Fortunately, the boys and the driver had time to jump out of the "yacht" before the anchor-rope was all "paid out," and so, with the exception of a bad shaking-up and a few bruises, they suffered no injury from their unceremonious disembarking. But the sudden fall had "broken the backbone" of the Slug, as Jack expressed it; and, as if that were not enough, the poor boat, as it hung by the painter, was swung, bumped, knocked, and dragged along, until it was literally reduced to fragments. There was scarcely a residence in all Mud Flat that did not have, long afterward, some satisfactory reminder of the last cruise of the Slug. But all agreed that the old boat had one virtue--it made famous firewood! [Illustration: THE GREAT SPRING-BOARD ACT.--BY THE ENTIRE COMPANY.] WONDERS OF THE ALPHABET. BY HENRY ECKFORD FIFTH PAPER In tracing back our letters, we now have reached Chalkis, where the Phoenicians under Kadmus taught the Greeks their letters. A funny thing occurred to the wise men who ferreted out all these facts. They could read Greek, and they could read Hebrew, and the strange likeness between many of the names for the letters in the two languages made it certain that in some way they were related or connected. But what meant those letters on rocks, metal vases, and earthenware jars that we now call Phoenician? Single letters looked like Greek letters distorted; but the words would not read as Greek. Nor would they read as Hebrew, although the characters appeared to have some connection with Hebrew. Greek is written like our writing, from left to right; but Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian are written from right to left. So, in those languages a book begins where our books end. It was found, too, that the Hebrew writing now in use is very different externally from that used by David and Solomon, although the names and general shape of the letters are the same. Have you ever seen a Hebrew Bible? The alphabet in which the Old Testament was originally written looked very different from that which the Jews now use in their Bibles; it was much nearer the Phoenician in appearance. For a long time it never dawned on men's minds that perhaps the Phoenician way of writing, from right to left, was not followed by the Greeks; but at last they remembered that in very early times the lines of Greek writing were made to read alternately from right to left and from left to right. Such inscriptions were called _boustrephédon_ ("turning like oxen in plowing"), because the letters had to be read as the oxen move from furrow to furrow in the field that they plow, first one way, then the other. That gave the needed clew.