Keep her hove to.

Don't hoist the mainsail.

Clean up the decks and bend the watch tackle on the main boom." He took the steering-sweep and encouraged the rowers with: "Washee-washee, good fella, washee-washee!"-- which is the beche-de-mer for "row hard." As he steered, he kept flashing the torch on the boat compass so that he could keep headed north-east by east a quarter east.

Then he remembered that the boat compass, on such course, deviated two whole points from the _Arangi's_ compass, and altered his own course accordingly.
Occasionally he bade the rowers cease, while he listened and called for Jerry.

He had them row in circles, and work back and forth, up to windward and down to leeward, over the area of dark sea that he reasoned must contain the puppy.
"Now you fella boy listen ear belong you," he said, toward the first.
"Maybe one fella boy hear 'm pickaninny dog sing out, I give 'm that fella boy five fathom calico, two ten sticks tobacco." At the end of half an hour he was offering "Two ten fathoms calico and ten ten sticks tobacco" to the boy who first heard "pickaninny dog sing out." * * * * * Jerry was in bad shape.