The thunder of flapping canvas, mingled with the stamping of feet, filled the deck with noise and confusion, above which presently rose trumpet-like the voice of the skipper: “Topsail haul!” More thumping of sails and squealing of blocks, until the main-topsail filled and the brig drew off on the starboard tack. “Shorten sail and heave the brig to, Mr. Jobling,” said the skipper. “Mr. Englefield has some heavy stuff to unload from his canoe; and we shall want a dozen kernel bags.” “Very well, sir,” replied Jobling; and recognising me for the first time, he exclaimed, “How d’ye do, Mr. Englefield?” and then added, “Good Lord! You _are_ an ugly-looking beggar!” The remark, if over candid, was not, I fear, without truth; for as I stood there, naked but for my kilt, emaciated, dirty, with a half-grown beard and a bristly poll, my appearance must have been unprepossessing in the extreme; and perhaps Bob Gummer was less unreasonable than I had at first thought him. As soon as the canvas had been reduced and the brig hove-to, I took a couple of kernel bags and went down the ladder. Throwing back the well cover, I crawled in under the canoe’s deck and dragged a pair of bunches of manillas from the forward part of the cargo into the well; and as I was stuffing them into a bag, the skipper came down the ladder with a rope having a pair of sharp hooks spliced into an eye at the end. “I’ve passed this through a snatch block above,” he explained; “but you had better follow each bag up the ladder, in case of accidents.” I stuck the hooks through the neck of the strong canvas bag and gave the word to hoist, and as the first instalment went up I followed, holding on to it, until it swung in over the rail. The skipper soon reappeared and was evidently greatly excited, for he came scuttling down the ladder, and leaning over the well, exclaimed-- “It’s all right, Englefield, they’re the right stuff. By gum! But you’ve struck it rich this time, and no mistake. It pays to be a lunatic.” I had another bag ready by now, and the skipper convoyed this to the deck, sending down a couple of empty bags on the hooks. So the unloading went on, the skipper’s wonder and delight increasing as bag after bag went aloft. “You ought to see the stuff, my boy,” he chuckled when twenty-four had been trans-shipped. “I’ve stowed it on the lower bunk in the spare berth that you are to have. It’s a sight, I can tell you; reminds me of the Arabian Nights or the vaults of the Bank of England. Are these hooks secure? All right; heave up!” and away went number twenty-five over the rail. The twenty-ninth was a light load with only one bunch in it, and this was the last of the cargo. As it vanished inboard, I drew up the drop-rudder and ascended the ladder. “Is it all out?” asked the Captain, popping up out of the companion like a Jack-in-the-box. “The cargo is all out,” I answered. “There is only the canoe to hoist in.”