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“Oh! How then shall we find it?” inquired Jack.

“By observation,” replied the other. “Keep a sharp look out as you coast along, and you can’t miss it.”

The idea of mists and darkness and storms occurred to Jack Robinson, but he only answered, “Very good.”

“Can any of the three men navigate the sloop?” he inquired.

“Not that I’m aware of,” said Murray; “but you know something of navigation, yourself, don’t you?”

“No! nothing!”

“Pooh! nonsense. Have you never sailed a boat?”

“Yes, occasionally.”

“Well, it’s the same thing. If a squall comes, keep a steady hand on the helm and a sharp eye to wind’ard, and you’re safe as the Bank. If it’s too strong for you, loose the halyards, let the sheets fly, and down with the helm; the easiest thing in the world if you only look alive and don’t get flurried.”

“Very good,” said Jack, and as he said so his pipe went out; so he knocked out the ashes and refilled it.

Next morning our hero rowed away with his three men, and soon discovered the creek of which his friend had spoken. Here he found the sloop, a clumsy “tub” of about twenty tons burden, and here Jack’s troubles began.

The Fairy, as the sloop was named, happened to have been beached during a very high tide. It now lay high and dry in what once had been mud, on the shore of a land-locked bay or pond, under the shadow of some towering pines. The spot looked like an inland lakelet, on the margin of which one might have expected to find a bear or a moose-deer, but certainly not a sloop.

“Oh! ye shall nevair git him off,” said Francois Xavier, one of the three men–a French-Canadian–on beholding the stranded vessel.

“We’ll try,” said Pierre, another of the three men, and a burly half-breed.

“Try!” exclaimed Rollo, the third of the three men–a tall, powerful, ill-favoured man, who was somewhat of a bully, who could not tell where he had been born, and did not know who his father and mother had been, having been forsaken by them in his infancy. “Try? you might as well try to lift a mountain! I’ve a mind to go straight back to Kamenistaquoia and tell Mr Murray that to his face!”

“Have you?” said Jack Robinson, in a quiet, peculiar tone, accompanied by a gaze that had the effect of causing Rollo to look a little confused. “Come along, lads, we’ll begin at once,” he continued, “it will be full tide in an hour or so. Get the tackle ready, Francois; the rest of you set to work, and clear away the stones and rubbish from under her sides.”

Jack threw off his coat, and began to work like a hero–as he was. The others followed his example; and the result was that when the tide rose to its full height the sloop was freed of all the rubbish that had collected round the hull; the block tackle was affixed to the mast; the rope attached to a tree on the opposite side of the creek; and the party were ready to haul. But although they hauled until their sinews cracked, and the large veins of their necks and foreheads swelled almost to bursting, the sloop did not move an inch. The tide began to fall, and in a few minutes that opportunity was gone. There were not many such tides to count on, so Jack applied all his energies and ingenuity to the work. By the time the next tide rose they had felled two large pines, and applied them to the side of the vessel. Two of the party swung at the ends of these; the other two hauled on the block-tackle. This time the sloop moved a little at the full flood; but the moment of hope soon passed, and the end was not yet attained.