One bright spring morning, two boys were walking out into the open country, near the little village of Cowes, on the Isle of Wight. Each lad carried under his arm a miniature cutter. It was the day of the great race between the Sea Mew and the Prince Albert, the reputations of which, as winning cruisers, had been earned in many a hard-fought battle on the pond then in sight. A number of boys were already at the shore, and their boats, beating up and down the lake, gave it a very animated appearance. As Ralph and Dick approached, bringing the champion cutters, all the competitors moved to the head of the lake, and soon the signal for the race was given. The Sea Mew and the Prince Albert got off first; then came the smaller boats; while following up the race, some in a skiff and some along shore, the boys shouted and cheered the imaginary skippers of the various crafts, who, it must be confessed, sailed them in a rather curious way. As the Prince Albert rounded the stake on the homestretch, a queer personage came aboard. The boys were allowed to put their crafts about, and Ralph had waded out and was just about to stop his boat, when it came in collision with a floating mass of leaves that threw it up into the wind. From the wrecked leaves nimbly darted the only survivor, a large spider, so alarmed at the catastrophe that it reached the crosstrees of the Prince Albert before it even looked about it. “The Prince has been boarded by a shipwrecked crew!” shouted Ralph, giving the mast a rap that sent the spider to the topmast-head. “Let him stay,” said Dick, picking up the leaves that now floated by. “You ran him down, and now you must take him ashore, or we’ll treat you as they did the man in America who was tarred and feathered and carried in a cart.” So the spider was taken back by the cutter to the starting-point, and it must have brought good luck to the cutter, for the Prince Albert came in ahead and won the “cup,” as the boys called the old-fashioned blue soup-tureen, ornamented with figures of Neptune and dolphins. And within this receptacle the shipwrecked spider was carefully placed after the race was over. “Here’s his craft!” said Dick. “Let’s put it in some water and see if he’ll take to it again.” So the “cup” was filled and the layer of leaves thrown in, when the spider, without a moment’s hesitation, leaped into the water from the side of the tureen—or “cup”—and soon clambered upon the leaves, much to the amusement of the young yachtsmen, who had gathered around to see what it would do. In this manner, Dick and Ralph carried the spider home to Dick’s father, who told the boys, much to their astonishment, that it was a ship-building spider. “Examine the leaves more closely,” he said. “Don’t you find that the bunch has not been accidentally caught together, but that the leaves have been drawn carefully one over another, and fastened together by silken cords, forming a perfect boat?” [Illustration: THE SPIDER AND HIS CRAFT.]