forard, Mr Butters, sir, and seeing what you can
make of it?"

The boatswain passed over the thwarts and joined his comrade of the past
night's work, stood looking down for a few moments, and then took off
his cap and scratched one ear.

"You young gents had better come and have a look," he said; "you had the
designing on it."

The boys did not wait for a second invitation, but hurriedly went
forward, to find that their scheme had acted far beyond their
expectations, for the fans of the propeller had wound up the thick soft
cable so tightly that the opening in which the fish-tail mechanism
turned was completely filled with the tightly-compressed strands of
rope, so that Poole suggested that all that needed was to get hold of
one end, and then as soon as the steam was well on to reverse and wind
the cable off in a similar way to that in which it had been wound on.

"Hah, to be sure," said the boatswain, giving his leg a sailor's slap,
"there's nothing like a bit o' sense, Mr Poole, sir; that nice noo
Manilla cable's been twisted round my heart, sir, ever since it was
used, and made me feel quite sore. Nothing I hates worse than waste."

"It wasn't waste," said Fitz, impatiently. "You might just as well say
the bait was wasted when you have been fishing. Don't you get something
good in return?"

"Ah, but that's fishing, young gentlemen, and this aren't," said
Butters, with a very knowing smile.

"Not fishing!" cried Fitz. "I think it was fishing. You used the
cable, and you've caught a gunboat."

"But s'pose we've got the gunboat and the bait back as well, how then?"
cried the boatswain. "Look ye here, my lad, I'm going to have that
there end of the cable taken a turn round the steam-capstan, and as soon
as the chaps have got full steam on, the screw shall be turned, and
we'll wind it off fine and good as noo."

Fitz shook his head as he gazed down through the clear water at the mass
of rope, and exclaimed--

"I know it won't do."

"What, aren't you saddasfied now?" said the boatswain, while Chips
wrinkled up his face and looked uneasy.

"Aren't never seen a screw fouled like that afore, along of a coir
cable, Mr Fitz, sir, have you?"

"No," replied the middy. "But I've seen a Manilla cable after it's been
down with a heavy anchor in a rocky sea off the Channel Islands."

"And how was that, sir?"

"Frayed in half-a-dozen places by the rocks, so that the anchor parted
before we'd got it weighed,