From Brazil our course lay west, but one cannot cross a continent in a sailing boat, as you understand, so we had to skirt South America. That took us south. The wind was fair, the sails rang, the rigging was taut, the bow cut a feather and the water foamed behind the stern. We ran along briskly, covering some two hundred miles in a day, and the crew had very little to do. Lom and Fooks grew terribly lazy, the discipline became lax, and I decided to find them jobs about the boat.
   "Enough idling , Lom," I said. "Have a go at the brass parts. Polish them till they burn!"
   "Aye, aye, sir," said Lom, ground some brick, took a rag and set about polishing.
   I went down to have a nap, but was wakened by Fooks's cries on deck. I jumped up and ran to the companionway. At that moment Fooks clattered down, pale and trembling.
   "Fire on board, Captain!" he cried.
   I shot up on deck, and sure enough the planking was burning in two places, Lom, unconcerned, was squatting by the bulwark and polishing a cleat. Suddenly I saw flames leaping up in that place too.
   I was flabbergasted.
   "Lom!" I yelled. "What do you think you're doing?"
   Lom rose calmly, saluted and reported:
   "I am fulfilling your order, sir-polishing the brass parts until they burn."
   I was about to give him a good bawling out, but I restrained myself. After all it was my own fault. A writer or an actor may permit themselves fancy language, but in seamanship one has to be precise. There must be no ambiguity in your language, for you never know how your command is going to be interpreted. Now Lom was a man in a thousand-industrious, painstaking, conscientious, but he always took your words literally. He was as strong as an ox, too, so you had to watch yourself if you did not want trouble.
   Well, I set about correcting my mistake.
   "Stop polishing the brass! Fire alarm!"
   Fooks rushed to the bell. Lom, according to the fire bill, was to be at the site of the fire, and I to do the steering. Somehow these measures proved ineffective. The flames kept spreading and the sails could be expected to catch on any moment. I saw things were in a bad way, and turned the boat round in the wind's eye. It helped, too. The wind blew the flames off the deck. For a while the flames flapped off like a kind of fiery train and then the train tore off and the fire was out.
Fooks came out of his trance and Lom seemed to have understood that by his excessive zeal he had nearly caused the worst calamity that is known at sea.
   We then reversed the course, changed the charred planking of the deck and without further mishaps rounded Cape Horn, and entered the Pacific Ocean.
   Here we fell on bad times. Near the coast of New Guinea we were overrun by a whopper of a typhoon. The Rage was tossed like a seagull, diving, surfacing, diving again. Mountains of water fell on the deck. The rigging groaned, the mast bent. Well, that's a typhoon for you.
   Suddenly the yacht began spinning in one spot, and then the wind died down completely. Lom and Fooks, ignorant of typhoons' treacherous character, heaved a sigh of relief. But I knew what it meant and my heart sank. We were in the hub of the hurricane and it boded no good.
   And indeed, after a brief lull, the wind again began to howl like a thousand devils. Within seconds the sails split across, the mast bent like a fishing-rod, snapped into two and fell overboard, sails, rigging and all. The Rage had been stripped clean.
   When the ocean's fury abated a little, I took stock of the situation. The damage was great and irreparable. Of course we had spare sails and ropes in our hold, but what's the use of sails if you have no mast? Far from the ocean high roads as we were, we might drift in the middle of the Pacific for years.
   Faced with the prospect of a slow death, I remembered my long life, as one is apt to do in such circumstances, thinking wistfully of my childhood with its innocent games.
   And, believe it or not, this recollection gave me a key to salvation.
   As a boy I was fond of flying kites. Why, I thought jubilantly, a kite is just the thing we want. We used the baskets which contained the gifts we were given in parting to make the kite's frame. Then we boiled some glue, collected all the paper that we had on board-books, newspapers, commercial correspondence and such like - and got down to gluing it all together. We made a first-class kite, take my word for it. I know what I am talking about. Well, when the structure was dry, we selected a long rope, waited till the wind rose and flew it.
   It pulled splendidly. The yacht gathered speed and was again obedient to the helm.
Down in my cabin, I spread a map to choose the nearest port where we could dock for repairs. Suddenly I heard an odd sort of noise, like something was crackling on deck. Alarmed, I ran up the companionway and saw a hair-raising picture: the rope attached to our kite had got caught on the windlass, and the friction had rubbed it so thin it literally held by a thread.
   "All hands on deck!" I yelled.
   Lom and Fooks dashed out on deck and stood there awaiting my orders.
   But I could not think of the right order. What was wanted was a knot. But the wind was strong, the rope taut as a violin string, and there is no tying a string, you know.
   I thought all was up with our new contraption, but here Lom's herculean strength saved the day. He grabbed the rope with one hand and a shackle on the deck with another, strained his biceps and pulled the rope in some.
   "Steady there!" I commanded, "Don't let go under any circumstances!" and began tying a knot.
   But at that moment a squall hit us, the kite gave a mighty tugJ the shackle/was pulled out of the planking like a carrot out of its bed, and Lom soared into the clouds with the last cry of "Aye, aye; sir!"