we're off the better."

"How can we go?"

"How? Easy enough. Get on deck, slide down a rope over the side when
it's dark."

"In irons?"

"They don't weigh much. We could get hold of an oar or two, or lower
down a grating, and hold on by that till we'd swam ashore."

"And the sharks, Jem?"

"Oh, those sharks!" cried Jem, pettishly. "I always forget them. I
wish there wasn't such a thing as a shark on the face of the earth.
Well, we must try some other way."

"That's easy enough to say, Jem; but what way is there?"

"Oh, I don't know yet, Mas' Don; but they say, `where there's a will
there's a way.' P'r'aps I can think it out. 'Member that big case as
was too wide to come into the lower warehouse?"

"Yes."

"Well, your uncle said he'd be obliged to have the doorposts cut, but I
thought that out after I'd measured it, and I found that it would just
go in at the top warehouse doors if we hauled it up with the crane."

"You used to call it winding anything up, Jem."

"Ay, but I hadn't been to sea then, Mas' Don. Well, didn't I have that
there case up to the top floor, and then lower it down through all the
traps, and get it into the ground floor without the door being cut; and
when your uncle come in, he stared, and asked me how I'd managed it?"

"Yes, I remember it all," said Don sadly.

"Look here, you two. I don't want to be hard," said the marine; "but
you'll get me into a row. Now, are you going to clap on the hatchways,
or am I to report you?"

"All right, Jolly; we won't talk any more," said Jem; and he kept his
word that night.

There was no release next day, and very drearily it passed till towards
evening, when Jem waited till the sentry's back was turned, and put his
lips to Don's ear.

"I've got it, Mas' Don," he said.

"What, can you see your way to escape?"

"I've hit it out, my lad. Look here. Do you know them's men's irons
you've got on?"

"Yes. They don't make irons for boys."

"Then look here, my lad; it may mean a bit of skin off; but all you've
got to do is to squeeze your feet through those rings, and then I'll be
bound to say a thin slip of a fellow like you can creep out of the iron
round your waist."

"I don't think so, Jem. I'm stouter than you fancy."

"Oh no, you're not, and I dessay it'll be a tight fit; but you do it."

"And suppose I do get out of them, what about you?"

"About me, Mas' Don? Ah, I don't know about me; but you could get right
away