"Why, it's Jim Spurling, Tom Sprowl's nephew!" exclaimed the astonished captain. "So the gale blew you down from Tarpaulin, eh? Well, all I've got to say is that you were confounded lucky to hit the buoy and not the breaker. How long since you've had anything to eat or drink?" "Forty-six hours since we've had a swallow of water, and about twenty since we finished our last hard bread." "Well, well! You must be hungry and thirsty! Come right aboard and we'll see what we can do for you." Gladly the boys cut the lashings that bound them to the bails. The whistle gave a screech of farewell as they tumbled stiffly into the boat. The solid deck of the _Gracie_ felt good beneath their feet. "You can have all the water you want, boys; but you'd better go light on food at first," cautioned the captain. It seemed to Percy as if he could never get enough to drink. Gradually, however, his thirst was quenched. He began to realize that he had not slept for two days and a half. "I'd like to carry you right back to the island," said Captain Greenlaw, "for your friends must be worrying. But there are lots of herring here, and I've got to get a load first. That may take two or three days. I'll land you at Tarpaulin on my way home. Better turn in and sleep." The boys were shortly wrapped in a heavy, dreamless slumber. It seemed to them as if they had just closed their eyes when they were shaken awake again. "Here's the cutter!" exclaimed the captain. "They got a wireless to hunt you up. Going to run in to Rockland, and can land you at Tarpaulin this evening. What do you say?" Tired though they were, Jim and Percy were only too glad of a chance to get home speedily. So they were transferred to the _Pollux_, and their leaking dory hoisted aboard. Swung in hammocks in the seamen's quarters, they were soon slumbering dreamlessly again. At eight that night the _Pollux_ stopped off the island. The dory, made sound and tight by the ship's carpenter, was dropped overboard, and the boys rowed into Sprowl's Cove. Their appearance transformed the gloom that overhung Camp Spurling into the wildest joy. Budge, Throppy, and Filippo burst out of the cabin and raced headlong down the beach, waking the echoes with their shouts of welcome. Even before the dory grounded they tumbled aboard and flung their arms about the castaways. No brothers, reunited after deadly peril, could have given one another a warmer greeting. Jim freed his hands at last, stooped, and picked up a package which he tossed out on the gravel. There was a suspicious moisture in his eyes. "There's the piston-rod!" said he in a rather choky voice. "I guess we'll get our set all right day after to-morrow." XX SQUARING AN ACCOUNT It was almost noon the next day before Jim and Percy rolled out of their bunks in Camp Spurling. One of Filippo's best dinners satisfied the last cravings of their appetites; but for a week they felt the strain of their forty-seven hours in the dory and on the buoy.