a small affair, that you could lug around in one hand, but mighty handy
for keeping a boat of that kind dry.

"I fitted one end of my hose to the lower end of that pump and wrapped
rubber tape around the j'int till she sucked when I tried her over the
side. Then I turned on the cocks in the gasoline pipes fore and aft, and
noticed that the carbureter feed cup was chock full. Then I was ready
for business.

"I went for'ard, climbing over the little low cabin that was just big
enough for a man to crawl into, till I reached the brass cap in the deck
over the gasoline-tank. Then I unscrewed the cap, run my hose down into
the tank, and commenced to pump good fourteen-cents-a-gallon gasoline
overboard to beat the cars. 'Twas a thirty-gallon tank, and full up. I
begun to think I'd never get her empty, but I did, finally. I pumped
her dry. Then I screwed the cap on again and went home, taking Allie's
bilge-pump with me, for I couldn't stop to unship the hose. The tide was
coming in fast.

"At nine o'clock that night I was in my skiff, rowing off to where my
power-boat laid in deep water back of the bar. When I reached her I made
the skiff fast astern, lit a lantern, which I put in a locker under a
thwart, and set still in the pitch-dark, smoking and waiting.

"'Twas a long, wearisome wait. There was a no'thwest wind coming up, and
the waves were running pretty choppy on the bar. All I could think of
was that gasoline. Was there enough in the pipes and the feed cup on
that launch to carry her out to where I was? Or was there too much, and
would she make the yacht, after all?