“No more than she is now, Sam. And if ever she should go down, tell the fellows to lash themselves to something or other that’ll float high, and we’ll be right there and maybe pick some of you up----” Sam waved, the last time they were able to see so much as a hand waved ere black night rolled down on them. From the little schooner all hands watched the night out for that spot in the darkness where they conceived the bark to be--that is, those that had time to spare from their work. Occasionally they could catch from her deck a call that they knew to be the voice of Sam with his word of cheer. They saw the attempts to light torches on her, the flash and flare, and then the almost immediate dousing when the sea washed aboard. But fortune attends the brave. She was there in the morning, rolling worse than ever and lower in the water, but still afloat. “Now, ain’t that amazin’?” demanded Crump of one after another of his crew. “Ain’t it amazin’?” he demanded of the captain of the bark. That intriguing party could only shake his head at the miracle of it. “Still afloat! And when I left her I give her about an hour. I set her afire myself with my own hand,” he explained, “so nobody’d be misled into tryin’ to save her. ‘No salvage on _her_,’ I said. ‘Another hour and she’ll be burned to the water’s edge, and then she’ll sink and trouble nobody no more,’ I said. And a good job I thought it was, she was that dangerous-lookin’. And if I’d never set a match to her, she was leakin’ that bad, and that low in the water! And there she is still afloat! Well, that’s past me.” That afternoon, the weather moderating, Crump sailed close up and once more offered to try to take off the worn-out gang of the now wildly sailing bark and put his own fresher men aboard. “What!” exclaimed Sam--“leave her, and after we got her this far? Why we’re gettin’ to love the old hulk. Let’s finish the job, Skipper, so long’s we started it. Another day and we’ll be home.” “Sam Leary, am I skipper, or you?” “Why, of course you’re skipper, and if you order it--_order_ it, Skipper--we got to obey.” “Well, come aboard here.” “How?” “Rig up that taykle--the same that hoisted your gang aboard.” “That taykle parted last night, Skipper, and it can’t be rigged.” If one can imagine an impudent, unshaven, hollow-eyed man in iced-up boots, beard, and oilskins, then it is possible to picture Sam Leary as he leaned against the mizzen-rigging of the wallowing derelict and smiled sweetly at his skipper. And imagine Sam Leary’s skipper, after a lot of spluttering, smiling back, and even at last admitting himself beaten. “All right, go ahead. There’s no gettin’ past you, Sam Leary. Finish your cruise in her.”