patience, and the position he was obliged to assume added to his
difficulties. He rested after he had sawed the rib in four places, and
decided to give Oakum Otie something to do; the mate had been begging
for an opportunity to grab in. He was ordered to knock away as much as
he could of the sawed section with hammer and chisel. Mayo figured that
when this section of rib had been removed it would leave room for a hole
through the bottom planks at least two feet square--and there were no
swelling girths in their party.

The mate had strength, and he was eager to display that helpful spirit
of which he had boasted. He went at the beam with all his might.

Mayo's attention had been centered on his task; now, with a moment's
leisure in which to note other matters, he was conscious of something
which provoked his apprehension; the air under the hull of the schooner
was becoming vitiated. His temples throbbed and his ears rang.

"Ain't it getting pretty stuffy in here?" asked the master, putting