“Skipper, be I?  Then right you are!” answered Billy, with a cheerful smile.  “An’ the first order is for you and Master Prosper here to tumble below an’ heft ballast for your lives.  Be the two specimens safe?”

“Eh?” It took my father a second, maybe, to fit this description to Messrs. Badcock and Fett.  “Ah, to be sure!  Yes, I left them safe and unhurt.”

“What’s no good never comes to harm,” said Billy.  “Send ’em on deck, then, and I’ll put ’em on to the pumps.”

We left Billy face to face with a job which indeed looked to be past hope.  The wheel had gone, and with it the binnacle; and where these had stood, from the stump of the broken mizzen-mast right aft to the taffrail, there yawned a mighty hole fringed with splintered deck-planking.  The explosion had gutted after-hold, after-cabin, sail-locker, and laid all bare even to the stern-post. `Twas a marvel the stern itself had not been blown out:  but as a set-off against this mercy—­and the most grievous of all, though as yet we had not discovered it—­we had lost our rudder-head, and the rudder itself hung by a single pintle.

“Nevertheless,” maintained my father, as we toiled together upon the ballast, “I took the only course, and in like circumstances I would venture it again.  The captain very properly thought first of his ship:  but I preferred to think that we were in a hurry.”

“How did you contrive it?” I asked, pausing to ease my back, and listening for a moment to the sound of hatchets on deck.  (They were cutting away the tangle of the mizzen rigging.)

“Very simply,” said he.  “There must have been a dozen hammering on the after-hatch, and I guessed they would have another dozen looking on and offering advice:  so I sent Halliday to fetch a keg of powder, and poured about half of it on the top stair of the companion.  The rest Halliday took and heaped on a sea-chest raised on a couple of tables close under the deck.  We ran up our trains on a couple of planks laid aslant, and touched off at a signal.  There were two explosions, but we timed them so prettily that I believe they went off in one.”

“They did,” said I.

“My wits must have been pretty clear, then—­at the moment.  Afterwards (I don’t mind confessing to you) I lay for some minutes where the explosion flung me.  In my hurry I had overdone the dose.”

We had been shovelling for an hour and more.  Already the ship began to labour heavily, and my father climbed to the deck to observe the alteration in her trim.  He dropped back and picked up his shovel again in a chastened silence.  In fact, deputy-captain Priske (who had just accomplished the ticklish task of securing the rudder and lashing a couple of ropes to its broken head for steering-gear) had ordered him back to work, using language not unmixed with objurgation.