After stripping off his water-soaked garments he slipped into a coarse, heavy shirt bearing the hated insignia, a pair of blue trousers, coarse wool socks and heavy shoes. The shoes were too large, but that did not count. “Now,” he sighed, “what next?” It struck him with sudden shock that the next thing might well be a routine visit to the float by an enemy patrol boat. After that he would be “Somewhere in Europe” for the duration of the war. Climbing to the narrow deck, he scanned the sea. A mist had settled down over the water. There was a freshness in the air which suggested impending storm. Here he was. Here he would stay unless—He sat down to think. Ten minutes later he sprang into action. There was a compass in the lower cabin. He studied the wind, then consulted the compass. “O. K.,” he muttered. “If only—” On a shelf he found a hammer and a box of wooden pegs. These, he concluded, would be for stopping up holes made by machine-gun bullets. Taking the hammer, he began examining the floor of the lower cabin on which he stood. The covering was, he discovered, composed of fiber. To rip it up was but the work of minutes. And there—he uttered a sharp exclamation of joy,—there, countersunk in the solid steel keel of this unsailing craft, was a heavy steel nut. “Thought so,” he murmured. He had reasoned that, since this float did not move it must be anchored by a cable or chain. The cable or chain must be fastened by a ring-headed bolt with a nut inside the float. And so it was. Now to remove the nut and let the float go free. He blessed his stars that from early childhood he had monkeyed with tools. A large nut, he had discovered years ago, can be turned off simply by hammering at the corners, thus turning it around little by little, a slow, tedious process, but sure of success in the end. For more than an hour, the empty world of sea and air might have heard the patient tap—tap—tap of a hammer on steel. Now and then he paused to listen. Only the ever-rising song of the wind—welcome sound—greeted his ears. Once he consulted the compass, then climbed to the upper deck to face the wind. After that he resumed his tapping with increased speed. At last, as a sigh escaped his lips, the nut slid to one side. At the same instant a wave larger than all the rest tilted the float half on its side. There came the grating sound of the threaded bolt slipping from its place. Then a thin fountain of water spurted up. “Hurray! Free! We win!” he exulted. “Not bad,” he murmured as, after stopping the hole with a towel, he wrapped himself in a blanket and stretched out for a rest.