that the darkness came soon and lasted a long way into the morning, when
he sought sleep in his bed of skins with a heap of shavings for his
pillow.

He spared no pains or trouble. If there was a board which would not run
into the right groove with the others, though never so little, he would
take out a whole row of them and plane them all round again and again.

Now, one night, just before Christmas, he had finished all but the
uppermost planking and the gabs. He was working so hard to finish up
that he took no count of time.

The plane was sending the shavings flying their briskest when he came to
a dead stop at something black which was moving along the plank.

It was a large and hideous fly which was crawling about and feeling and
poking all the planks in the boat. When it reached the lowest keel-board
it whirred with its wings and buzzed. Then it rose and swept above it in
the air till, all at once, it swerved away into the darkness.

Jack's heart sank within him. Such doubt and anguish came upon him. He
knew well enough that no good errand had brought the Gan-fly buzzing
over the boat like that.

So he took the train-oil lamp and a wooden club, and began to test the
prow and light up the boarding, and thump it well, and go over the
planks one by one. And in this way he went over every bit of the boat
from stem to stern, both above and below. There was not a nail or a
rivet that he really believed in now.

But now neither the shape nor the proportions of the boat pleased him
any more. The prow was too big, and the whole cut of the boat all the
way down the gunwale had something of a twist and a bend and a swerve
about it, so that it looked like the halves of two different boats put
together, and the half in front didn't fit in with the half behind. As
he was about to look into the matter still further (and he felt the cold
sweat bursting out of the roots of his hair), the train-oil lamp went
out and left him in blank darkness.

Then he could contain himself no longer. He lifted his club and burst
open the boathouse door, and, snatching up a big cow-bell, he began to
swing it about him and ring and ring with it through the black night.

"Art chiming for me, Jack?" something asked. There was a sound behind
him like the surf sucking at the shore, and a cold blast blew into the
boathouse.

There on the keel-stick sat some one in a sloppy grey sea-jacket, and
with a print cap drawn down over its ears, so that