Bush had left behind her, in addition to a very fair wake, a considerable portion of petticoat. Our implements were but plain; they consisted of a sail-needle, some blue worsted with which it happened to be threaded, some green flax (throw a copper into the fountain of Trevi if you wish to revisit Rome: if you would come back home to New Zealand, sew a garment with green flax), the mate’s fingers, and every one’s ungrudging advice; but the effect they produced was striking, and it gave us great satisfaction, in spite of the heroine’s scathing “Sure, ’tis a walking piece o’ patchwork wid a bite out of ut I do be lookin’—no offence to ye, Mr. Black, for I know ye done your best!” Finally, we harnessed Floss and Darkie to our kits of peaches, and raced them home to the whaleboat across the soft sand of the beach. That was a very good day.
By the morning following the wind had shifted a point or two, and the skipper decided to put out. The engine was accordingly started, sail set, the anchor hove in, and we had just got beyond our breakwater, and well into the tumble outside, when, at one and the same moment, the wind failed, and our imp of an engine stopped dead.
So there we were, with all that spread of canvas, and our getting-out just as far advanced as to have brought us beyond shelter—helpless, and extremely close to a shore that, of a sudden, had completely lost all charm. It was an anxious moment. “If worrying would help, I would worry,” murmured gentle Mr. Quin, “but it won’t; so I don’t.” Far less “philosophical” were the rest of us, I fear; and the maker of that engine (“Engine? Darning-
