k of your burst boot! For my part, I'm
willing enough to stay here as anywhere: or you can stay, and I'll
start back for camp, and we'll share this island like two kings, you
keeping this imperial anchorage.'

"But of course this had him beaten. He helped me launch the boat and
ran to collect stuffing for her seams, while I sat in her and baled,
baled, baled. . . . It was pretty eerie to sit there alone--for the
dog had gone with Farrell--fighting the water, and feel her settling,
if for five minutes I gave up the struggle, down nearer and nearer
upon the shoulders of that drowned corpse with the hidden face.
By sunset Farrell returned with an armful of sun-dried fibre.
We hauled the boat high again and he began caulking her lower seams,
that already had started to close.

"'She'll keep afloat now for a few hundred yards,' he announced after
a while. 'Let's launch her again and run her round the point and
beach her. I left a bundle of bark there that, early to-morrow,
we'll cut in strips and tack over the seams, and she'll do fine to
carry us home.'

"'Home?' echoed I grimly.

"'You know what I mean, you blighter!' he snarled. 'Oh, for God's
sake, no--we mustn't start bickering alongside of _that_!' He forced
his eyes to look down again at the corpse, and shuddered.
'The tide's going down, too.'

"'It won't go down far enough to uncover _him_: and that you ought to
have sense to know," said I.

"'But the farther it goes down the nearer he'll come up, or seem to,'
he argued.

"'Well, night's coming on, and you won't see him,' I suggested,
playing on his nerves.

"'D'you think I'll sit here in the dark, alongside of--oh, hurry, you
devil! Hurry!'

"I chuckled at this. It came into my mind to refuse, and declare I
would sit out the night here by the boat. I knew that the shore
beyond, though it curved for two good miles, would not be wide enough
to contain his agony through the night hours. . . . But I had pushed
him far enough for the time. So we launched the boat again and
paddled her around and beached her on shelving sand: and soon after,
night fell.

"Farrell slept poorly. Three or four times I heard him start up, to
pace to and fro under the starlight: and each time the dog awoke and
trotted with him. . . .

"But he was up, brisk and early, with dawn; and he made quite a good
job of tacking bark over the boat's seams, while I sat and cobbled up
his boot with sailmaker's needle and twine.