bow, and how those small arms did strain on the oars and strive to coax the Relentless into shoal water!

"Give us a sailor's song, Dick," said Jimmy Davis.

"I will, boys, when I get my breath," replied Dick, puffing after his late efforts and wiping the sweat from his brow. "I'll start 'Reuben Ranzo.'"

The boys sang with a will, and their voices made a fine chorus.

"Reuben" had been able to coax the schooner away from her moorings, but he could not win her back.

True to her name, she obstinately drifted on.

"Don't you know anything else?" inquired Dave.

"I know 'Haul the Bow-line.'"

"Give us that, Dick."

"I'll start you on the words, boys,--

'Haul the bow-line, Kitty is my darling;

Haul the bow-line, the bow-line haul.'

Sing and pull, boys."

The boys sang and the boys pulled, and there was a fierce straining on that bow-line; but no soft words about "Kitty" had any effect on the Relentless. It seemed as if this obdurate creature were moved by an ugly jealousy of "Kitty," and drifted on and on.

"It's of no use!" declared Dick. "I move we untie our rope and go ashore and let the old thing go. We have done what we could to get ashore."

He did not say that he had done what he could to get the Relentless adrift, and had fully succeeded. Dave did not twit him with the fact, but he was not ready to abandon the schooner.

Some of the boys murmured regrets about their "things." They did not want to forsake these.

"Well, boys," said Dick, with a boastful air, "I'll get you out of the scrape somehow. We might go on deck again, and hold a council of war and talk the situation over."

Any change was welcomed, and the boys scrambled on deck again. Dick was the last of the climbing column.

"Hand that painter up here and I'll make it fast," said Dave. "Then come up and we will talk matters over."

"Oh!" said Dick, who was half-way up the ladder, "I forgot to bring that rope up."

He descended the ladder and reached out his foot to touch the boat, but he could not find it! When he had left the boat, a minute ago, he gave it unintentionally a parting kick, and--and--alas! The boat was now too far from the schooner's side to be reached by Dick's foot.

"Get something!" he gasped. "Bring a--pole--and--get that boat!"

The boys scattered in every direction to find a--they did not know what, that in some way they might reach after and capture that escaping boat. Their excitement was intense but fruitless. There were now two vessels adrift--a schooner and a dory--serenely floating in the still but strong current, steadily moving seaward, and the moonlight that had been welcomed only revealed to them more plainly the mortifying situation of the party.

"Ridiculous!" exclaimed Dick.

Most of the boys looked very sober. Dave put his hands in his pockets and whistled.

"Well, boys, don't you worry! I'll get you out of this in good fashion yet," cried Dick. "We can't go far to sea, and then the tide will bring us back again in the morning."

"Far to sea!" said Dab mockingly. "There's the lighthouse on the left, and it looks to me as if we should hit the bar!"

The bar! The boys started. At the mouth of the river the sand brought down from the yielding shores would accumulate, and it formed a bar whose size and shape would annually change, but the obstacle itself never disappeared. There it stretched in the navigator's way, seriously narrowing the channel; and of how many catastrophes that "bar" had been the occasion! The breakers above were soft and white, and the sand below was yielding and crumbling; and yet just there how many vessels had been tripped up by that foot of sand thrust out into the harbour! The boys laughed and tried to be jolly, but no one liked the situation. It was a very picturesque scene,--the moonlight silvering the sea, the calmly-moving schooner and boat, that lighthouse like a tall, stately candlestick lifting its quiet light; but, for all that, there was the bar! Either the night-wind was growing very chilly, or the boys shivered for another reason.

"Don't worry, fellows," said Dick, putting as much courage as possible into his voice. "When this old thing hits, you see, we shan't drift right on to the bar, but our anchor will catch somewhere on this side. That will hold us. I can swim, and I'll just drop into the sea and make for the light and get Toby Tolman's boat, and come and bring you off."

He then proceeded to hum "Reuben Ranzo;" but nobody liked to sing it, and Dick executed a solo for this unappreciative audience.

"How--how deep is the water inside the bar?" said chattering Jimmy Davis. He felt the cold night-air, and he shook as if he had an ague fit.

"Pretty deep," solemnly remarked Dab Richards.

The musical hum by the famous soloist, Dick Pray, ceased; only the breakers on the bar made their music.

Dick began to doubt seriously the advisability of dropping into that deep gulf reputed to be inside the bar. It was now not very far to the lighthouse, and the surf on the bar whitened in the moonlight and fell in a hushed, drowsy monotone. People by the shore may be hushed by this lullaby of the ocean, but to those boys there was nothing drowsy in its sound; it was very startling.

"I--I--I--" said Jimmy.

"What is it, Jimmy?" asked Dave.

Jimmy did feel like wishing aloud that he could be at home, but he concluded to say nothing about it. Steadily did the Relentless drift toward that snow-line in the dark sea.

"Almost there!" cried Dave.

"May strike any moment!" shouted Dab.

Yes, nearer, nearer, nearer, came the Relentless to that foaming bar. The boat had already arrived there, and Dave saw it resting quietly on its sandy bed. Did he notice a glistening strip of sand beyond the surf? He had heard some one in Shipton say that at very low tide there was no water on portions of the bar. This fact set him to thinking about his possible action. It now seemed to him as if the distance between the stern of the vessel and the bar could not be more than a hundred feet. The bow of the vessel pointed up river. She was going "stern on." How would it strike--forcibly, easily?