Stooping down he slipped the line under the bags of ballast and made a timber-hitch with the end, hauling it well taut.

With the other end he made a bowline round the thwart on which he was sitting, and on which he must sit to pull the bow oar in the evening.

He tied the knot wide enough to admit of its running freely from side to side of the boat, and he stowed the bight between the ballast and the thwart, so that it lay out of sight in the bottom.

The two sacks of pebbles together weighed, perhaps, from a half to three-quarters of a hundredweight.
When all was ready he went ashore and shouted for the Cripple and the Son of the Fool, who at once appeared out of the dusk, and were put on board the sailboat by him.

Then he pulled himself ashore and moored the tub to a ring in the pier.