The Boy's Illustration.
Fig. 107.—Pipe and the Pixie.
"I should hate to say how many knots an hour we rated. The Pixie went so fast that my head was kept above water by the swiftness of the motion. She made straight for the island, and upon my word, I believe she would have towed me clear ashore if it hadn't been for an accident. In doubling the edge of a cluster of water lilies my tug struck a snag and capsized. The rope slackened and I had to swim for it. Mrs. Argyroneta dived. Not relishing a second journey to the bottom of the lake, I cut the cable with my knife and clambered on top of a lily leaf. After some trouble I managed to cut the leaf loose, and as the wind and current set in toward the island, I drifted ashore just below here. I had scarcely landed when I met these hearties here, who broke off into the woods at a livelier rate than even my Pixie tug had made. That is the whole of my yarn. And now if you please, give me something to eat for I'm mortal hungry."
"What became of your Pixie?" asked Blythe.
"Never saw her after she dived," returned Pipe. "I reckon she's going yet, for a worse scared creature, barring these three Jacks of ours, of course, I never saw. But, come comrades, here I have been spinning my yarn about my own miserable carcass, and all the time have heard nothing of the fleet. To tell the truth, I've been afraid to ask. But let me know the worst, all of it, while the cooks are getting supper ready."
The story was soon told. The good sailor was glad to find affairs had gone no worse. His joy over the ignoble end of the Pixie monitor was particularly keen.
"Humph!" he said, "just what I thought. A lubberly old pot! And any seaman that would sail in such an affair deserves no better fate than to be sent to the bottom by a dragoon's cutlass."