try-seat, near Mount Merino, on the
Hudson: meantime, we were welcome to the benefit of the idea."

"Really, we're greatly obliged to you, Max," said Browne, "for helping
us so generously through with the most difficult part of the business.
All that we now want in order to finish it at once, is merely a few
loads of joist, plank, pine-boards, shingles, and window-sash; a supply
of nails, a set of carpenter's tools, and a couple of carpenters to use
them."

"Of course," rejoined Max, "we shall want a supply of building
materials, tools, etcetera, and I am expecting them along daily. We
have now been here several weeks, and it is quite time, in the natural
and regular course of things, and according to the uniform experience of
people situated as we are, for a ship heavily laden, (say in our case),
with lumber and hardware, to be driven upon our shores in the midst of a
terrible storm, (yesterday, when it began to thunder, I thought it was
at hand). The ship will come driving upon the reef--the crew will take
to the boats, but no boat can live in such a sea, and notwithstanding
our humane and daring efforts to assist them, all perish among the
breakers--that is to say, all except the carpenter--whom I rescue, by
plunging into the raging flood and dragging him ashore by the hair, just
as he is about sinking for the third time."

"Nobly done!" said Browne, "but couldn't you at the same time manage to
save a drowning washerwoman? she would be as great an acquisition as the
carpenter, in my mind."

"At length," resumed Max, "the storm abates--the sea becomes smooth--we
go out in the yawl to the stranded vessel, where she lies upon a coral
patch, and bring off, in two boat loads, the carpenter's chest, a keg of
gunpowder, a blunderbuss, seven muskets, fourteen pairs of pistols, and
a bag of doubloons, (think of that, Johnny!) That very night the wind
rises again: the surf breaks the wreck to pieces, and washes the
fragments ashore, and in the morning the sea is strewn far and wide with
floating spars, and bales, and barrels; and the reef is covered for
miles with `joist, plank, pine-boards, shingles, window-sash,' and
whatever other trifling conveniences are requisite for building my
cottage. This is what Johnny and I confidently calculate upon."

"In the meantime," said Arthur, "in case by any unfortunate accident
your ship should fail to arrive in time to enable us to get the cottage
up before the rains set in, I p