ve
into position.

And so, having gotten in our three jury lower-masts, we hoisted up the
foreyard to the main, to act as our mainyard, and did likewise with the
topsail-yard to the fore, and after that, we sent up the t'gallant-yard
to the mizzen. Thus we had her sparred, all but a bowsprit and jibboom;
yet this we managed by making a stumpy, spike bowsprit from one of the
smaller spars which they had used to shore up the superstructure, and
because we feared that it lacked strength to bear the strain of our fore
and aft stays, we took down two hawsers from the fore, passing them in
through the hawse-holes and setting them up there. And so we had her
rigged, and, after that, we bent such sail as our gear abled us to carry,
and in this wise had the hulk ready for sea.

Now, the time that it took us to rig the ship, and fit her out, was seven
weeks, saving one day. And in all this time we suffered no molestation
from any of the strange habitants of the weed-continent; though this may
have been because we kept fires of dried weed going all the night about
the decks, these fires being lit on big flat pieces of rock which we had
gotten from the island. Yet, for all that we had not been troubled, we
had more than once discovered strange things in the water swimming near
to the vessel; but a flare of weed, hung over the side, on the end of a
reed, had sufficed always to scare away such unholy visitants.

And so at last we came to the day on which we were in so good a
condition that the bo'sun and the second mate considered the ship to be
in a fit state to put to sea--the carpenter having gone over so much of
her hull as he could get at and found her everywhere very sound; though
her lower parts were hideously overgrown with weed, barnacles and other
matters; yet this we could not help, and it was not wise to attempt to
scrape her, having consideration to the creatures which we knew to
abound in those waters.

Now in those seven weeks, Mistress Madison and I had come very close to
one another, so that I had ceased to call her by any name save Mary,
unless it were a dearer one than that; though this would be one of my own
invention, and would leave my heart too naked did I put it down here.

Of our love one for the other, I think yet, and ponder how that mighty
man, the bo'sun, came so quickly to a knowledge of the state of our
hearts; for he gave me a very sly hint one day that he had a sound idea
of the way in which the