astern on long double painters, and by the time the mate had it hauled in
under the stern, Van Horn was back. He was undeterred by the barbed
wire, lifting boy after boy of the boat's crew over it and dropping them
sprawling into the boat, following himself, as the last, by swinging over
on the spanker boom, and calling his last instructions as the painters
were cast off.

"Get a riding light on deck, Borckman. Keep her hove to. Don't hoist
the mainsail. Clean up the decks and bend the watch tackle on the main
boom."

He took the steering-sweep and encouraged the rowers with:
"Washee-washee, good fella, washee-washee!"--which is the beche-de-mer
for "row hard."

As he steered, he kept flashing the torch on the boat compass so that he
could keep headed north-east by east a quarter east. Then he remembered
that the boat compass, on such course, deviated two whole points from the
_Arangi's_ compass, and altered his own course accordingly.

Occasionally he bade the rowers cease, while he listened and called for
Jerry. He had them row in circles, and work back and forth, up to
windward and down to leeward, over the area of dark sea that he reasoned
must contain the puppy.

"Now you fella boy listen ear belong you," he said, toward the first.
"Maybe one fella boy hear 'm pickaninny dog sing out, I give 'm that
fella boy five fathom calico, two ten sticks tobacco."

At the end of half an hour he was offering "Two ten fathoms calico and