ards were braced up, the spanker sheet
hauled aft again; the brig was close hauled, lay down to her work like a
thing in earnest, and had soon drawn near to the point of advantage,
where she might stay and lie out of the lagoon in a single tack.

Wicks took the wheel himself, swelling with success. He kept the brig
full to give her heels, and began to bark his orders: "Ready about.
Helm's a-lee. Tacks and sheets. Mainsail haul." And then the fatal
words: "That'll do your mainsail; jump for'ard and haul round your
foreyards."

To stay a square-rigged ship is an affair of knowledge and swift sight:
and a man used to the succinct evolutions of a schooner will always tend
to be too hasty with a brig. It was so now. The order came too soon; the
topsails set flat aback; the ship was in irons. Even yet, had the helm
been reversed, they might have saved her. But to think of a sternboard
at all, far more to think of profiting by one, were foreign to the
schooner-sailor's mind. Wicks made haste instead to wear ship, a
manoeuvre for which room was wanting, and the _Flying Scud_ took ground
on a bank of sand and coral about twenty minutes before five.

Wicks was no hand with a square-rigger, and he had shown it. But he was
a sailor and a born captain of men for all homely purposes, where
intellect is not required and an eye in a man's head and a heart under
his jacket will suffice. Before the others had time to understand the
misfortune, he was bawling fresh orders, and had the sails clewed up,
and took soundings round the ship.

"She lies lovely," he remarked, and ordered out a boat with the
starboard anchor.

"Here! steady!" cried Tommy. "You ain't going to turn us to, to warp her
off?"

"I am though," replied Wicks.

"I won't set a hand to such tomfoolery for one," replied Tommy. "I'm
dead beat." He went and sat down doggedly on the main hatch. "You got us
on; get us off again," he added.

Garthew and Wicks turned to each other.

"Perhaps you don't know how tired we are," said Carthew.

"The tide's flowing!" cried the captain. "You wouldn't have me miss a
rising tide?"

"O, gammon! there's tides to-morrow!" retorted Tommy.

"And I'll tell you what," added Carthew, "the breeze is failing fast,
and the sun will soon be down. We may get into all kinds of fresh mess
in the dark and with nothing but light airs."

"I don't deny it," answered Wicks, and stood a while as if in thought.
"But what I can't make out," he be