murder some of ye."

"Ay, ay, most gallant skipper," answered Will, with a grin; and then, hitching their trousers as they went, the whole boisterous crowd tumbled down below to examine the interior of the strange home they expected to occupy for the next two weeks.

As soon as they had disappeared, Captain Crotty and Jabez his son, commonly called "young Jabe," a lad of seventeen, who represented the sloop's crew, cast off the mooring-lines, and got their clumsy craft under way.

The Rangers were delighted with the accommodations prepared for them in the hold, which was fitted up with temporary bunks for their use. Each boy made a rush for the bunk that seemed to him most desirable, and scrambled into it to test its comfort as well as to make good his claim by possession.

"But I thought sailors always slept in hammocks," remarked Mif Bowers, in a disappointed tone.

"Oh, pshaw!" replied Abe Cruger. "They're no good, for I tried it at home and nearly broke my neck tumbling out the minute I got to sleep. I expect hammock is only a sailor's name for bed, for no one could really sleep in one; and then, you know, they always call things different at sea. But I say, Will, isn't old Crotty a daisy? And didn't he seem surprised to find us looking so much like regular sailors! What did he mean, though, by the things he told us to do?"

"I don't exactly understand myself," replied the Ranger Captain. "I suppose, though, we've got to try and do them, because it'll be mutiny if we don't."

"And in a mutiny everybody gets hung, don't they?" asked Cracker Bob Jones.

"He said he'd murder us, anyhow, if we didn't keep out of his sight until he got away, though I don't see how we're going to do it," chimed in little Cal Moody, upon whom this threat had made a deep impression.

"That's all right, Cal," laughed Hal Bacon "He won't murder you if he don't see you, so just lie low and you'll be safe. I say, though, I saw a compass in the cabin as we came through. And we might begin work right off by boxing it. I suppose he wants to send it off somewheres. I don't know what he meant by 'backwards,' but I guess upside down will do."

So the boys got the compass and began to make a box for it from some bits of board left over when the bunks were built and what few nails they could pick up. They got an axe out of the "kitchen," as Sam Ray called the galley, and made such a racket pounding with it that young Jabe hurried below to see what was up. The moment he appeared they pounced on him and demanded the bells.

"What ever do you fellers mean?" he queried, at the same time trying to shake himself loose.

"The eight bells that Skipper Crotty said we were to get from his son," they shouted; "and if you don't give 'em to us we'll report you, and you'll be cat-o-nine-tailed for neglect of duty."

"Cat-o-nothing," retorted young Jabe, in a disgusted tone. "You can report all you want to. Same time I'll do some reporting myself; and when the old man hears what you're a-doing to his best compass I rather guess there'll be somebody besides me in danger of the cat."

"He told us to box it."

"We're only obeying orders."

"Guess we know what we're doing."

So shouted the Rangers; and when young Jabe started to report to his father the state of affairs in the hold, they all sprang after him, determined to present their side of the question, and utterly forgetting that they had just decided to keep out of the skipper's sight for a time at least.

The sloop was running dead before a light breeze, with its big mainsail away out on the starboard side, and Captain Crotty was just then doing some very fine steering in trying to clear a sharp bend in the river without gybing. The sudden rush of young Jabe and the excited boys, all shouting at the top of their voices, and bearing down on him with frantic gestures, so startled the skipper that for a single moment his attention was drawn away from the big sail.

"They're stealing the compass!"

"He won't give us the bells!"

As the opposing factions uttered these cries there came a mighty sweep of something over their heads. The next moment young Jabe and Cracker Bob Jones were overboard and struggling in the river, the skipper, Will Rogers, and several more of the Rangers were flung to the deck, and the sloop, left to her own devices, was rounding into the wind with such a slatting of sails, sheets, and blocks, as caused those boys who were still below to imagine that she had been struck by a cyclone. The mainsail had gybed over, and though the boom was, fortunately, so lifted, that it cleared the heads of those who stood on deck, the sheet had tripped them, and flung two of the number overboard.