he
carryall was awash.

"Port your hellum, you lubber!" shouted the driver, pulling with all his
might on one rein. "Heave to! Come 'bout! Gybe! consarn you! gybe!"

Then Horace Greeley tried to obey orders, but it was too late. He
endeavored to touch bottom with his forelegs, but could not; tried to
swim with his hind ones, but found that impossible; then wallowed wildly
to one side and snapped a shaft and the rotten whiffletree short off.
The carryall tipped alarmingly and Miss Patience screamed.

"Whoa!" yelled the agitated Perez. "'Vast heavin'! belay!"

The animal, as much frightened by his driver's shouts as by the water,
shot ahead and tried to tear himself loose. The other sun-warped and
rotten shaft broke. The carryall was now floating, with the water
covering the floor.

"No use; I'll have to cut away the wreck, or we'll be on our beam ends!"
shouted the Captain.

He took out his jackknife, and reaching over, severed the traces. Horace
Greeley gave another wallow, and finding himself free, disappeared in
the darkness amid a lather of foam. The carriage, now well out in the
channel, drifted with the current.

"Don't cry, Pashy!" said the Captain, endeavoring to cheer his sobbing
companion, "we ain't shark bait yit. As the song used to say:

"'We're afloat, we're afloat,
And the rover is free.'

"I've shipped aboard of 'most every kind of craft," he added, "but
blessed if I ever expected to be skipper of a carryall!"

But Miss Patience, shut up in the back part of the carriage like a water
nymph in her cave, still wept hysterically. So Captain Perez continued
his dismal attempt at facetiousness.

"The main thing," he said, "is to keep her on an even keel. If
she teeters to one side, you teeter to t'other. Drat that fox!" he
ejaculated. "I thought when Web's place burned we'd had fire enough to
last for one spell, but it never rains but it pours."

"Oh, dear!" sobbed the lady. "Now everything 'll burn up, and they'll
blame me for it. Well, I'll be drownded anyway, so I shan't be there to
hear 'em. Oh, dear! dear!"

"Oh, don't talk that way. We're driftin' somewheres, but we're spinnin'
'round so I can't tell which way. Judas!" he exclaimed, more soberly, "I
remember, now; it ain't but a little past seven o'clock, and the tide's
goin' out."

"Of course it is," resignedly, "and we'll drift into the breakers in the
bay, and that 'll be the end."

"No, no, I guess not. We ain't dead yit.