“I guess that settles it,” ruefully observed the second mate, “another Cape Codder, from Hyannis.  Cal’late we’ll stay here for a spell now, hey, Cap’n.”

“For a spell, yes,” replied Nat.  “We’ll stay here until we get another craft to set sail in, and no longer.”

“Another craft?  Another one?  Where in time you goin’ to get her?”

“Build her,” said Captain Nat cheerfully.  Then, pointing to the row of empty houses and the little deserted church, he added, “There’s timber and nails—­yes, and cloth, such as ’tis.  If I can’t build a boat out of them I’ll agree to eat the whole settlement.”

He did not have to eat it, for the boat was built.  It took them six months to build her, and she was a curious-looking vessel when done, but, as the skipper said, “She may not be a clipper, but she’ll sail anywhere, if you give her time enough.”  He had been the guiding spirit of the whole enterprise, planning it, laying the keel, burning buildings, to obtain nails and iron, hewing trees for the largest beams, showing them how to spin ropes from cocoa-nut fiber, improvising sails from the longboat’s canvas pieced out with blankets and odd bits of cloth from the abandoned houses.  Even a strip of carpet from the church floor went into the making of those sails.

At last she was done, but Nat was not satisfied.

“I never commanded a ship where I couldn’t h’ist Yankee colors,” he said, “and, by the everlastin’!  I won’t now.  We’ve got to have a flag.”

So, from an old pair of blue overalls, a white cotton shirt, and the red hangings of the church pulpit, he made a flag and hoisted it to the truck of his queer command.  They provisioned her, gave her a liberal supply of fresh water, and, one morning, she passed through the opening of the lagoon out to the deep blue of the Pacific.  And, hidden in her captain’s stateroom under the head of his bunk, was the ten thousand dollars in gold.  For Nat had sworn to himself, by “the everlasting” and other oaths, to deliver that money to his New York owners safe and, necessary expenses deducted of course, untouched.

For seven weeks the crazy nondescript slopped across the ocean.  Fair winds helped her and, at last, she entered the harbor of Nukahiva, over twelve hundred miles away.  And there—­“Hammond’s luck,” the sailors called it—­was a United States man-of-war lying at anchor, the first American vessel to touch at that little French settlement for five years.  The boat they built was abandoned and the survivors of the Sea Mist were taken on board the man-of-war and carried to Tahiti.

From Tahiti Captain Nat took passage on a French bark for Honolulu.  Here, after a month’s wait, he found opportunity to leave for New York on an American ship, the Stars and Stripes.  And finally, after being away from home for two years, he walked into the office of his New York owners, deposited their gold on a table, and cheerfully observed, “Well, here I am.”