"Scat, you slab-sided gray symbol!" barked Wheezer just then, and the cat scatted with a long leap from the rail of the oil-ship on to Scoot's shoulder, and from there into the hold of the _Happy Day_. "Whatever the Persians thought o' cats, this cat's off her now, Scoot," said Wheezer--"she's sure abandoned now," and went aboard. "It looked hungry passing me," said Scoot, and called down to Billie T. to feed it a little lubricating oil on a shovel. "It's nourishing and fattening," says Scoot, "and we'll keep it aboard. Every seagoing ship should have one for luck." Wheezer reported not another soul aboard the oil-ship; and, under the laws of the sea, that made her ours to do what we pleased with. And we had our own notions of how to work her off the bar. We broke out ten or a dozen barrels of oil and poured them over the troubled waters. Then I belted and bolted Wheezer into his diving-suit, and broke out our steam-drill--left over from the _Weeping Annie_--and Wheezer dropped over and began to bore holes under the bow of the oil-ship. Scoot had never been shipmates with an oil-burner before, and he went below to get acquainted with this one. I was busy wiring charges of dynamite for what we had to do next, so to William T. was left the job of pumping air to Wheezer. Twice Wheezer came up, his cheeks bulging out when I unscrewed his helmet, to ask me to explain to William T. that pumping the air ahead of time and then resting up to wait till that was used up wasn't the way of it--not if Wheezer was to stay alive. Regular and steady, that was the word, said Wheezer. Wheezer got all his holes bored and the dynamite planted in them. This was a lot of dynamite left over when we traded the _Weeping Annie_; we'd kept it in the hold of the _Happy Day_, which was another reason for Scoot to sleep aboard her nights. He said he wasn't going to let her blow up some night and no one on board to prove who did it. When we were all ready on deck, Scoot said he guessed he'd take a chance on her engines. He would not bet on what would happen, but he guaranteed we'd get action of some kind, even if it was no more than a cylinder-head blown through the side of the ship, if we'd only come below and help him out. So we passed him this and that, turned this jigger and that jigger to his orders, and by and by he lights a row of jets and her engines turned all right. "Any time now," says Scoot, and I touched off the dynamite, and what looked like a million cubic yards of mixed stuff comes splattering up from under her bow. William T., who was leaning over the bow to see how it worked, got most of the oil, that being on top. Then I gave Scoot the bells, he backed her engines, and off she came smooth and easy.