sunk in the undertaking; and now, in order to get it back, he must succeed where a well-equipped salvage expedition had failed. Though the wreck had since changed her position, the prospects were not very encouraging.

“Well,” he said, “we must do the best we can; but I wish our funds had run to a better supply of stores.”

“Hank can fish,” grinned Bethune. “In fact, he’ll have to whenever there’s anything to catch. Fortunately, fish is wholesome and sustaining. However, as this job must be finished to-morrow, we had better get to sleep early.”

Jimmy sat smoking for a few minutes after the others went on board the sloop. It was getting dark, but a band of pure green light still glimmered along the crest of the black ridge to the west. The air was cold and very still, and gray wood smoke hung in gauzy wreaths above the roofs of the town. The tall pines were growing blurred, but their keen, sweet fragrance hung about the beach, and the smooth swell lapped with a drowsy murmur upon the shingle.

Jimmy loved the sea; and now he was to go afloat again, in his own vessel, bound by no restrictions except the necessity for making the voyage pay. This would not be easy; but there was a romance about the undertaking that gave it a zest.

 CHAPTER III—THE FURY OF THE SEA

In the evening of the day on which they saw the last of Vancouver Island, Jimmy sat in the Cetacea’s cockpit with a chart of the North Pacific spread out before him on the cabin hatch. It showed the tortuous straits, thickly sprinkled with islands of all sizes, through which they had somehow threaded their way during the last week, in spite of baffling head winds and racing tides, and though Jimmy was a navigator he felt some surprise at their having accomplished the feat without touching bottom. Now he had their course to the north plotted out along the deeply fretted coast of British Columbia, and rolling up the chart he rose to look about.

It was nine o’clock, but the light was clear, and a long, slate-green swell slightly crisped with ripples rolled up out of the south; to the northwest a broad stripe of angry saffron, against which the sea-tops cut, glowed along the horizon; but the east was dim, and steeped in a hard, cold blue. Shadowy mountains were faintly visible high up against the sky; and, below, a few rocky islets rose, blurred by blue haze, out of the heaving sea.

The sloop rolled lazily, her boom groaning 

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