ow?" asked the cook.

"No matter," returned Mayo. His project was such a gamble that he did
not care to canvass it in advance.

The nearer they drove to the stakes the more unattainable those objects
seemed. They projected high above the water.

The cook perceived them and got up on his knees and squinted. "Huh!" he
sniffed. "You'll never make it. It can't be done!"

In his fierce anxiety Mayo heaved his noose too soon, and it fell short.
He dragged in the cable with all his quickness and strength and threw
the noose again. The rope hit the stake three-quarters of the way up and
fell into the sea.

"It needs a cowboy for that work," muttered the cook.

Mayo recovered his noose and poised himself again.

In the shallows where they were the boat which bore him became a
veritable bucking bronco. It was flung high, it swooped down into the
hollows. He made a desperate try for the next stake in line. The noose
caught, and he snubbed quickly. The top of the stake came away with a
dull crack of rotten wood when the next wave lifted the boat.

Mayo pulled in his rope hand over hand with frantic haste. He
was obliged to free the broken stake from the noose and pull his
extemporized lasso into position again. He made a wider noose. His
failure had taught a point or two. He waited till the boat was on the
top of a wave. He curbed his desperate impatience, set his teeth, and
whirled the noose about his head in a widening circle. Then he cast just
as the boat began to drop. The rope encircled the stake, dropped to the
water, and he paid out all his free cable so that a good length of the
heavy rope might lie in the water and form a makeshift bridle. When he
snubbed carefully the noose drew close around the stake, and the latter
held. The waves which rode under them were terrific, and Mayo's heart
came into his mouth every time a tug and shock indicated that the rope
had come taut.

However, after five minutes of anxious waiting, kneeling in the bow, his
eyes on the cable, he found his courage rising and his hopes glowing.

"Does it mean--" gasped the girl, when he turned and looked at her.

"I don't know just what it will mean in the end, Miss Marston," he
said, with emotion. "But it's a reprieve while that rope holds."

Bradish sat clutching the gunwale with both hands, staring over his
shoulder at the waters frothing and roaring on the shore. The girl
glanced at him occasionally with a certain wonderment in her expres