JACK BOBSTAY SPINNING YARN. 87

the rocks at the mouth of the harbor, and jest above the water was

a strip of white light that made the sea and sky look all the blacker.
Well, bare-headed, I paddled round till I was tired, and the squall
too, and pilot-boat comin’ along, they fished me up and took me
home.”

“Did— did you let the sail go when the squall— squall struck
you—you? That’s the way we do on Concord River,” said Ralph
eager to impart information.

“T did it every time, every time, boy, but you see I was in a bad
place where tide and eddy meet. People joked me when I got back,
about my knowledge of the sea, but I told °em they were welcome to
the laugh as long as I had saved my skin. Things though did not
look so bad as when I was in the Nancy Dee.”

“De Nancy Dee, a woman?” inquired Siah.

“A love-scrape? Massy, boy, I hope not. Jack Bobstay has not
been captured yet. A ship, a ship, I mean, and a wreck, a true one,
a live one.”

“© tell us about that?” pleaded Ralph.

Jack’s “bluelights” twinkled, and he was evidently delighted to
unwind one more yarn.

The boys now crept closer to this magnetic son of the sea who
began the fascinating tale of Jack Bobstay and the Nancy Dee.

“We were nearin’ the coast of England when a fearful storm
struck us. It howled all day and then it blew all night. What
a night that was, black and roarin’, tossin’ and ravin’, and toward
mornin’, we struck! What it was then, we did not know. As it
neared toward day-break, we could make out somewhat where we
were. . We were not far from as ugly and black a set of coast-
rocks as I ever see, and we knew we were on some kind of a
ledge. I’ve been north, south, east, west, but I never see an angrier