With aching backs, fingers lacerated by frenzied tugging at the jumbled cargo, and perspiration pouring off them, the men toiled at their task without a break all day, and Mr. Quick did not call them off until there was an appreciable difference in the way the boat was riding in the water. The men at the pumps, however, worked in vain. Thousands of gallons of water gushed out of the hold for’ard without raising the bow an inch in the sea. It was evident that a hole of considerable size must have been torn in the side of the vessel, through which the water rushed as fast as the overtaxed muscles of the seamen pumped it out. Everybody on the _Pacific Queen_ was agog with excitement, casting many an anxious glance back at the precious prize. “Quick ain’t giving them men a picnic; no, sir!” Barnes said to Dave. “They’ll be ’most dead by the time we get to port. That mate hasn’t had a proper chance to let off steam in months, and my name isn’t Bill Barnes if he doesn’t enjoy it more’n a big-league baseball game. That man ain’t got no heart. He’s just made up of vinegar and guncotton.” It was true that Mr. Quick was getting the last ounce out of the men, and the pumping went on incessantly. There was always the bare chance that they were lightening the derelict a trifle, and the mate did not like to think of the tremendous strain those bulkheads were standing. Every hour, though, brought them miles nearer Charleston. When night had fallen Barnes stood at the stern of the _Pacific Queen_, surveying the lurching light which alone showed that the stricken craft was still above water. “This is where I quit cookin’ puddin’s for a bunch of sailors,” he said to Dave. “It’s more’n I ever hoped for to come my way, is pickin’ up two hundred feet or so of a steamer without even a canary on board. D’you know what I’m going to do with my share, kid? I’m going to found a home for tired sea-cooks. Yes, sir. That’s what I’m going to do. There’s going to be free grub and things, and no man in there will do a stroke of work. Maybe there’ll be a steward engaged. Yes, sir, I’ve got his duties figgered out right now. When a tired sea-cook is reclinin’ at his ease, with a good cargo of roast beef stowed aboard, running his mind over the days when he had the life plagued out of him afloat, that steward’ll knock at the door soft-like and say it’s time the crew’s dinner was ready. Yes, sir. There’ll only be one man in that home for tired sea-cooks, and that’s me. And do you know what I’ll say to the steward? I’ll tell him to tell the crew to go to Jericho. “Laugh, you little lubber,” he added, glaring at Dave, “or I’ll drop you overboard. What are you going to do with your share, Dave?” The boy thought for a moment. “I’ll pay some one to write a book teaching manners to sea-cooks,” he said, side-stepping just in time to avoid Barnes’s hand.