ination to try yet once more,
so that no one of the prophets of evil I had left behind me could say,
"I told you so." Whatever the danger may have been, much or little, I
can truly say that the moment was the most serene of my life.

[Illustration: "I suddenly remembered that I could not swim."]

After righting the dory for the fourth time, I finally succeeded by
the utmost care in keeping her upright while I hauled myself into her
and with one of the oars, which I had recovered, paddled to the shore,
somewhat the worse for wear and pretty full of salt water. The
position of my vessel, now high and dry, gave me anxiety. To get her
afloat again was all I thought of or cared for. I had little
difficulty in carrying the second part of my cable out and securing it
to the first, which I had taken the precaution to buoy before I put it
into the boat. To bring the end back to the sloop was a smaller matter
still, and I believe I chuckled above my sorrows when I found that in
all the haphazard my judgment or my good genius had faithfully stood
by me. The cable reached from the anchor in deep water to the sloop's
windlass by just enough to secure a turn and no more. The anchor had
been dropped at the right distance from the vessel. To heave all taut
now and wait for the coming tide was all I could do.

I had already done enough work to tire a stouter man, and was only too
glad to throw myself on the sand above the tide and rest; for the sun
was already up, and pouring a generous warmth over the land. While my
state could have been worse, I was on the wild coast of a foreign
country, and not entirely secure in my property, as I soon found out.
I had not been long on the shore when I heard the patter, patter of a
horse's feet approaching along the hard beach, which ceased as it came
abreast of the sand-ridge where I lay sheltered from the wind. Looking
up cautiously, I saw mounted on a nag probably the most astonished boy
on the whole coast. He had found a sloop! "It must be mine," he
thought, "for am I not the first to see it on the beach?" Sure enough,
there it was all high and dry and painted white. He trotted his horse
around it, and finding no owner, hitched the nag to the sloop's
bobstay and hauled as though he would take her home; but of course she
was too heavy for one horse to move. With my skiff, however, it was
different; this he hauled some distance, and concealed behind a dune
in a bunch of tall grass. He had made u