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 went down into the bottom of the ship, to see how bad the trouble was.

"She's cracked at a flaw in the steel," MacTavish declared, "and it's only a question of how much strain is put on her before she rips right off as clean as a carrot. You 'll have to run at half speed, anyway, Cap'n. If you make Fremantle, you 'll be lucky."

For days after that the Kingfisher crawled westwards, with the engineers nursing her "scrap iron" jealously. She managed to scrape out of the Bight and was already within a few hundred miles of Fremantle when a southerly gale struck her in all its fury.

Suddenly, while the ship was pitching, she shuddered convulsively. There was a grating noise in the engine-room, and then silence.

The propeller-shaft had parted, and they were at the mercy of the sea. The only thing that was of the slightest assistance was a fore-and-aft sail which had been rigged, but the canvas was rotten,