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The Missing Merchantman

by Harry Collingwood · English · Gutenberg #21063 · 619,867 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Missing Merchantman

Author: Harry Collingwood

Illustrator: William Heysham Overend


        
Release date: April 13, 2007 [eBook #21063]
                Most recently updated: December 4, 2013

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21063

Credits: Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MISSING MERCHANTMAN ***




Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Missing Merchantman

By Harry Collingwood
________________________________________________________________________
Harry Collingwood is a superlatively good writer of books about the sea
because he was himself a working designer of ships, and a shipwright.
This makes his style extremely authoritative.

In this book the crew of a vessel, meaning in this case the deckhands,
got it into their heads that the captain and officers of merchant
vessels were paid far too much, and that ordinary deckhands ought to be
paid on the same scale.  In other hands they had been "robbed of fair
wages" for hundreds of years.  They quite forgot the education and skill
that goes into the training of an officer, as well as the taking of
responsibility.  So they take the ship, making themselves essentially
into pirates.  The officers and passengers, being resourceful people,
manage somehow to work their way out of this predicament, and eventually
to bring their ship back home, where she had been posted as "Missing"
for some considerable time.

As always with this author the book makes an excellent audiobook.
________________________________________________________________________
THE MISSING MERCHANTMAN

BY HARRY COLLINGWOOD



CHAPTER ONE.

INTRODUCTORY.

This story opens on a glorious day about the middle of July; and
Weymouth, with its charming bay, was looking its very best.  A gentle
southerly breeze was blowing; the air was clear--just warm enough to
render a dip in the sea the quintessence of luxury--and so laden with
ozone and the wholesome scent of the sea that to breathe it was like
imbibing a draught of _elixir vitae_.  The east land was in itself a
picture as it stretched across the horizon in front of the town, its
lofty chalk-cliffs and swelling downs, the latter dotted here and there
with a solitary farm-house or a clump of trees, gleaming softly through
the clear transparent atmosphere in a thousand varied hues of green, and
creamy white, and ruddy neutral, which gradually merged into a series of
delicate pearly-greys as the eye followed the bold outline to where
Saint Alban's Head sloped down into the azure sea.  The noble bay,
gently ruffled by the morning breeze, shimmered and sparkled brilliantly
in the strong unclouded sunlight, its rippling wavelets chasing each
other shoreward in long lines until they plashed with a soothing murmur
into mimic breakers upon the broad, smooth, firm expanse of sand,
whereon happy children were disporting themselves, bare-footed, with
boat, and spade, and bucket, to their innocent hearts' content.

The proprietors of the bathing-vans were doing an excellent business,
their lumbering vehicles jolting noisily down into the water with
scarcely a moment's intermission.  The band, drawn up in front of the
hideous statue to George the Fourth, which so greatly disfigures the
town, was discoursing, fairly well, a selection of good music; a long
line of chairs on the sands was fully occupied by loungers, mostly
ladies, reading, or amusing themselves by watching the antics of the
thronging children; the broad promenade was crowded with people on
pleasure bent.  Light skiffs and neat well-appointed sailing boats were
darting hither and thither along the surface of the glancing waters; and
farther out, at a distance of about a mile from the shore, some half-a-
dozen or more yachts of various rigs and tonnage were lying at anchor,
with their club burgees gaily fluttering in the breeze, and most of them
with mainsail hoisted, or with other preparations actively going forward
toward getting under weigh for a day's cruise.

The delightful little watering-place, it has been said, was looking its
best; or at least this was the opinion expressed by a young man who,
accompanied by his father and sister, walked up the esplanade on that
particular morning, on his way to the railway-station _en route_ for
London by the ten o'clock South-Western express--his luggage having
preceded him on a hand-truck.

As the young man happens to be the hero of the present story, it may not
be amiss to describe him somewhat particularly.

Edward Damerell, then--for that was his name--was, at the date of our
introduction to him, within a month of reaching his nineteenth year; and
he had hoped to spend his birthday at home with his father and sister,
the only relatives he possessed on earth, but circumstances had ordered
it otherwise.  He stood just five feet seven inches in his stockings;
was as stout-built and shapely a youth as one need wish to see, though
it was evident that he had not yet attained his full growth; his frank,
handsome, albeit sunburnt face was lighted up by a pair of keen, honest
grey eyes and crowned by a close-cut crop of crisp, curly, flaxen hair--
a good-tempered, pleasant-looking fellow enough, true as steel, brave as
true, and, having been already three years at sea, as smart a seaman as
ever trod a plank.

His father was his exact counterpart, with the comparatively trifling
difference that he was not quite so tall as Ned; was broader in the
beam, and, as of course might be expected, much older-looking, though
the appearance of age was due principally to the grey with which his
hair and bushy whiskers (which latter appendages, by the by, Ned was
still without) was thickly dashed; the old gentleman's eye being as keen
and bright as his son's, and his step almost as springy.

Edward Damerell, senior, it may be as well to mention, was a naval
lieutenant, retired upon half-pay.  He had seen a great deal of service
in his youth, principally on the West Coast of Africa and in the China
seas, and had been fairly fortunate in the matter of acquiring prize-
money--to which circumstance he was indebted for the exceedingly
comfortable little cottage on the hill overlooking Newton's Cove, which
he had inhabited for some twenty-five years, having purchased and
settled down in it upon his marriage and retirement from the service.

His daughter Eva was a beautiful girl, as good as she was beautiful, and
the very apple of her father's eye--which is all that need be said of
her, as she plays no part in the events which it is the purpose of this
narrative to chronicle.

Young Edward Damerell, born and brought up within sight and sound of the
sea, early manifested a natural desire to tread in his father's
footsteps by following the same profession.  To this the old gentleman
made no very serious objection, but he would not hear of his son
entering the navy.  The service, he insisted, had been ruined by the
introduction of steam and armour-plates.  Moreover, he had discovered,
to his cost, that without money and influence, and plenty of both, a man
stood but little chance, in these piping times of peace, of making any
great amount of headway up the ratlins of promotion.  "So," said he, "if
Ned chooses to go to sea, he will have to enter the merchant service,
where good seamen are still, and always will be, required."

And this Ned did under the most advantageous circumstances, as
"midshipman-apprentice" on board an Australian clipper belonging to the
"Bruce" line, in which employ he was duly serving his time--very
creditably, indeed, to himself and to the officers who had the training
of him, if the report of the skipper, Captain Blyth, was to be believed.
And he was now, on this particular morning, leaving home once more,
after a month's leave, to join a brand-new steel-built clipper called
the _Flying Cloud_, the latest addition to the "Bruce" fleet, of which
ship Captain Blyth had been given the command.

As the lad arrived opposite King Street, the point where he would have
to turn off and leave the esplanade and the "front," as the inhabitants
term it, he paused a moment, looked longingly to right and left of him
at the long terraces of neat houses facing the sea, at the "Nothe" on
the opposite side of the harbour, at the sands, the bay, and the long
stretch of bold coast to the northward and eastward, and sighed
regretfully at the thought that he was about to leave the place once
more for so long a time.  He was enthusiastically attached to his
profession--as every lad must be if he would make his way in the world--
but he was also attached to the place of his birth, and infinitely more
was he attached to his father and sister; and though he was too manly to
express sorrow at his departure, the feeling was there and would not be
altogether ignored.  It was, therefore, with but an indifferently
successful assumption of cheerfulness that he exclaimed:

"Well, good-bye, old town!  Who knows how many weary leagues I shall
have to travel, and through what hardships and perils I may have to
pass, before I tread your streets again!"

And, linking his arms in those of his father and sister, he crossed the
road and passed down the street to the railway-station.

Poor Ned! when he spoke so lightly he little knew that the words had so
prophetic a meaning.

In due course he arrived in London, and, chartering a cab, made the best
of his way to his new ship, which was taking in cargo in the London
Docks.  On arriving alongside his first act was naturally to give a
scrutinising look at the craft and to mentally compare her with the
_Bride of Abydos_, his former ship; and much as he thought of the
latter, he was almost reluctantly compelled to admit that the _Flying
Cloud_ greatly excelled her in every point most highly prized by a
seaman.  She was the very latest exponent of the shipbuilder's art, and
of the success which has attended the efforts of the naval architect to
combine, in the highest degree, a large carrying capacity with perfect
sea-going powers and super-excellence in point of speed.  She was just a
nice, comfortable, handy size--twelve hundred tons register--steel-
built, and of exceptional strength, classed 100 A1 at Lloyd's; a beamy
rather than a deep vessel, with very fine ends.  And an innovation had
been introduced in her construction in the shape of a pair of deep
bilge-keels, which her designer asserted would not only very greatly
modify her rolling, but would also cause her to hang to windward like a
yacht.  She was an exceptionally pretty model, with a full poop, and was
full-rigged, her stability being most satisfactorily demonstrated by the
fact that her skysail-yards were aloft and crossed notwithstanding the
circumstance that she had only just begun to receive her cargo.  She was
painted grey, with a broad white riband and painted ports, her top-sides
being black.  She carried a very handsome, well-executed carving of a
woman, with long, streaming hair and fluttering drapery, under her
bowsprit, by way of figurehead; and Ned noted with deep satisfaction,
that instead of the double topsail-yards now so common in large ships,
she was fitted with single revolving yards for patent reefing topsails.

He was interrupted in the midst of his admiring scrutiny by a hail from
Mr Bryce, the chief-mate, who, after a somewhat off-hand welcome,
informed him that he was wanted to assist in receiving and taking
account of the cargo, which was coming down too rapidly to be dealt with
by one man.  Stowing away his "dunnage," therefore, in the after deck-
house, and flinging his bedding into the berth which he selected for his
own occupation, he quickly rejoined the mate, who furnished him with
book and pencil, and stationed him at the after hatchway to take account
of everything which passed down that receptacle.

As soon as the work of the day was over and the hatches had been put on
and secured, Ned made his way to Captain Blyth's lodgings, and reported
himself as having returned to duty.

He had observed, with some surprise, that the stevedores had left a
large vacant space in the centre of the main hatchway, and at the very
bottom of the ship; and he had once or twice wondered, during the course
of the afternoon, what could be the nature of the cargo for which this
space was being reserved.  That it must be something heavy he knew, from
the fact that the bottom of the hold had been selected for its stowage.
The secret, however (if secret there was), came out next morning, when
several very heavy cases of peculiar shape were brought alongside; which
cases turned out to contain twelve steel 14-pounder breech-loading
rifled field-pieces, with mountings, etcetera, complete, and several
hundred rifles, sword-bayonets, etcetera, for the use of the colonial
volunteers.  The nature and destination of the contents were legibly
enough set forth in stencilled lettering on the outside of the cases,
and they very naturally attracted a considerable amount of curiosity as
they were carefully hoisted out of the trucks and lowered into the
ship's hold.  Among the onlookers Ned soon noticed a swarthy-
complexioned man, who wore gold rings in his ears, and was dressed in a
very natty suit of dark blue cloth--evidently a seaman in shore-going
togs--who manifested quite an unusual amount of interest in the cases
and their handling, and who finally climbed into the trucks and lent a
hand in the slinging of them, exhibiting in the performance of his self-
imposed task a very considerable amount of smartness and seamanlike
dexterity.  And when the cases were all at length safely deposited in
their destined place on the dunnage in the bottom of the hold, the man
was observed narrowly scrutinising the ship herself--hull, spars, and
rigging--with just that appearance of intelligent and appreciative
interest which a smart seaman would be likely to bestow upon so handsome
and well-appointed a craft as was the _Flying Cloud_.

The cargo came alongside with very satisfactory rapidity, and on the
morning of the eighth day from that on which Ned joined, hopes were
entertained that the evening would see the loading of the ship completed
and the hatches put on for good and all.  The swarthy-complexioned man
had been seen on the quay alongside two or three times since the loading
of the guns.  He had evidently taken a fancy to the ship; and Ned was
therefore by no means surprised when, on the morning in question, he
again appeared, and, seeing Captain Blyth on the poop, stepped on board,
and approaching the skipper asked if the crew had all been shipped.
They had not, as it happened; so, after a short conversation, which
seemed to give complete satisfaction to both parties concerned, the man
was instructed to present himself at noon that day at the shipping
office to sign articles.

"Rather a smart fellow, that," observed the skipper to the chief-mate,
as the man swung himself lightly on to the rail and stepped thence
ashore.  "I'm very glad to have fallen in with him; he is an A.B., and
has been twice round the Horn, so he ought to know his business.  And he
tells me that there are five other men, former shipmates of his, and
good, smart, active, willing men, staying at the same boarding-house
with himself, who, he believes, will be willing to ship with us for the
voyage; so I hope we shall have a good crew."

Mr Bryce assented, and dutifully echoed the skipper's wish; but it was
with a tone and manner which seemed to indicate that he did not feel
very greatly interested in the matter; and Captain Blyth, when he went
ashore shortly afterwards, felt more than ever sorry that his former
mates were not to be with him on the forthcoming voyage.  For, it must
be explained, the late chief-mate of the _Bride of Abydos_ had been
promoted to the post of master of that ship--or _captain_, as the
masters of merchant ships like to be called--and the second-mate had met
with an accident, and was lying disabled in an hospital.  However, it
could not be helped, and Captain Blyth was obliged to content himself
with the hope that Mr Bryce--who had come to him with a very good
recommendation--would turn out to be a better chief-mate than, at the
moment, seemed likely.

The _Flying Cloud's_ crew were shipped that day, and they comprised a
second-mate, a steward, a cook, a carpenter, a sailmaker, a boatswain
and boatswain's-mate, eight A.B.'s (or able seamen), including the
swarthy man--whose name, by the way, was entered upon the articles as
Joshua Williams--and his five shipmates, and ten ordinary seamen.
These, with the captain, chief-mate, and four midshipmen-apprentices,
made up a crew of thirty-one, all told; which, exclusive of the captain,
cook, steward, carpenter, and sailmaker, neither of whom kept watch,
made up a crew of thirteen hands in a watch, none too many for a full-
rigged ship of the size of the _Flying Cloud_, with such a spread of
canvas as she could show to the breeze.

During the afternoon Ned made a little journey up into the Minories, to
the studio of a clever marine artist to whom he had given a commission
to paint the portrait of the ship; and when he reached the place he was
much gratified to find that not only was the picture finished, but also
that it was a capital representation of the _Flying Cloud_ as she would
appear at sea under all plain sail upon a taut bowline.  Her ensign was
shown flying from the peak; the house-flag--a large square white flag,
with blue border, blue Saint Andrew's cross, and a large letter B in red
in the centre--floated from the main-skysail-mast-head, and her number
from the mizen, in response to a signal from another ship seen in the
distance.  It was a very spirited picture, and as Ned paid down its
price, and gave instructions for its immediate despatch to his father's
address, he felt that the money had been well laid out.

The hatches were put on, and, with the exception of the after-hatch,
battened down that evening; and, whilst this was being done, Captain
Blyth made his appearance on board, accompanied by a friend, a certain
Captain Spence, who had been invited to take a farewell glass of wine in
the _Flying Cloud's_ saloon.  Captain Spence was in command of a very
fine ship, named the _Southern Cross_, some two hundred tons larger than
the _Flying Cloud_.  She also was in the Australian trade; and though
the two ships belonged to rival lines, and there was intense emulation
between the skippers of the "Bruce" and the "Constellation" clippers,
Captains Blyth and Spence were old and sincere friends, and the rivalry
between them was all in good part.  They had long been secretly anxious
to have a fair race together; but hitherto circumstances had been
against them.  Now, however, their opportunity had come, for the
_Southern Cross_ had also been loading in the London docks for
Melbourne, the port to which the _Flying Cloud_ was bound, and, like the
latter, was to haul out of dock with the morrow's tide; and the two
skippers had each made a bet of a new hat that his own ship would make
the passage from Gravesend to Port Phillip Heads in a less number of
hours than the other, which bet was now to be ratified over their
parting glass of wine.  The _Southern Cross_, however, would get the
start by about one day, as the _Flying Cloud_ was to call at Tilbury
Fort to take on board a quantity of ammunition for the guns and rifles
which she was carrying out, and Captain Spence was cherishing an inward
hope that a fine easterly breeze which had been blowing for some days
would carry him well down channel and then chop round from the southward
in good time to baffle his old friend during the passage of the _Flying
Cloud_ through the Downs.  A somewhat curious and amusing characteristic
of the friendly rivalry between the skippers was that, whilst each
implicitly believed in his own ship, he affected a faith in the superior
qualities of the other, and framed his remarks accordingly.  So when the
little farewell chat and the parting bottle of wine had come to an end,
and Captain Spence rose to go, he held out his hand with:

"Well, good-bye, Blyth, and a pleasant passage to you.  You will catch
us somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Line, I expect, if not before;
and, should the weather be fine, I hope you will come on board and dine
with me, and make the acquaintance of my passengers, who, I assure you,
seem to be very capital people."

"Thank you very much," was the response; "but you know very well that
this poor little ship has no chance whatever with such a spanking craft
as the _Southern Cross_.  Look how deep we are in the water; and we
don't even know our proper trim.  Then, too, the glass seems inclined to
drop a little, which probably means that the wind is going to haul round
from the southward, which, with the twenty-four hours' start you will
have, will carry you down channel nicely enough, whilst we shall be hung
up in the Downs.  So that, altogether, I consider you ought to reach
Melbourne about eight days, at least, ahead of us, which will give you
ample time to tell them that we are coming."

And so, with mutual protestations of disbelief in each other's
prognostications, the rival skippers laughingly shook hands and parted.

On the following morning the two ships hauled out of dock, the _Southern
Cross_ leading, and proceeded down the river in tow, the one anchoring
off Gravesend to take her passengers on board, whilst the other went
alongside the wharf at Tilbury Fort.  The ammunition was all ready for
shipment, as it happened; and, securely packed in copper-lined cases,
was that same afternoon carefully stowed on top of all in the after
hatchway, whence, if necessary, it could be easily and quickly removed
and launched overboard in case of an outbreak of fire.  The _Southern
Cross_, meanwhile, with her tug hanging on to her, had only paused long
enough to allow of her captain going on shore and fetching off her
passengers, when she had proceeded.  The _Flying Cloud_, on the other
hand, having now completed her cargo, and battened down everything,
shifted her berth and anchored off Gravesend pier; but, as it had not
been expected that she would receive quite such quick despatch at
Tilbury, the passengers would not be on board until the following
morning, so there was no alternative but to wait for them.  In the
meantime there was plenty for the crew to do in getting the decks
cleaned up and everything made ship-shape; and this task was so
satisfactorily performed, under the supervision of the mates, that
Captain Blyth's spirits rose, and he began to hope that he had secured
not only a good crew, but good officers as well.  He was also
particularly pleased to notice that the steerage passengers--twelve in
number, all men, who had joined the ship in the docks on the preceding
evening--though a rough-looking lot, were scarcely as bad as they
looked, evincing a distinct inclination to make themselves useful and to
assist the crew as much as possible.

On the following morning, directly after breakfast, Captain Blyth
proceeded on shore in his gig to look up his passengers; and about ten
o'clock they were seen approaching the ship, a shore-boat being in
attendance with the trunks, portmanteaux, etcetera, which contained
their immediate necessaries (the bulk of their luggage having been sent
on board whilst the ship was in dock).  Upon this, the windlass was at
once manned, the cable hove short, and the tug signalled to come
alongside and take the tow-rope.  These preparations were still actively
in progress when the two boats pulled alongside the ship; and by the
time that the passengers had reached the decks and their luggage had
been passed up, the tug had received the tow-rope and had passed ahead,
and the anchor was reported ready for tripping.  The shore-boat was then
discharged, the gig hoisted up, the windlass was again manned, the
paddles of the tug began to revolve, the anchor was broken out of the
ground, and the long voyage had at length actually commenced.

The saloon passengers were seven in number (quite a pleasant little
family party, Captain Blyth averred), and they consisted of a Doctor and
Mrs Henderson, with their daughter, Lucille, aged six; Miss Sibylla
Stanhope, Mrs Henderson's sister; Mr and Mrs Gaunt, and their son,
Percy, aged seven.

Dr Henderson was a medical man who, notwithstanding his undoubted
ability, had found it difficult to establish a satisfactory practice in
England, and was therefore going to try his fortune in the southern
hemisphere, taking his family and his wife's orphan sister with him; and
Mr Gaunt was a civil engineer on his way to the colony to take up a
lucrative professional appointment.  They were both clever, quiet,
unassuming men, very gentlemanly in manner, but with nothing
particularly striking in their appearance; the kind of men, in fact, of
whom it is impossible to predict whether they will, in case of
emergency, turn out to be heroes or mere useless incumbrances.

The ladies were very much more interesting.  Mrs Henderson was a very
handsome, dark-eyed young matron of medium height, and a temper as
perfect as her form; in short, a very charming person altogether.  Miss
Stanhope bore a very marked resemblance to her sister, except that she
was much younger, being barely eighteen years of age; but there were not
wanting indications that her charms would one day even surpass those of
the lovely Mrs Henderson Mrs Gaunt was a _petite_ blonde, very pretty
and engaging, and an excellent foil to Mrs Henderson, the two ladies
being of exactly opposite types of beauty.  Of the children no more need
be said than that they were light-hearted, joyous, and just well-behaved
enough to show that their parents did not intend to spoil them if it
could possibly be helped.

The first act of the saloon passengers, on reaching the deck, was to
inquire for their respective cabins, of which they at once took
possession, and forthwith set about arranging in such manner as they
judged would prove most convenient during the long journey they had
before them.  The trunks uncorded, and the heavier work done, the
gentlemen had it gently insinuated to them by their fair partners that
they were rather in the way than otherwise; and they accordingly
adjourned to the poop with the youngsters, where, over a cigar, they
soon made acquaintance with each other and with the ship's officers.  By
luncheon-time they had mutually arrived at the conclusion that they were
likely to get on exceedingly well together, that the captain was a
capital fellow, the mates but so-so, the midshipmen very gentlemanly
lads, and the ship everything that could be wished; and that, on the
whole, they were justified in expecting the passage to be as pleasant as
it was likely to prove long.  The ladies, meanwhile, had been busy
below, and had found time not only to convert their somewhat cramped
quarters into perfect bowers of comfort and convenience, but also to
follow the gentlemen's example, by cultivating mutually friendly
relations; so that when the little party sat down to luncheon they felt
almost as much at home with each other as though they had been
acquainted for the best part of their lives, instead of for a few hours
only.



CHAPTER TWO.

ON BOARD THE "FLYING CLOUD."

The weather was gloriously fine; much too fine, indeed, to suit Captain
Blyth, for, as he and his friend Captain Spence had foreseen, the
easterly breeze which had prevailed for so long had at length died
completely away, leaving the surface of the river as smooth as a sheet
of polished silver.  The air had grown much warmer, a sure precursor of
a southerly wind; and the ladies had, in consequence, changed their
dresses immediately after luncheon, discarding the woollen fabrics in
which they had embarked and substituting for them dainty costumes of
cool, light, flimsy material, arrayed in which they established
themselves for the afternoon on the poop.

It was somewhat late that night when the _Flying Cloud_ rounded the
North Foreland; and, as Captain Blyth had feared, the little breeze
which had sprung up with the setting of the sun was all out from the
southward.  There was, however, a capital moon, almost full; the tide,
too, was in their favour.  So, instead of anchoring in the Downs until
next day, as had been his first intention, he determined to keep on; and
all sail was accordingly made upon the ship as soon as the tug had cast
off the tow-rope.  A stretch was made across the channel towards the
French coast, in the direction of Gravelines; and great was the
satisfaction of all hands when they found that the ship, on a taut
bowline, and with only wind enough to heel her some six inches under
every stitch of plain sail they could set upon her, was slipping along
through the water at the rate of fully five knots, and that, too, so
cleanly that the ripple under the bows was inaudible to the men on the
forecastle unless they put their heads over the side and listened for
it, whilst scarcely a whirl or a bubble was to be seen in the long
smooth wake which she left behind her.

The breeze continued scant all night, notwithstanding which the _Flying
Cloud_ was, at eight o'clock next morning, as close to the French coast
as Captain Blyth cared to take her, and she was accordingly hove about,
the wind so far favouring her that it was confidently hoped she would
weather Beachy Head and so pass out clear of everything.  With the
rising of the sun the wind gave promise of freshening, which promise was
so far fulfilled that by noon the ship was skimming along at a pace of
over nine knots an hour, she being at the time just abreast of Calais.
The breeze still increasing, and the tide being again in their favour,
Cape Grisnez was passed little more than an hour later; and then,
running out from under the lee of the land, the swell of the channel
almost immediately began to make itself felt.  The full strength of the
wind at the same time also became apparent, and the ship, now heeling
over sufficiently to send the water spouting up through the scupper-
holes with every lee-roll, increased her pace to a fair, honest ten
knots, steering "full and by."  Captain Blyth was simply enchanted with
the performance of his new command, feeling fully convinced (though he
did not yet venture to give utterance to his conviction) that in her,
that hitherto invincible clipper, the _Southern Cross_, would at length
assuredly find she had met her match.  By three o'clock Dungeness was
broad on the lee-bow; by four o'clock it was fairly abaft the beam; and
when the passengers went on deck after dinner they found the ship in the
act of weathering Beachy, though without very much room to spare, the
wind evincing an inclination to veer round from the westward.  At eight
o'clock next morning, when Ned came on deck to keep the forenoon watch,
he saw that he was on familiar ground, the ship being about midway
between Saint Catherine's Point and Saint Alban's Head, the high land at
the east end of the Isle of Wight looming like a white cloud on the
horizon astern, or rather on the starboard quarter, whilst Saint Alban's
gleamed brilliantly in the bright sunlight on the starboard bow.  The
ship was still close-hauled on the larboard tack and going about six
knots, the wind having headed her somewhat during the night and fallen
lighter.  The weather was magnificent, and everybody was in capital
spirits.  Captain Blyth was pleased because, though the ship was not
just then travelling at any great speed, he had at all events got half-
way down the channel; the passengers were pleased because they were
having such a splendid view of the coast--with the prospect of getting a
still better view later on in the day, as Ned informed them--and most
pleased of all was Ned himself, because he not only looked forward to
getting one more glimpse of dear old Weymouth itself, but also hoped to
be able to make his near vicinity known to his father.

Noon found the _Flying Cloud_ abreast of Saint Alban's Head and within
half a mile of the shore; and, this bold promontory once rounded, all
hands found themselves face to face with that magnificent panorama of
rolling downs, smiling valleys, tiny strips of snow-white beach, and
lofty precipitous chalk-cliffs, which help to make the scenery of
Weymouth Bay one of the fairest prospects within the boundaries of the
British island.

The ship was reaching right down along the coast at a distance of little
more than two miles from the shore, and though it was now his watch
below, Ned undertook to point out the various objects of interest as
they crept into view, such as Warbarrow Bay, with Lulworth Castle
nestling among its surrounding trees; Lulworth Cove, with its bold,
rocky entrance; the noble natural archway of Durdle Door; the curious
Burning Cliff, and so on; and when they were off the latter he made bold
to ask Captain Blyth's permission to hoist the ship's colours,
explaining that he would like his father to see the vessel and to know
that he was so near at hand.  Ned was a very great favourite with the
skipper; moreover, the latter and Ned's father were old friends.  The
cheery answer given to this request, therefore, was:

"Yes, certainly, my lad; show our bunting by all means.  We shall then
be reported as having passed, and the owners will be glad to learn that
we have crept so far on our way."

Armed with this permission Ned lost no time in getting out the flags and
hoisting them exactly as they were represented in the picture he had
sent to his father, and which he knew must be in the old gentleman's
possession by this time.

That afternoon old Mr Damerell and his daughter were, according to
their usual custom, on the Nothe, Eva with a piece of dainty embroidery
work wherewith to amuse herself, and her father with his somewhat
ancient but trusty telescope, without which, indeed, he was scarcely
ever seen out of doors.  They had hardly reached the old gentleman's
favourite point of look-out when his quick eye detected the ship
reaching down along the east land, and even before he had adjusted the
telescope he had a presentiment that she might be the _Flying Cloud_.
He had received a hastily-scribbled line or two from Ned--forwarded by
means of the shore-boat, which had taken off the passengers' luggage at
Gravesend--which had made him acquainted with the day and hour of the
ship's sailing; and his long experience and intimate acquaintance with
the navigation of the Channel, aided by his habitual observation of the
weather, enabled him to follow the subsequent movements of the _Flying
Cloud_ almost as unerringly as though his eye had been on her the whole
time.  In one particular only had his calculations been inaccurate, and
that was in the _speed_ of the ship; he had not reckoned on her being
either so fast or so weatherly as she had proved to be, and his
reckoning located her as being at that moment within sight of but to the
eastward of the Wight.  When, however, he saw a large ship, loaded, and
evidently by the course she was steering, bound out of the channel, and
when he further noted the clean, white, new appearance of the stranger's
canvas, the peculiar painting of her hull, and the very marked
similarity of appearance which she bore to the picture at that moment
hanging in the place of honour on the walls of his snug little parlour,
he was quite prepared to admit a possible error in his calculations
sufficient to account for the appearance of the ship where she actually
was; and when he saw the colours hoisted, he had, of course, no further
doubt upon the matter.  The ship, it is true, was heading so obliquely
towards him that he could only see the house-flag at her main-skysail-
mast-head; but that was quite sufficient.  The broad snow-white field,
the blue border and cross, and the large red B in the centre, were
plainly distinguishable through his telescope; and turning to his
daughter he said, with just a faint tremor of excitement in his voice:

"Eva, do you see that ship reaching down under the east land, yonder?"

"The one you have been watching so intently, father?  Yes, I see her,"
was the reply.  "What a noble object she looks, with her white canvas
gleaming in the sun!  It is not often that we see such large ships as
that so close in with the land, is it?  I wonder where she is going!"

"She is bound to Melbourne.  She is called the _Flying Cloud_, and she
has a young gentleman named Edward Damerell on board her, who, I'll be
bound, is at this moment intently looking in this direction," answered
the old gentleman decisively.

"Oh, father, you can't mean it!" exclaimed the young lady impetuously,
though she knew very well that her father _did_ mean it.  "Pray let us
make haste down to the boat and go out to meet him."

Her father looked irresolute, took another glance at the ship, then
shook his head sorrowfully.

"It would be of no use, my dear," he said.  "Before we could reach the
boat and get her under weigh yonder ship will have tacked, and fast as
the _Eva_ is she would never catch her in this light breeze.  No; we
must be satisfied to remain here and see as much of the _Flying Cloud_
as we can.  Perhaps when the ship goes about we may even succeed in
catching a glimpse of dear Ned himself through the glass."

At this moment the loud clanging of a bell, which was being rung
somewhere down in the harbour, smote noisily upon their ears.

"The very thing!" exclaimed Eva, starting eagerly to her feet.  "Come,
father, we have not a moment to lose!  That is the first bell.  The
_Victoria_ is to make an excursion to the Bill this afternoon, and if we
go on the trip we shall surely pass not very far from Ned's ship."

"Capital!" exclaimed the old man cheerily.  "Come along, my girl; we are
neither of us rigged exactly in a style suited to our mingling with
swells; but never mind, we shall both pass muster, I dare say, and,
whether or no, we have no time to shift our canvas."

And away went the pair, without more ado, making the best of their way
toward the steps which lead down the side of the hill to the quay,
whence they took a boat across the harbour, the second bell from the
steamer admonishing them that they had no time to spare.  They reached
the pay-gate in good time, however, took their tickets, and ascended to
the hurricane-deck just as the captain of the boat climbed to his own
private bridge.  The last bell rang, a few belated excursionists came
rushing breathlessly down, and whilst they were scrambling for their
tickets the _Flying Cloud_, now within two miles of the town, was seen
to tack.  The laggards hurried on board, the gang-plank was drawn
ashore, the ropes were cast off, the engines made a revolution or two
astern to cant the steamer's head toward the centre of the harbour, and
then away the excursion party went, the band on board at the same moment
striking up a lively tune.

By the time that the _Victoria_ had reached the harbour's mouth Mr
Damerell was able to see that they had started at exactly the right
time.  The _Flying Cloud_--a beautiful sight, as she now appeared
broadside-on to them, reaching across the bay, with the afternoon sun
gleaming brilliantly upon her immense spread of canvas--was slipping
along through the water at a speed of about six knots, and it was
apparent she would pass the breakwater-end at about the same moment as
the _Victoria_.  But the excursion steamer's usual course was through
the opening in the breakwater, and not out round its end; and if she now
took that direction the trip would be spoiled, so far, at least, as Mr
Damerell and his daughter were concerned.  The old gentleman looked
round, and saw that Captain Cosens, the veteran commodore of the little
pleasure fleet, was in command, and to him he determined to make his
wishes known.  The captain was talking to some of his lady passengers
when Mr Damerell approached him, but looked up at once and spoke on
recognising an old friend.

"Good-morning, Mr Damerell," said he.  "What fair wind blows you on
board the _Victoria_?  It is not often that you favour us with your
company.  A noble vessel that, isn't she?" indicating the _Flying
Cloud_.  "I take it she is an Australian liner."

"Yes," said Mr Damerell, "that is the _Flying Cloud_, my son's ship,
you know, Captain--"

"What! your son aboard?" interrupted the commodore.  "Starboard, Tom,
starboard a bit, boy! and pass as close to leeward of that ship as you
safely can.  It's not often we have the opportunity to treat our
passengers to a sight of a clipper under all plain sail, so, as the
water is smooth, and we can do so with safety, we will do it to-day; it
will be something of a novelty for them.  And perhaps," he added, his
kindly grey eyes beaming sympathetically, "you may be able to get
another glimpse of Ned as we pass.  Come upon my bridge, Mr Damerell,
you will see better, and he will see you all the quicker too."

The ship and the steamer now rapidly approached each other; and soon
after passing the breakwater-end, the latter shot across the stern of
the former and ranged up on her lee quarter.  The word to "ease her" was
passed below into the _Victoria's_ engine-room; and Mr Damerell and Eva
had the opportunity of not only seeing, but also of exchanging a few
words with Ned, who had soon espied them on the steamer's bridge, and
had placed himself in the mizen-rigging for the purpose.  The pleasure
party on board the steamer were meanwhile thoroughly enjoying the
unwonted sight which the _Flying Cloud_ presented, with her ponderous
but shapely hull, lavishly adorned with gilding at the bow and stern;
her clean, well-ordered decks resplendent with glittering brass-work,
and polished teak and mahogany fittings; her handsome boats, fresh
painted, with the house-flag emblazoned on their bows, and canvas covers
neatly lashed over them from gunwale to gunwale; the lofty masts, the
orderly but intricate maze of standing and running-rigging; and the
towering spread of canvas which seemed to reach almost to the clouds.
Many of them had never in their lives before seen a ship of any size
under her canvas and fairly at sea; and now they were brought into close
proximity with one which was not only "a clipper," but, as the affable
captain of the steamer explained to his numerous questioners, one of the
finest, if not the largest, of that class of vessels afloat.  The little
group of passengers on the poop, seemingly so thoroughly comfortable and
so completely at home, naturally attracted a considerable amount of
attention, the children especially; and one enthusiastic lady on board
the steamer was so completely carried away by the influences of the
moment, that she tossed to little Percy Gaunt a basket of freshly-
gathered flowers which she happened to have with her, which the little
fellow deftly caught, and with a laughing "Thank you very much!" at once
handed to his mother.  Then, the brief conversation between father and
son being brought to an end, the signal for "full speed" was given, and
the steamer drew ahead, the band on board playing "A life on the ocean
wave," and the vessels separated with much waving of hats and
handkerchiefs on both sides.  The steamer was of course the first to
reach the Bill, the _Flying Cloud_ being partially becalmed under the
high land of Portland; and when the pleasure party again passed her, it
was at a distance of about a mile, the ship steering a course which
would take her well clear of the Shambles shoal.

"Bill," said Captain Cosens, when the two vessels were again abreast,
"jump aft, my lad, and dip the ensign!"

The ensign was dipped three times, the salutation being promptly
responded to by the clipper; and then her colours were hauled down as,
catching a freshening breeze, she gracefully inclined to it, and swept
grandly out to seaward.

Such was Mr Damerell's last farewell to his son, on this eventful
occasion at least.  Poor old gentleman! well was it for him that he so
little dreamed of what that son was destined to pass through before they
two again should meet!  Little, as they lost sight of her, did the
light-hearted throng on board the _Victoria_ guess at the horrors of
which that noble ship was to be the theatre.

On clearing the Bill of Portland, and once more getting the true breeze,
it was found by those on board the _Flying Cloud_ that the wind had
veered some points further to the westward, and was now almost dead in
the teeth of their course down channel.  There was a red-hot ebb tide
running, however, which was so much in their favour, and Captain Blyth
held on upon the same tack, pushing out toward mid-channel so as to get
the full benefit of it.  The ship was heading well up to windward of the
Channel Islands, so that she was not doing at all badly; and the wind
having veered so far, the skipper was in hopes it would veer still
further, and so give him a favourable slant down channel after his next
reach in for the land.  Nor was he disappointed; for tacking at six
o'clock to avoid the flood, which he knew would soon be making, he found
himself, at ten o'clock that night, some four miles to the westward of
Beer Head, the wind heading him more and more as he drew in with the
land.  On again tacking, it was found that the ship was heading well up
for the Start, which was passed about four bells in the morning watch;
when, feeling themselves at length safe for a fair run out of the
channel, the ship's departure was taken, together with a small pull upon
the weather braces.  A course was given the helmsman which would carry
the ship well clear of Cape Finisterre, and away went the _Flying Cloud_
to the southward and westward, reeling eleven knots off the log with all
three skysails set.  By three o'clock in the afternoon, Captain Blyth's
reckoning placed the ship off Ushant.  They now began to feel the
regular Atlantic roll, and shortly afterwards the wind, continuing to
veer, worked round so far to the northward of west, that they were not
only enabled to get another good pull upon the weather braces, but also
to set studding-sails on the starboard side, when away went the ship
plunging and rolling across the Bay of Biscay at a pace which amply
justified her name, and sent all hands into ecstasies of delight.  And
the climax of their happiness was reached when, just about sunset, a
large steamer, which had been in sight ahead since noon, was
triumphantly overhauled and passed, though she, like themselves, was
under all the canvas she could show.  Captain Blyth was simply in a
beatitude of bliss; he walked the poop to and fro, rubbing his hands
gleefully, chuckling, and audibly murmuring little congratulatory
ejaculations to himself, fragments of which--such as--"new hat--astonish
that fellow Spence above a trifle, I flatter myself--reach the Heads a
clear week before him," etcetera etcetera--Ned Damerell caught from time
to time as the skipper trotted past him.

In the forecastle, too, there was great jubilation that evening.  Jack
dearly loves a speedy ship; and now that they had had an exemplification
of what the _Flying Cloud_ really _could_ do when she had a fair chance,
all hands were fully agreed that she was by far the fastest ship they
had ever sailed in.

Williams, the man who had assisted at the loading of the guns on board,
was especially enthusiastic upon the subject.

"My eyes! mates, what a pirate-ship this craft would make!" he
ejaculated when at length all hands' catalogue of praises seemed to be
about exhausted.  "Why, if she was mine I'd make my fortune--ay, and
that of all hands belonging to her in less than six months!"

This remark produced a general laugh.  "Why, Josh, bo! you don't mean to
say as how you'd go piratin' if so be as this here pretty little ship
was yourn, do you?" asked Tim Parsons, a great burly, bushy-whiskered
seaman, who was seated on a sea-chest on the opposite side of the
forecastle.

"Why--no, I don't perhaps exactly mean _that_," was the reply.  "And
yet--I don't know--why shouldn't I?  There's worse trades than pirating,
let me tell you, boys?"

"Ay, ay?  Is there?  I should like to hear you name a few of 'em,"
objected Parsons.

"Well, then," said Williams, warming to the subject, "to go no further
than this identical fo'c's'le where we're now sitting, I mean to say
that the trade of sailor-men like ourselves is a precious sight worse.
We're hard worked, badly fed, badly paid--not, mind you, that I'm
finding fault with the treatment we're getting aboard here--far from
it--the grub's good enough for anybody; and, as to work--well, we
haven't seen much of that yet.  But this I _will_ say, I don't like the
looks of either of the mates, and as for the skipper, why, he's a good
enough man, but this ship is going to spoil him.  Now you mark my words
if she don't--he's just finding out that he's got a flyer under him, and
what will be the consequence?  Why, he'll be everlastingly carrying on,
driving the ship all she'll bear, carrying on to the very last minute,
and then it'll be `all hands shorten sail' to save the spars, instead of
handing his canvas in good time, by which means the watch could do all
the work.  Now, you wait a bit, mates, and you'll see I'm right."

There were several melancholy shakes of the head at this, indicative of
a belief on the part of the shakers that these prognostications would
prove only too true.

"But what's all this got to do with piratin'?" persisted Parsons.

"Oh--well--why, everything," returned Williams.  "Here we are, as I was
saying, hard worked, badly fed, and badly paid; whilst if we was the
crew of a pirate clipper we should have nothing to do but trim sails, we
should live upon the fat of the land, and in six months, if our cruise
was a lucky one, we could chuck up the sea and live like princes ashore
for the rest of our days."

Parsons burst into a hearty laugh.

"Why, Williams," he said, "I wouldn't ha' believed you was such a
greenhorn.  You can't _mean_ what you're sayin', shipmate.  I don't
suppose you've ever been a pirate, and I'm precious certain I never
have--or I don't believe we should either of us be sittin' in this here
snug fo'c's'le to-night--so I reckon neither of us knows very much about
the business.  But anybody, not a born fool, must understand without
much tellin' that a pirate's life wouldn't be worth havin'.  As to work,
he'd have to work just as hard as any of us, with the chance of bein'
shot at a minute's notice by the skipper or either of the mates, if he
didn't happen to do his work just exactly to their likin'.  Then he'd be
in constant dread of bein' overhauled by a man-o'-war, and mayhap strung
up to the yard-arm; he daresn't venture into a civilised port, to save
his life.  And then, what about the murders he has to commit?  Faugh! no
piratin' for me, thank 'ee."

"Nobody's wanting you, Tim Parsons, or anybody else, to go pirating" was
the rejoinder.  "I was only talking about the thing in a general sort of
a way.  But, though, as you say, I never was a pirate myself, I happen
to know that the trade ain't quite such a bad one as you'd make out
after all.  First and foremost, there's no occasion for murdering at
all.  `Dead men tell no tales,' we know; but there's ways of stopping
the telling of tales without cutting men's throats.  There's islands
enough scattered about here and there quite out of the regular tracks of
ships, the natives of which don't see the colour of canvas once in a
lifetime; what's to prevent a pirate-ship landing her prisoners there?
They'd have a jolly enough life of it in such a place, and be out of
harm's way.  Then, as to work, I should keep just enough prisoners
aboard to do all the rough, dirty work, and let my regular crew have
easy times of it.  And with such a ship as this, for instance, what need
to be afraid of a man-o'-war, even if there weren't a dozen ways of
bamboozling the `gold-buttons,' which there are.  Then, as to going into
port--that's easy enough managed by a man with a good head-piece on his
shoulders; and, as I was saying, a lucky six months' cruise, and your
fortune's made.  Then, what do you do?  Why, you watches your chance,
scuttles your ship some fine night when the weather's favourable, and
goes ashore with your swag, as a castaway seaman whose ship has sprung a
leak and foundered.  Pooh! don't tell me.  The thing could be easy
enough done."

"Then, I s'pose you're one o' those chaps who wouldn't mind layin' hands
on other people's goods?" quietly inquired Parsons.

"Ah!  I see you've misunderstood me altogether, or you wouldn't ask such
a question as that, shipmate," replied Williams.  "No--if you mean by
`laying my hands on other people's goods,' would I go to any of your
chests and help myself--I would not.  I'm not a thief; I'm as honest as
ever a man here.  You've got nothing in any of your chests, I reckon,
but what I call _necessaries_--things a man needs and has a right to
have.  But--it may seem a strange thing to say, mates, yet it's what I
think--no man has a right to more than he needs of anything whilst other
people have to go short.  Why, for example, should some people have more
cash than they know how to spend--and that, too, without working for
it--whilst we poor sailor-men have to strive night and day, in fair
weather and foul, just to keep soul and body from parting company?  I
say it ain't fair; things ain't evenly divided, as they should be.
We've just as much right to ride about in a carriage as any of them
swells ashore--we're just as good men as they are--and if I had the
chance I'd think I was doing no wrong to help myself to a little of
their spare cash to make myself comfortable with.  That's what _I_ think
about it."

"Ay, ay," muttered one or two, "that sounds fair enough when you come to
overhaul the thing in all its bearings."

Others maintained silence; they instinctively recognised the falsity of
Williams' logic though their intellects were not acute enough to enable
them to put their fingers on the weak spot.  Others, again, shook their
heads dissentingly.  But Parsons, the irrepressible, after looking at
Williams in blank surprise for a moment or two, broke out in a tone of
mingled contempt and raillery:

"There, there, you've said enough, man; and now you'd better clap a
stopper over all.  You're an uncommon smart man, Williams,--I won't deny
it--almost _too_ smart, it seems to me,--and you've just been talking
like this to give us an idee, as it were, of your smartness.  You argufy
like a lawyer, shipmate, there's no mistake about that; but you can't
persuade me that you believe a single word of what you've been sayin'.
Why, man, if you hadn't already proved yourself to be the primest seaman
and the most willing hand aboard this here dandy little hooker I'm blest
if I shouldn't almost be inclined to believe you was a Socialist.  Pah!"
and he spat contemptuously on the floor of the forecastle.

"There goes eight bells," he continued, "and on deck we goes, the
starboard watch.  Whose wheel is it?"



CHAPTER THREE.

THE PLOTTER AT HIS WORK.

The little forecastle conclave made their way out on deck without
waiting for the formality of a call; and, there happening to be no sail-
trimming to attend to, and every prospect of a fine night, they made
themselves as comfortable as circumstances would permit under the
shelter of the bulwarks and elsewhere, excepting, of course, the man
whose trick at the wheel it was and the look-out, the latter of whom
stationed himself on the topgallant-forecastle, to windward, whilst the
former went aft.  The men broke up into little knots, some to smoke,
some to chat, and some to snatch a cat-nap--if they could elude the
vigilance of the second-mate, which they had already discovered was no
very difficult achievement.  The two apprentices in the watch were
keeping a look-out in the waist, the one to windward and the other to
leeward.

Williams and another man, named Rogers, lighted their pipes and settled
themselves on the lee side of the deck, just forward of the fore-
rigging, where they maintained a sort of perfunctory look-out on the
lee-bow whilst smoking and chatting.

"I say, Josh," began Rogers, in a low tone of voice, "don't you think
you pitched matters just a trifle too strong in the fo'c's'le just now?
Seems to me, mate, that you spoke out plainer than was altogether wise
by way of a starter.  If 't had been me, now, I should ha' felt my way a
bit; talked more in a general sort of a way, you know.  I tell you it
fairly took my breath away to hear you rap out about piratin' right off
the reel.  I'm afraid that chap Parsons 'll get suspicious next time any
thing's said."

"Yes," Williams admitted, "I did overrun my ground-tackle a trifle; no
mistake about that.  Parsons sort of provoked me into it.  But don't you
trouble; it'll give the thing a start, and set the hands talking
together; and as for Parsons, you'll see I'll put everything right next
time we have a yarn together.  He called me `smart,' and he's right; I'm
a precious sight smarter than he gives me credit for being, 'cute as he
is.  And there's no harm done; I could see that I've given some of 'em a
new idea or two to overhaul and think about.  I think that, even now, I
could name three or four in our watch who'll prove all right when the
time comes."

There was a great deal more said in the same strain which need not be
repeated; the pith of the conversation has been given, and will suffice
to suggest to the intelligent reader the idea that, even thus early in
her first voyage, there was something radically wrong on board the
_Flying Cloud_.

To the superficial eye, however, everything seemed to point to a
prosperous voyage.  The wind continued slowly but steadily to haul round
from the northward, and by nine o'clock in the evening of the fifth day
out the good ship, with a breeze at about due north and fresh enough to
necessitate the stowing of all three skysails, was off Cape Finisterre
and bowling along upon her course with studding, sails, from the royals
down, set to windward, and reeling off her knots in a manner which
caused the mates to stare incredulously at the line every time they hove
the log.

As for the little party of passengers in the saloon, they were
delighted--charmed with each other, with the captain, with the
midshipmen, with the crew--who seemed to them an exceptionally smart and
steady set of men--with the ship, and with the weather; with everything
and every body, in fact, but the two mates, who both proved to be very
disagreeable men.  There had not been a single symptom of _mal de mer_
among them, though the motion had been pretty lively during the passage
across the Bay of Biscay; and by this time they had thoroughly settled
down and become almost as perfectly at home in the ship as though they
had been born on salt water.  The gentlemen chatted, smoked, walked the
poop, and played chess together, romped with the children, or read aloud
to the ladies whilst they reclined in their deck-chairs and pretended to
work, and otherwise made themselves generally useful.  This was the
usual disposition of their day from about nine a.m. to about eight
o'clock p.m., the married ladies very frequently joining in their
husbands' post-prandial promenade on the poop until the latter hour,
when, the air getting cool, the whole party would adjourn to the saloon,
and, Dr and Mrs Henderson producing their violins and Mr Gaunt his
flute, Mrs Gaunt or Miss Stanhope would open the piano which formed
part of the saloon furniture, and the sounds of a very capital chamber
concert would float out upon the evening air, to the great delectation
of Captain Blyth, the officer of the watch, the helmsman, and--in a
lesser degree, because less perfectly heard by them--the watch clustered
forward on the forecastle-head.

In this quiet, methodical way life went on with the occupants of the
saloon for some time; but at length ambition entered into and seized
upon the imagination of Miss Stanhope, and she determined to learn to
steer.  Hour after hour had she watched the helmsmen standing in more or
less graceful attitudes at the wheel, with their sinewy hands upon the
spokes, now drawing them gently toward them a few inches only to push
them as far away again a minute or two later.  It looked ridiculously
easy; yet there was grandeur in the thought that, by these simple,
effortless movements, the destiny of the ship and all within her was to
a large extent controlled.  There was something almost sublime, to her
imagination, in the ability to "guide the furrowing keel on its way
along the trackless deep," as she expressed it to herself; and she
determined she would learn how to do it.

At length, making her way up on the poop one glorious evening after
dinner--the ship being at the time about in the latitude of Madeira, and
close-hauled on the starboard tack, with a nice little eight-knot breeze
blowing, and everything set that would draw, from the skysail down, and
with the water as smooth as it ever is under such circumstances--she
descried Ned standing aft at the wheel, with his left arm resting on its
rim, his right hand lightly grasping a spoke at arm's-length, and his
eye on the weather leach of the main-skysail, as he softly hummed to
himself the air of a song she had sung a night or two before; and the
young lady at once arrived at the conclusion that this afforded an
excellent opportunity for her to take her first lesson.  So she walked
aft, and opened the negotiations by saying:

"Good evening, Ned."  (Everybody on board, fore and aft, called the lad
Ned; so she naturally did the same.)

"Good evening, Miss Stanhope," replied Ned, straightening himself up and
doffing his cap with a sweep which would not have disgraced a--a--well,
let us say, a Frenchman; "what splendid weather we are having!  Here is
another glorious evening, with every prospect of the breeze lasting, and
perhaps freshening a bit when the sun goes down.  If it only holds for
forty-eight hours longer I hope it will run us fairly into the trades."

"I hope it will, I am sure," said Miss Stanhope, "if `running fairly
into the trades' is going to do us any good.  I presume you are
referring to the trade _winds_, about which Captain Blyth has been
talking during dinner."

"Precisely," acknowledged Ned.

"Could you not _tie_ that wheel, and sit down comfortably, instead of
standing there holding it as you are doing?" inquired Sibylla, by way of
leading up gradually to the proposal she intended to make.

Ned laughed.  "It _looks_ as though one might as well do so," he said.
"But you've no idea how capricious a ship is.  I've not moved the wheel
for the last ten minutes, and look how straight our wake is.  Yet, if I
were to lash this wheel exactly as it is now, it would not be half a
minute before the ship would be shooting up into the wind."

"How very curious!" remarked Sibylla.  "And yet, so long as you hold the
wheel the ship goes perfectly straight.  How do you account for that?"

"I watch her," answered Ned, "and the moment I detect a disposition to
deviate from the right course I check her with a movement of the wheel.
The slightest touch is sufficient in such fine weather as we are having
at present."

"I see," remarked the young lady.  "The ship is as obedient to her guide
as a well-trained child.  And it seems easy enough to guide her.  I
believe I could do it myself."

"Certainly you could.  Would you like to try?" said Ned, who at length
fancied he could see the drift of his fair interlocutor's remarks.

"I should very much," answered Miss Stanhope.  "But I did not like to
ask, fearing that such a request would be a transgression against
nautical etiquette."

"By no means," said Ned.  "Captain Blyth is one of the most gallant of
men; he would never dream of opposing so very reasonable a desire on the
part of a lady--at least, not _now_, when no possible harm can come of
it.  If you will take my place on this raised grating, I shall be
delighted to initiate you into the art.  _This_ side, please--the
helmsman always stands on the weather side.  That is right.  Now grasp
this spoke with your left hand, and this with your right, so--that is
precisely the right attitude.  Now, you feel a slight tremor in the
wheel, do you not?  That indicates that the water is pressing gently
against the rudder--the ship carries a small weather-helm, as a well-
modelled and properly rigged ship should--and if you were to release the
wheel it would move a spoke or two to the right, and the ship would run
up into the wind.  Now, at present we are steering `full and by,' which
means that we are to steer as near the wind as possible, and at the same
time to keep all the sails full.  You see that small sail right at the
top of all on the mainmast?  That is the main-skysail.  It is braced a
shade less fore and aft than the other sails; so if you keep it full you
will be certain to also have all the rest of the canvas full.  Now you
will observe an occasional gentle flapping movement of the weather leach
of that sail--the _edge_ of it, I mean.  That indicates that the sail is
just full and no more; and you must keep your eye on that weather leach
and maintain just precisely that gentle flapping movement.  If it
ceases, the sail is unnecessarily full, and you are not keeping a good
`luff,' and you must turn the wheel a shade to the right; if it
increases, you are sailing rather too near the wind, and must press the
wheel a trifle to the left.  Do you understand me?"

"I think so," answered Sibylla, compressing her lips, grasping the
spokes tightly, and concentrating her whole attention upon the weather
leach of the skysail.

She proved an apt pupil; and though for the first ten minutes or so the
course of the ship was a trifle erratic, and steering in a straight line
proved to be not quite so simple and easy a matter as she had deemed it,
Miss Sibylla soon caught the knack, and at the end of half an hour the
_Flying Cloud_ was making as straight a wake again as though the best
helmsman in the ship had her in hand.

"Why, this is _splendid_!" exclaimed Ned.  "You are evidently a born
helmsman--or _helmswoman_, rather--Miss Stanhope.  Permit me to
congratulate you on your success.  Not a man in the ship could do better
than you are now doing.  I foresee that, before long, whenever any extra
fine steering has to be done, we shall have to request you to take the
wheel."

"Thank you; that is a very neatly turned compliment," remarked Sibylla.
"But I am afraid I do not wholly deserve it.  For the last five minutes
I have been steering, not by the little sail up there, as you told me,
but by that small dark object right ahead.  It is so much easier--"

"Small dark object! where away?" interrupted Ned.  "Ah!  I see it.  Sail
ho! right ahead Mr Bryce," he reported to the chief-mate.

The mate, who was sitting smoking on a hen-coop, to leeward, close to
the break of the poop, rose slowly to his feet, walked to the weather
side of the deck, and, shading his eyes with his hand, looked ahead, but
was apparently unable to see anything.

"There she is, just over the weather cat-head!" exclaimed Ned, as he
placed himself in line with the mate.

"All right!  I see her," responded the mate, as he at length caught
sight of the small purple-grey spot on the south-western horizon, and he
sauntered back to his seat.

At this moment Captain Blyth made his appearance on the poop.  "Did I
hear a sail reported ahead, Mr Bryce?" he asked, as he reached the
poop.

"Very likely.  There _is_ one," answered the mate, without offering to
point her out.

Captain Blyth looked annoyed at this boorishness of speech and conduct,
but it was habitual with the mate--he apparently knew no better--the
skipper was becoming accustomed to it by this time, and, without
noticing it, he walked aft and said:

"Where is she, Ned?"

Ned pointed her out.

"Ah, yes," said the skipper.  "Is she coming this way, think you?"

"I should fancy not, sir," answered Ned.  "It was Miss Stanhope who
first sighted her; she has been steering by her for fully five minutes;
and had yonder ship been coming this way I think we should see her more
distinctly by this time than we do."

"I'll bet any money that it's the _Southern Cross_!" exclaimed the
skipper with animation.  "Get your glass, Ned, my boy, and slip up as
far as the fore royal-yard, and see what you can make of her.  I'll stay
here, meanwhile, and see that Miss Stanhope doesn't run away with the
ship."

And as Ned hurried away to execute his errand, Captain Blyth turned to
Sibylla and laughingly began to banter her upon her new accomplishment.

Active as a cat, Ned soon reached the royal-yard, upon which he
composedly seated himself, preparatory to bringing his telescope to bear
upon the stranger.  A little manoeuvring sufficed him to find her; but
she was so far away--quite fifteen miles--that he could make out nothing
beyond the fact that she was apparently a ship of about the same size as
the _Flying Cloud_.  He remained on his elevated perch watching her for
fully a quarter of an hour, a period long enough to satisfy him that
both ships were standing in the same direction, and then he descended.

"Well; what do you make of her?" demanded the skipper, as the lad joined
him on the poop.

Ned stated fully all that he had seen and all that he surmised--for a
sailor is often able to shrewdly guess at a great deal when he sees but
little; and when he had replied to the somewhat severe cross-examination
to which he was subjected, Captain Blyth reiterated his former opinion:

"It is the _Southern Cross_, for a cool hundred!  Mr Bryce"--to the
mate--"be good enough to muster the watch, sir, and see if you cannot
get those sails to set something less like so many bags than they are at
present."

There had been a pretty heavy shower earlier on in the evening, which
had sensibly stretched the new canvas, and now that it was again dry it
hung from the spars and stays, as the skipper had said, "like so many
bags"--a terrible eye-sore to a smart seaman--yet the mate had
apparently not noticed it; or, at all events, had made no attempt to
have the matter rectified.

Mr Bryce made no reply; but, rising nonchalantly from his seat, he went
slowly down the poop ladder and sauntered into the waist, where he came
to a halt, and shouted:

"For'ard, there! lay aft here, all hands, and take a pull upon these
sheets and halliards, will ye!"

"Confound the fellow!" muttered Captain Blyth.  "I told him to muster
_the watch_; and he must needs set all hands to work."

The men moved aft, very deliberately, clearly in no amiable mood at
being given such a job in the second dog-watch, and began upon the main
tack and sheet, gradually working their way upward, and from thence
forward.

"What did I say, mates?" commented Williams, as they slowly brought the
canvas into better trim.  "This is the `old man's' work--this swigging
away upon sheets and halliards just upon night-fall; and there he is
upon the poop looking as black as thunder, because, I suppose, we're not
more lively over the job.  And what's it all for?  Why, simply because
that young sprig, Ned, happens to sight a sail ahead of us; and because
we happen to be a smart ship the skipper won't be satisfied until we've
overhauled her.  This is just the beginning of it; it'll be like this
every time we happen to see anything ahead; you mark my words."

"D'ye twig the new helmsman?" laughed another, jerking his head aft to
direct attention to Sibylla, who still held the wheel.

"Ay, ay, mate; we see her," answered Williams, who seemed to think
himself called upon to play the part of spokesman.  "We see her; and a
pretty creature she is.  But do you think, mates, she'll ever give any
of _us_ a spell when it's our trick?  Not she!  It's all very well when
it's a smart young sprig of an apprentice--or midshipman, as they call
themselves--that she can laugh and talk with; but it's a different
matter with us poor shell-backs.  The swells won't have anything to say
to _its_."

"Now, you're wrong there, Josh, old shipmate, as I can testify," spoke
up Jack Simpson, a smart young A.B.  "Mrs Henderson and Mrs Gaunt has
both spoke to me; and it was only a night or two ago that, when it was
my wheel, Mr Gaunt gived me a cigar; and a precious good one it was
too, I can tell ye."

"Ay; and I suppose when he handed it to you he made you feel as if you
was a dog that he was giving a bone to; didn't he?" said Williams.

"No, he didn't; not by a long ways," answered Jack.  "He looked and
spoke like a thorough-bred gentleman; but he was as perlite and civil as
ever a man could be."

"Civil!" grunted Rogers.  "Well, I don't make no account of that; it's
his business to be civil.  He's what they calls a civil engineer; though
hang me if I know what an engineer wants aboard of a sailing ship."

"How come _you_ to know he's a civil engineer?" demanded another man.

"Because, d'ye see, mate," replied Rogers, "I was one of the hands as
was told off to pass the dunnage up when the passengers came alongside;
and I read on one of the boxes `Mr William Gaunt, C.E.'  The mate saw
it, too; and he says to the skipper, as was standin' close alongside of
him, says he:--

"`Mr William Gaunt, C.E.'--what does C.E. stand for?  And the skipper,
he says: `What, don't you know?  Why, C.E. stands for Civil Engineer,
which is the gentleman's purfession,' says he.  And that's how I come to
know it, matey."

"Well, civil or not civil, I maintain he ain't a bit better than any of
us," insisted Williams; "and I want to know by what right he or anybody
else is to be allowed to give themselves airs over the likes of us.  Can
he do anything that any of us can't do?  Answer me that if you can," he
demanded defiantly.

"Ay, that can he, my lad," spoke up Parsons, promptly.  "Why, he's one
of them people that builds railroads and bridges and harbours, and the
likes of that.  Civil engineers is among a sailor's best friends,
shipmates.  Look at the scores of snug harbours they've built where
there was nothing but open roadsteads before.  There's Colombo, for
instance.  Look what a snug spot they've made of that.  Why, mates, I
was lying at Colombo once before that harbour was built, and we had to
keep watch and watch all the time we was there, just the same as if we
was at sea, just to take care that the ship didn't strike adrift and go
ashore.  And now, look at the place!  Why, you're moored head and starn;
and some ships don't keep even so much as an anchor watch all the time
they're there.  Don't tell me!  A civil engineer's a man of eddication,
boys; and that's where he goes to wind'ard of chaps like us.  Look at
the skipper, again.  Any one of us could take him up and toss him over
the rail, so far as hard work's concerned.  But you give him his charts,
and chronometers, and sextants, and things; put him aboard of a ship,
and tell him to take her clear round the world and bring her back again
to the same place, _and he can do it_.  Why?  Eddication again.  It's
_eddication_, mates, that makes swells of men, that enables 'em to earn
big pay, and makes 'em of consequence in the world.  There'll be no such
thing as equality in this world, Josh, as long as one man lets another
get ahead of him in the matter of eddication.  Them's my sentiments."

And Parsons was right, lads.  Simple, homely, and unpolished as was his
language, he had succeeded in giving utterance to a grand truth; one
which all boys will do well to lay to heart and profit by to the utmost
extent of their opportunities.

It occupied the men fully until eight bells to get the canvas trimmed to
Captain Blyth's satisfaction; after which the watch below retired to the
forecastle and to their hammocks.

During the night the wind freshened somewhat, hauled a trifle, and came
a point or two free, in consequence of which, when the passengers made
their appearance on deck next morning to get a breath or two of the
fresh sea air before breakfast, they found the ship bowling along at a
regular racing pace, with weather braces checked, sheets eased off, and
every possible studding-sail set on the weather side.  The strange sail
was in sight, and still ahead--a shade on the _Flying Cloud's_ lee-bow,
if anything--but the distance between the two ships had been reduced to
something like nine miles.  Like the _Flying Cloud_, the stranger was
covered with canvas from her trucks down; and it was evident, from the
circumstance of her still being ahead, that she was a remarkably fast
vessel.  Captain Blyth had been on deck from shortly after sunrise, and,
notwithstanding a somewhat windy look in the sky, had himself ordered
the setting of much of the additional canvas which his ship now carried.
After getting matters in this direction to his mind, he had gone up
into the fore-top with his telescope and spent fully half an hour there
inspecting the stranger; and when he descended and met his passengers on
the poop, he announced that though still too far distant to permit of
actual identification, he was convinced that his first supposition was
correct, and that the stranger ahead was none other than the _Southern
Cross_.

"And he knows us, too," he added with a chuckle; "recognised us at
daybreak, and at once turned-to and set his stunsails.  But let him,
ladies and gentlemen; we have the heels of him in this weather, and
we'll be abreast of him in time to exchange numbers before sunset to-
night."

In this assertion, however, Captain Blyth proved to be reckoning without
his host; for as the morning wore on the breeze freshened considerably,
obliging him to clew up and furl his skysails one after the other, and
then his royals, which seemed to give the leading ship an advantage.
For, whilst by noon the distance between the two vessels had been
reduced to about seven miles, after that hour the stranger was, by the
aid of Captain Blyth's sextant, conclusively proved to be holding her
own.  It was an exciting occasion for all hands; the passengers entering
fully into the spirit of the time and exciting Captain Blyth's warmest
admiration by the sympathetic interest with which they listened over and
over again to his story of the long-standing rivalry existing between
himself and the skipper of the _Southern Cross_, with its culmination in
the bet of a new hat upon the result of the passage then in progress.
Mr Gaunt even went so far as to unpack his own sextant--an
exceptionally fine instrument--and to spend most of the time between
luncheon and dinner on the topgallant forecastle, in company with the
skipper, measuring the angle between the stranger's mast-heads and the
horizon.  Sometimes this angle grew a few seconds wider, showing the
_Flying Cloud_ to be gaining a trifle, then it lessened again; but when
dinner was announced the two enthusiasts were reluctantly compelled to
admit that, if gain there was on their side, it did not amount to more
than a quarter of a mile.

Captain Blyth, however, though somewhat crestfallen at the non-
fulfilment of his boast, was still confident in the powers of the ship;
but the weather, he explained, had been rather against them that day,
the wind had been just a trifle too strong for the _Cloud_ to put out
her best paces, whilst it had been all in favour of the other and more
powerful ship.  But the wind had continued to haul during the day,
working more round upon the weather quarter with every hour that passed,
and he was of opinion that they had caught the trades; the sky looked
like a "trades'" sky, and, if his opinion proved correct, he anticipated
that as the wind hauled further aft, so would the _Flying Cloud_
decrease the distance between herself and her antagonist.



CHAPTER FOUR.

A MEETING IN MID-OCEAN.

Mr Bryce, the chief-mate of the _Flying Cloud_, was one of those
unfortunate men who are always more or less in an ill humour.  He was,
like poor Mrs Gummidge, "contrairy," and so disputatious that it was
almost impossible for anyone to make a statement that he would not
either deny outright or strive to prove fallacious.  He had a permanent
quarrel with Fate, which he considered had not treated him in accordance
with his high deserts; but as Fate was rather too intangible for him to
satisfactorily vent his spleen upon it, he made his fellow creatures
Fate's substitute, and never missed an opportunity to vent his spleen
upon them instead.  And, as he was a vulgar, surly, ill-bred fellow, he
was able to make himself excessively disagreeable when he seriously set
about the attempt, as he did when he discovered Captain Blyth's anxiety
to overhaul the ship ahead.  He did not--he _dared_ not--set himself in
opposition to the skipper, because that would have made matters
unpleasant for himself; but he promptly saw that, by affecting to share
the captain's anxiety, he could at one and the same time inflict great
annoyance upon him and a large amount of unnecessary labour upon the
crew, or at least upon that portion of it which constituted the larboard
watch.  Luckily for this watch it happened that they had to do deck duty
only from midnight until four o'clock a.m. on this particular night, so
Mr Bryce had only four hours in which to worry them.  But during that
four hours he did it most thoroughly.  His first act on taking charge of
the deck at midnight was to glance aloft, then he looked into the
binnacle, after which he walked forward and had a look for the _Southern
Cross_.  That ship, or at least the ship which Captain Blyth averred to
be the _Southern Cross_, was just discernible, a faint dark blot upon
the star-lit sky; but in that imperfect light it was quite impossible to
say whether she was gaining or being gained upon.  The chief-mate,
however, affected to believe the former, and exclaiming, loud enough for
the men to hear him:

"Tut, tut, this will never do! the stranger is walking away from us, and
the skipper will make a pretty fuss in the morning," he there and then
began forward with the flying-jib, and made the watch sweat up every
halliard throughout the ship, and the same with the sheets of the square
canvas.  Then, the wind having hauled still further aft, a pull was
taken upon all the weather braces; the jib, staysail, and trysail sheets
were next eased up a trifle; and, finally, all three skysails were set,
only to be clewed up and furled again just before the expiration of the
watch.  This kept the men pretty busy for the greater part of their four
hours on deck, highly exasperating them--which was what the mate
intended to do--and producing a general fit of grumbling among them, for
which he cared not one iota.

Whether Mr Bryce's excessive zeal was productive of good results or not
it is scarcely possible to say--the alterations he effected in the set
of the canvas were so trifling that, with the ship running off the wind,
it is probable they were not--but, be this as it may, the fact remains
that at daylight next morning the stranger, still ahead, had been neared
to within about four miles.

Captain Blyth, as might be expected, was on deck early that morning--
before, in fact, the watch had begun to wash down the decks--and,
observing that the stranger was carrying skysails, he immediately
ordered his own to be set, the sails, small as they were, being capable
of doing good service now that the wind was so far aft.  He was in the
most amiable of humours; for not only was he getting a trifle the best
in the race, but the look of the sky was such as to convince him that he
had undoubtedly caught the north-east trades, and that he was therefore
certain of a good run at least as far as the line.  His enthusiasm at
the breakfast-table became almost wearisome, though his passengers
listened to him with the most indulgent good-nature; but it was a
distinct relief to them when he rose from the table to superintend on
deck the setting of the larboard studding-sails, which had now become
possible through the wind drawing dead aft.

This change of wind was slightly disadvantageous to both ships, much of
the fore-and-aft canvas becoming useless, whilst even the square canvas
on the foremast was partially becalmed by that on the main; but it soon
became evident that, relatively, the _Flying Cloud_ was a gainer by it,
the distance between the two ships now lessening perceptibly.  By noon
they were separated by a space of barely half a mile, by which time the
identity of the stranger had been established beyond all doubt.  Captain
Blyth hastened, therefore, to get and work up his meridian altitude,
hoisted his ensign at the peak, and, as both ships appeared to be
steering admirably, proceeded to edge down within hailing distance of
the _Southern Cross_.

By half an hour after noon the two ships were abreast of each other, and
divided by a space of little more than a hundred feet of water.  The
passengers--of whom the _Southern Cross_ carried twenty in her saloon--
were mustered, in their fine-weather toggery, on the poops of the two
ships, eyeing each other curiously at intervals, but chiefly intent upon
the impending ceremony of "speaking," the two captains having
established themselves in their respective mizen-rigging.  At length,
when the two craft were as close to each other as it was prudent to take
them, Captain Blyth took off his cap, bowed, and said:

"Good-morning, Captain Spence!  This is a pleasant surprise for us; we
scarcely hoped to see you before reaching Melbourne.  What has happened
to detain you on the way?"

"Good-morning, Captain Blyth!  I am very glad we have fallen in with
each other so early in the voyage," answered Captain Spence.  "I have
been looking out for you during the last three or four days, for, with
such very fine weather as we have had lately, I expected you would
completely outsail us.  How has the wind been with you?  We have had it
light and shy, so far, during the entire voyage, except for the little
slant we got down channel on our first day out."

"Ah, yes!" remarked Captain Blyth; "you had the advantage of us there.
We had to beat the whole way from the Foreland to the Start."

"An advantage which is more than counterbalanced by your beautiful model
and your brand-new canvas," observed Spence.  "Our sails are so worn and
thin that we can almost see through them; the wind goes through them
like water through a sieve.  But I am just about to shift them for a new
suit, when I hope we shall be able to keep company with you at least as
far as the line, where, if, as is most probable, we fall in with calms,
I hope you and your passengers will do me the favour to come on board
and dine with us."

"That we will, with the greatest pleasure; and you and your passengers
will, I hope, favour us with a return visit--_if, when you have bent
your new canvas, you do not run away from us altogether_," retorted
Blyth.  "Meanwhile," he continued, raising his voice as the _Flying
Cloud_ drew gradually ahead of the _Southern Cross_, "I am afraid we
must say good-bye for the present, as we seem to be slipping past you."

With this parting shot Captain Blyth again raised his cap politely, and
stepped down out of the rigging on to a hen-coop, and from thence to the
poop; and so the little verbal sparring match between the rival skippers
ended, each flattering himself that he had had the best of it, and that
he had come out well in the eyes of the little audience before which he
had been performing.

One thing, however, was certain, the _Southern Cross_ had sailed twenty-
four hours before her rival, and had by that rival been overtaken and
passed--fairly outsailed; and whether Captain Spence's somewhat laboured
explanation of this circumstance satisfied his passengers or not, it
assuredly did not satisfy himself.  He was fain to confess--to himself--
that the hitherto invincible _Southern Cross_ had at length been
subjected to the ignominy of defeat.  The thought was unendurable; there
could be no more happiness for him until the stain had been wiped from
his tarnished laurels.  And to do this with the least possible loss of
time he at once went about the task of shifting his canvas, for which,
as the ship was now running dead before the wind, he could not have a
better opportunity.  It was a heavy task, and all hands were set to work
upon it, the steerage passengers--ay, and some of the gentlemen in the
saloon also--so far identifying their own interests with that of the
ship as to volunteer their services in the pulling and hauling part of
the work, which enabled the skipper to send two strong gangs aloft.  But
it was all of no use--just then, at least.  The fact was that the older
suit of canvas was not nearly so unserviceable as Captain Spence chose
to consider it, and the substitution of the new suit was therefore
without appreciable effect--the result being that when night closed down
upon the little comedy the people on board the _Southern Cross_ had the
mortification of seeing the rival ship hovering on the very verge of the
horizon ahead of them.

On board the _Flying Cloud_, on the other hand, apart from her commander
there was no very great amount of enthusiasm.  The passengers were
merely placidly satisfied at having outsailed a notoriously fast vessel;
whilst the mates and crew were, or affected to be, supremely indifferent
to the circumstance.  Captain Blyth, however, made ample amends in his
own person for the indifference of everybody else.  He was simply
exultant.  Whatever might happen in the future, nothing could rob him of
the right to boast that he had beaten the _Southern Cross_ in a fair
trial of sailing, with the two ships side by side.  And with regard to
the future, also, he was tolerably sanguine.  It had been conclusively
demonstrated that the _Flying Cloud_ was the faster ship of the two
before the wind and in ordinary trades weather, which weather he could
now depend upon until he reached the region of the calms about the line;
and it was also possible that, walking away from the _Southern Cross_ at
his present rate, he might get a slant across the calm belt which the
other ship would miss, and a consequent start from thence into the
south-east trades of nobody could say how many days.  And if the worst
came to the worst and he were overtaken in the calm belt, the two ships
would at least make a fair start of it again from the line, when he was
not without hopes that the extraordinary weatherliness of his own ship
would enable him to keep the advantage already won.  So that, looking at
the matter in all its bearings, he was not only fully satisfied with the
past and present, but hopeful for the future.  At the same time, knowing
by his recent experience how hard a ship to beat was the _Southern
Cross_, he fully realised that he must neglect no means within his power
to secure to himself the victory.  Nor did he.  Had his life and fortune
both been staked on the result of the race, he could scarcely have
manifested more eagerness.  Indeed, he rather overdid it, imperilling
his spars by carrying a heavy press of canvas up to the last moment
possible; which, as the north-east trades happened to be blowing rather
fresh, involved a great deal of clewing up, hauling down, furling, and
subsequently re-setting of his lighter sails, and a consequent amount of
extra work for the crew which was anything but to their taste.

A week passed thus; but on the seventh day following that on which the
_Southern Cross_ had been spoken, and within an hour or two of the time
when the skipper, having worked up his meridian altitude of the sun, had
expressed to his passengers a confident hope that they would have
crossed the line by the time that they retired that night, the wind
began to fail them, and by eight bells in the afternoon watch the ship
was lying motionless on a sea the surface of which was smooth as
polished glass, save for the undulations of the ground-swell which came
creeping up to them from the northward and eastward.  The sky was hazy
but without a cloud, and the temperature of the motionless atmosphere
was almost unbearably oppressive, the pitch melting out of the deck-
seams and adhering to the shoe-soles even beneath the shelter of the
awning which was spread over the poop.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen," said Captain Blyth as he joined his
passengers at the dinner-table that evening, "here we are in the
Doldrums, fast enough, and no mistake.  The nor'-east trades brought us
so close up to the line that I was in hopes they'd be accommodating
enough to carry us over it.  However, we mustn't grumble.  We're within
sixty miles of the Equator, whilst on my last outward voyage I was left
becalmed close upon two hundred miles to the nor'ard of it.  And we're
not alone in our misery; I counted no less than fifteen sail in sight
from the deck just before dark, but I couldn't make out the _Cross_
among 'em.  I am in hopes of getting a start across and into the south-
easters before she comes up."

"How far astern do you think she is just now, captain?" asked Mrs
Henderson.

"Not an inch less than one hundred and fifty miles, ma'am," answered the
skipper.  "And if she brings the trades as far down with her as we've
done--which is doubtful--she can't reach the spot sooner than nine
o'clock to-morrow evening.  So we've twenty-six hours the start of her
now, and I'm going to do my best to keep it."

The saloon was far too hot for the passengers to hold their usual
concert there that evening; they therefore adjourned to the deck, and
lounged there to the latest possible moment.  It was a glorious night--
brilliant star-light with a young moon--the combined light enabling them
to just dimly make out here and there the hull and sails of one or
another of their companions in misfortune, the side-lights, green or red
according to the position of the vessel, gleaming brightly and throwing
long, wavering, tremulous lines of colour along the polished surface of
the water.  On board one of these vessels, about a mile distant, someone
was playing a concertina--very creditably, too--and singing a favourite
forecastle ditty to its accompaniment; and it was surprising how softly
yet clearly the sounds were conveyed across the intervening space of
water.  Singing and playing was also going on among the more distant
ships; but the sounds were too far removed to create the discord which
would have resulted had they been near enough to mingle.

On board the _Flying Cloud_ all was silent save for the persistent
"whistling for a breeze" in which Captain Blyth indulged, mingled with
the rustle and flap of the canvas overhead, and the patter of the reef-
points occasioned by the pendulum-like roll of the ship.  The water was
highly phosphorescent; and the two children, carefully looked after by
Mr Gaunt, were delightedly watching from the taffrail the streams of
brilliant stars and haloes produced by the gentle swaying movement of
the ship's stern-post and rudder, when far down in the liquid crystal a
dim moon-like radiance was seen, which increased in intensity and
gradually took form as it rose upwards until it floated just beneath the
surface, its nature fully confessed by the luminosity which enveloped it
from snout to tail--an enormous shark!  It remained under the ship's
counter, lazily swimming to and fro athwart the ship's stern, just long
enough to allow the rest of the passengers to get a good sight of it,
when it suddenly whisked round and darted off at a tremendous pace
toward one of the other ships, leaving a long trailing wake of silver
light behind it.  A moment later, the sound of a heavy splash at some
distance was heard; and whilst the little group of horrified spectators
on board the _Flying Cloud_ were still speaking of the terrible aspect
presented by the monster a shout and a shrill piercing scream came
floating across the water, followed by more shouting and sounds as of
the hasty lowering of a boat.

"Hark!  What can that mean?" ejaculated Mrs Gaunt.

"Sounds as though there was something wrong aboard the barque yonder,
sir," reported one of the men to the chief-mate.  (Captain Blyth
happened to be below at the moment.)

"Well, it's no business of ours if there is," answered Mr Bryce, not
attempting to move from his seat.

"Did you ever know such a brute as that man is?" whispered Mrs Gaunt to
Miss Stanhope.

"Never," was the reply.  "That I am free from any further association
with him will be my most pleasant reflection when I leave the ship."

The flash of oars in the phosphorescent water showed that a boat had
been lowered from the barque, and she could be faintly seen pulling
about for some time afterwards; but at length she returned to the ship.
The cheep of the tackle-blocks could be heard as she was hoisted up, and
that ended the incident for the night.

On running into the calm the _Flying Cloud_ had, of course, been
stripped of her studding-sails in order that she might be ready to meet
the light variable airs which were all she would have to depend upon to
help her across the calm belt; and about nine o'clock that evening one
of these little puffs, accompanied by a smart shower of rain, came out
from the westward, lasting nearly an hour, and enabling the little fleet
to make some four miles of progress on their several ways, some of the
vessels being bound north, whilst the others were making their way in
the opposite direction.

The following morning dawned with another flat calm; but that the crews
of the several ships had not been idle during the night was shown by the
scattered appearance of the fleet.  Six of the fifteen sail counted by
Captain Blyth on the previous evening were hull-down to the northward,
in which direction three more vessels had put in an appearance during
the hours of darkness; but these three were all in a bunch and about
twelve miles to the northward and westward of the _Flying Cloud_.  A
solitary sail had also hove up above the southern horizon during the
same period, and the remaining nine were scattered over an area of about
seven miles; the barque before referred to being nearest the _Flying
Cloud_, but a shade to the southward of her, showing how partial had
been the light airs encountered during the night.

About four bells in the forenoon watch, that day, a few light cats'-paws
were seen stealing over the surface of the water from the southward, and
the sails of the several vessels were properly trimmed to meet them.
The _Flying Cloud_ happened to be heading to the westward, whilst the
barque was heading east when the little breeze reached them, in
consequence of which the two vessels began to approach each other on
opposite tacks as soon as their canvas filled.  Captain Blyth had been
informed of the mysterious incident of the previous night on board the
barque, and he now announced his intention of speaking her if the breeze
lasted long enough to bring the two vessels within speaking distance.
It was at first doubtful if this would be the case, but when the two
vessels were within about a cable's-length of each other a somewhat
stronger puff came up, dying away again just as the _Flying Cloud_ was
slowly passing under the barque's stern.

The usual hails were exchanged, by means of which each captain was made
acquainted with the name, destination, port sailed from, number of days
out, and so on, of the other vessel (the barque turning out to be the
_Ceres_, of Liverpool, bound from that port to Capetown); and then
Captain Blyth continued:

"Was anything wrong on board you last night?  Some of my people thought
they heard some sort of a commotion in your direction."

"Yes," answered the skipper from the barque.  "I am grieved to say that
we lost one of our best men.  The poor, foolish fellow--unknown to me,
of course--took the notion into his head to jump overboard, with the
idea of swimming round the ship.  He jumped from the starboard cat-head,
and had very nearly completed his journey when he was seized by a shark
and carried off from under our very eyes, as it might be.  We lowered
the gig and gave chase, but the boat could not get near him, and at last
the fish dived, taking the man down with him, and we never saw any more
of either.  Good-bye! if we don't meet again I'll be sure to report you
when we get in!"

The vessels gradually drifted apart, and the short colloquy was brought
to a close.

"Good heavens, how horrible!" ejaculated Gaunt, turning to his fellow-
passengers, who, with himself, had heard the short history of the
tragedy.  "That must, undoubtedly, have been the identical shark we saw.
Being in the water he, of course, heard the plunge of the unfortunate
man before the sound reached our ears, and at once made off, as we saw,
in that direction.  How little we dreamed of the fatal errand on which
he was bound as we watched him disappear!  Truly, `in the midst of life
we are in death.'"

Shortly before noon a black, heavy, thunderous-looking cloud worked up
from the southward, and, when immediately over the ship, burst with a
tremendous downpour of rain, but with no wind.  Seeing that the fall was
likely to be heavy, Captain Blyth ordered a couple of studding-sails to
be opened out and spread to catch the water as it fell, and so copious
was the shower that not only did they succeed in completely refilling
all the tanks, but, by plugging up the scupper-holes the men were
actually enabled to enjoy the unwonted luxury of a thorough personal
cleansing in the warm soft water, and also to wash a change of clothing.
The ladies and children, had, of course, been driven below by the heavy
downpour; but they were not forgotten, Messrs. Henderson and Gaunt
taking care to promptly secure a sufficiency of water to afford each of
them the treat of a copious fresh-water bath.

Between sunrise and sunset that day, the _Flying Cloud_ contrived to
make nearly eight miles of southing, and a small slant of wind during
the night enabled her to make about fourteen more.  When morning dawned
they were again becalmed; but the sky was overcast, and it was evident
that a heavy thunder-squall was working up from the eastward, and
Captain Blyth was in hopes that when it came it would do them good
service.  He was on deck at daylight, eager to see if he could discover
any traces of the _Southern Cross_; and great was his jubilation when,
after a most careful scanning of the horizon from the main-topgallant-
yard, he failed to detect anything at all like her in sight.

By breakfast-time the aspect of the sky was so threatening that Captain
Blyth gave instructions to have all the lighter canvas taken in, leaving
the ship under topsails, courses, fore-topmast staysail, jib, and mizen.
It was well that he took this precaution, for just as they sat down to
breakfast it began to thunder and lighten heavily, and about ten minutes
later, a terrific downpour of rain followed.  The rain suddenly ceased,
and the murky darkness of the atmosphere as suddenly gave place to a
vivid yellow light, a change which caused the skipper to spring to his
feet and rush out on deck without even the pretence of an apology to his
passengers for so abrupt a movement.  On reaching the deck his first
glance was to the eastward, the direction from which the light emanated,
and he then saw that the heavy veil of black cloud--which now completely
overspread the heavens--was in that quarter rent asunder, leaving a
great gap through which was revealed a momentarily increasing patch of
pale straw-coloured sky.  The water was every where black as ink save
beneath this livid streak, but there it presented the appearance of a
long line of snow-white foam advancing toward the ship with terrific
rapidity.

The second-mate, who was in charge of the deck, was standing on the poop
regarding this phenomenon with a doubtful expression of visage, which
gave place to one of unmistakable relief when he saw the skipper on
deck.

"That looks like a squall coming down, sir"--he began.  But Captain
Blyth had no time to attend to him just then; he saw that there was not
a moment to be lost, and turning his back unceremoniously upon Mr
Willoughby he shouted:

"Stand by your topsail-halliards here, the watch!  Hurry up, my lads, or
we shall lose the sticks!  Let run, fore and aft!"

The men, who saw what was coming, and had been expecting the call,
sprang at once to their stations, let go the halliards, and then helped
the revolving yards down by manning the topsail-clewlines, by which
means the three topsails were snugly close-reefed by the moment that the
squall burst upon them.  There was no time to do more or Captain Blyth
would have taken the courses off the ship.  As it was she had to bear
them; and so heavy was the squall that during its height the vessel was
compelled to run dead before it.  Her head was, however, brought to the
southward the moment that it was safe to do so, and away she went like a
frightened thing, tearing through the surges with her lee gunwale under.
The first fury of the squall was spent in about a quarter of an hour,
but it continued to blow with great violence until noon, when the gale
broke and the crew were able to take a pull of a few feet upon the
topsail-halliards.  By eight bells in the afternoon watch the ship was
under whole topsails once more, with a clear sea all round her and a
rapidly clearing sky; and at ten o'clock that same evening, when Captain
Blyth entered the saloon, after personally superintending the setting of
the topgallant-sails, he announced not only that there was every
prospect of a fine night and a steady breeze, but also that he believed
they had caught the south-east trades.



CHAPTER FIVE.

THE DERELICT BARQUE.

The next morning demonstrated the correctness of Captain Blyth's
surmise; for daylight found them with the breeze still steady at about
east by south, and so fresh that they were compelled to keep all their
skysails and the mizen-royal stowed.  Needless to say, everybody was
delighted at having slipped through the Doldrums so easily; even the
chief-mate almost allowed himself now and then to be betrayed into an
expression of dawning amiability; and, as for Captain Blyth, his
exuberance of spirits threatened at times to pass all bounds.  He
believed it quite impossible that the _Southern Cross_ could now cross
the line in less than three days, at least, after himself; and the way
in which the _Flying Cloud_, against a fair amount of head sea and on a
taut bowline, was steadily reeling off her eight, nine, and sometime
even ten knots per hour, with her really extraordinary weatherliness,
quite convinced him that he could beat his antagonist in any weather
which would permit him to show his topgallant-sails to it.

This state of general satisfaction and good humour was at its height,
when about ten o'clock on that same morning, a man who was at work on
the weather fore-topsail-yard-arm hailed the deck with:

"On deck, there!  There is a wreck, or something like it, broad on our
weather-beam, and about nine mile off."

Captain Blyth was on deck, and so was Ned; and the skipper immediately
ordered that young gentleman to go aloft with his glass to see if he
could make out the object.

Ned was soon in the main-topmast cross-trees, from which elevated stand-
point he was at once enabled to make out the whereabouts of the supposed
wreck with the naked eye, and he was not long in bringing his glass to
bear upon it.

"Well, Ned, my hearty," hailed the skipper, when the lad had been
working away in a puzzled manner with his telescope, "that you see
something is perfectly evident.  What d'ye make her out to be?"

"It is not very easy to say, sir," replied Ned.  "The light is so
dazzling in that quarter that I can see nothing but a dark patch; but it
looks more like a vessel on her beam-ends than anything else.  But, if
it is so, she is lying over so much that her sails are in the water."

"Phew!" whistled the skipper.  "We must have a look at her; it will
never do to leave a ship in such a fix as that.  Can you see any people
on board her, Ned?"

"No, sir," was the answer.  "But if there _are_ people on board it would
be impossible to make them out from our present position."

"No, no," muttered the skipper, "I don't suppose it would; of course
not.  Hark ye, Ned; just stay where you are, my lad, and let me know
when we have brought the wreck a good couple of points abaft our beam,
and in the meantime take a look round with your glass and see if you can
make out anything like a boat anywhere."

"Ay, ay, sir," replied Ned, settling himself into a comfortable, easy
position in the cross-trees, somewhat to the secret trepidation of Miss
Stanhope, who was watching his movements with a great deal of
undemonstrative interest, and who every moment dreaded that the young
man's careless attitude, coupled with the pitching of the ship, would
result in a fall.  Nothing of the kind, however, happened; and in due
time Ned hailed:

"I think we can fetch her now, sir.  I can make her out much better than
I could a quarter of an hour ago; and I believe she _is_ a ship on her
beam-ends.  I can see nothing of boats in any direction, sir."

"Very well," replied Captain Blyth.  "Stay where you are, nevertheless,
and continue to keep a bright look-out.  We will tack the ship, if you
please, Mr Bryce."

"Ay, ay, sir.  Hands 'bout ship!" responded the chief-mate; and in a
minute or two the men were at their stations.

"All ready, sir!" reported Mr Bryce Captain Blyth walked aft to the
mizen-rigging, signed to the helmsman, and gave the word:

"Helm's a-lee!"

"Helm's a-lee," responded the men, lifting the coiled-up braces and so
on from the pins and throwing them down on the deck all ready for
running.

The ship shot handsomely up into the wind; and the word was given to
"raise tacks and sheets," quickly followed by the other commands; and in
a couple of minutes the _Flying Cloud_ was round and heading well up for
the wreck, whilst the crew bowsed down the fore and main tacks
simultaneously with the aid of a couple of watch tackles.

To the honour of Captain Blyth be it said that, though his interest in
the race between his own ship and the _Southern Cross_ was as ardent as
though his very life depended upon its result, not one single murmur
escaped him on account of this delay; for delay it certainly was.  No;
apart, perhaps, from the passengers, he of all on board betrayed the
most anxiety respecting the crew of the distressed vessel.

In an hour the _Flying Cloud_ was hove-to abreast and close to leeward
of the wreck, which proved to be a fine wooden barque, copper-bottomed,
on her beam-ends, as Ned had reported, with her masts lying prone in the
water.  There was no sign of any one on board her; nevertheless Captain
Blyth ordered one of the gigs to be lowered, and instructed Mr Bryce to
proceed to the wreck and give her a careful overhaul.  At Mr Gaunt's
own request that gentleman accompanied the mate.

The little party had some difficulty in boarding the derelict, for she
was lying broadside-on to the wind, with her masts pointing to windward;
and though there was no very great amount of sea running, there was
still sufficient to make boarding from to windward an awkward if not an
absolutely dangerous matter, in consequence of the raffle of spars and
cordage in the water.  But they succeeded at last; Mr Gaunt and the
mate contriving to gain a footing in the main-rigging, whilst the boat
with her crew backed off again out of harm's way.  The task of examining
the vessel, now that they were actually on board her, was even more
difficult and dangerous than that of boarding, the ship lying so far
over that her deck was perpendicular.  By getting out on her weather
side, however, and by means of ropes'-ends, they eventually succeeded in
penetrating first to the cabin, and then to the forecastle (both of
which were on deck); but in neither was there any one to be found.
There were, however, in the cabin, signs--such as open and partially
empty boxes and trunks, with articles of wearing apparel scattered
about--which seemed to indicate that the vessel had been very hurriedly
abandoned; and the state of these articles was such as to lead Mr Gaunt
to the conclusion that the abandonment had taken place within the
previous twenty-four hours.

Having so far completed their examination, the boat was signalled to
again approach, and a few minutes later the party found themselves once
more on the deck of the _Flying Cloud_, the chief-mate briefly reporting
that the barque was undoubtedly abandoned.

"Then," said Captain Blyth, hesitatingly, "I suppose there is nothing
more to be done but to hoist up the boat and fill away upon our course
again?"

"No; I suppose not, sir," replied Bryce, in a tone of voice which very
sufficiently indicated his supreme indifference.

"Very well," said the skipper, "man the--"

"Excuse me, Captain Blyth, but may I offer a suggestion?" interrupted
Mr Gaunt.

"Assuredly, my dear sir," responded the skipper; "what suggestion would
you offer?"

"Well," said Mr Gaunt, "if I may be permitted to say so, it seems a
great pity to leave that fine ship there, to be possibly run into by and
perhaps to occasion the loss of another ship; or, as an alternative, to
eventually founder.  So far as I could perceive, the hull is as sound
and tight as ever it was, and, by the way she floats, I do not believe
she has very much water in her; and with regard to her spars, her fore
and main-topgallant masts are snapped off short by the caps, which
appears to be about all the damage done in that direction.  Now, why
should you not right her, pump her out, man her, and send her into port?
If her cargo is valuable, as is likely to be the case, it would put a
handsome sum of salvage money into your pocket."

"So it would, sir," replied the skipper.  "I was thinking of that just
now, but couldn't exactly see how the thing is to be done; and as Mr
Bryce seemed to have no idea of any such thing, why I concluded it must
be impracticable."

"By no means, I should say," observed Mr Gaunt.  "We engineers, you
know, are constantly accomplishing things which other people would be
disposed to pronounce impossible; and I confess I see no great
difficulty in this case.  I believe the barque is only held down in her
present position by the weight of the water in her canvas."

Mr Gaunt then indicated to the skipper the means which he thought would
be likely to prove successful; and Captain Blyth, though somewhat
doubtful of the result, was sufficiently impressed to express his
willingness to try the experiment, Mr Gaunt volunteering--to his wife's
secret dismay--to assist by taking charge of a small working party on
board the derelict.

To work all hands accordingly went.  The gig once more shoved off for
the barque, which was boarded by the energetic engineer and four men,
who took with them a coil of light line, an axe, and, of course, their
clasp knives.  The little party got out on the weather side of the ship,
in the main-chains, uncoiled their line, and were then all ready to
commence operations.  The gig, meanwhile, returned to the ship, and
received on board a large but light new steel towing hawser, which was
coiled down in long flakes fore and aft the boat, and with this she once
more went alongside the barque, to leeward of her this time, however--
that is to say, alongside the vessel's upturned bilge.  A rope's-end was
hove into her by the little working party in the main-chains, and by
this means the end of the hawser was hauled on board, and, with some
labour and difficulty, eventually made fast round the mainmast head,
just above the truss of the main-yard.  This done, a signal was made to
the _Flying Cloud_, which had meanwhile drifted some distance away, and
the ship thereupon filled her main-topsail and bore up, waring short
round upon her heel.  At the same time the crew hauled up the courses,
clewed up royals and topgallant-sails, and, in short, reduced the canvas
to the three topsails, jib, and spanker.  She was now upon the larboard
tack.  Having stood on a sufficient distance, Captain Blyth went in
stays, and the ship was again headed for the barque.  Now came the only
delicate part of the operation.  But the skipper was an accomplished
seaman, and he managed his part of the work to perfection, bringing the
_Flying Cloud_ up alongside the barque so close to leeward that there
was only bare room for the boat between the two hulls; and at the proper
moment the main-topsail was backed and the way of the ship stopped.  A
rope's-end, to which the other end of the hawser was attached, was then
promptly hove from the boat alongside and smartly hauled inboard over
the ship's bows, and several turns of the hawser were taken round the
windlass-bitts.  Then, by carefully manipulating the canvas, the _Flying
Cloud_ was brought head to wind, or with her bows towards the derelict,
until, dropping to leeward all the time, the hawser was tautened out and
a strain brought upon it.  The topsails were then laid flat aback, and
the result was awaited with some anxiety; the boat meanwhile remaining
alongside the derelict to take off Mr Gaunt and his little party in the
event of any accident happening.  For a few minutes no visible result
attended these manoeuvres; but at length a shout from Mr Gaunt of
"Hurrah, there she rises!  Be ready to let go the hawser on board there
when I give the word" was followed by a barely perceptible indication
that the vessel was righting.  The movement increased; and then, still
gradually, the masts rose out of the water until they were at an angle
of about forty-five degrees with the horizon, when the vessel recovered
herself so suddenly that the little party on board had to cling on for
their lives or they would have been flung into the sea.  A heavy roll or
two followed, and the vessel then settled upon an even keel once more,
with the water pouring in torrents out of the canvas down on to the
deck, and wetting Mr Gaunt and his crew to the skin.  Captain Blyth was
personally superintending his share of the operations from the _Flying
Cloud's_ forecastle, and at the proper moment the end of the hawser was
cast off and let fly overboard, to be recovered later on by the gig.

The first thing the engineer now did was to heave-to the barque as well
as he could with his scanty crew; his next act was to sound the well,
with the result that a depth of five feet of water was found in the
hold.  This, however, was not so formidable a matter as it at first
sight appeared; for, the hold being tightly packed with cargo, the water
could only get into the interstices, and a comparatively small quantity
would consequently show a large rise in the pump-well.

A strong gang was now sent on board the barque, with the chief-mate in
command; and the pumps were at once manned.  A quarter of an hour's work
at these sufficed to show that the vessel was making no water (that
which was already in her having doubtless made its way in through the
top-sides and down the pump-well whilst the craft was on her beam-ends);
the men therefore went to work with a will, and by eight bells in the
afternoon watch it was reported that the ship was dry.

Mr Gaunt, meanwhile, made his way into the cabin as soon as the mate
took charge, and proceeded to give the place a general overhaul, with
the object of ascertaining who and what the vessel was.  He succeeded in
finding the log-book, log-slate, and the captain's desk, with all of
which he proceeded on board the _Flying Cloud_.  The articles were
placed in the hands of Captain Blyth, who forthwith sat down to examine
them, with the result that the barque was found to be the _Umhloti_ of
Aberdeen, her commander's name being Anderson.  She was from Port Natal,
bound to London, thirty-three days out when discovered; and her cargo
consisted of hides, ivory, indigo, coffee, sugar, and wool.  She was
therefore a very valuable find, well worth the time and trouble they
were devoting to her.  The last entry on the log-slate had been made at
eight o'clock on the previous morning; and the log-book had been
written-up as far as noon on the day preceding that.  Captain Blyth had
therefore no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that the vessel
must have been capsized in a very similar squall to that which had
struck the _Flying Cloud_ on the previous day, and at about the same
moment.  This surmise was confirmed by the fact that when Mr Gaunt had
entered the captain's state-room he had found the chronometers still
going, though nearly run down.  He had, of course, at once taken the
precaution to wind them afresh.

Having brought the pumps to suck, the next task of the men on board the
_Umhloti_ was to clear away and send down on deck the wreck of the fore
and main-topgallant masts, with all attached, a couple of hands being at
the same time deputed to give the store-room an overhaul to ascertain
whether the contents had been damaged or not by water.  Everything was
luckily found to be in perfect order there, the water not having risen
high enough in the hull to reach the lazarette.  This being found to be
the case, nothing now remained but to man the vessel and dispatch her on
her homeward way.

Captain Blyth had already thought out his plans in this direction.  And
when it was reported to him that the barque could part company at any
moment he went forward, and, mustering the steerage passengers, told
them he had not only observed their efforts to make themselves useful on
board, but had also noticed that those efforts had been crowned with a
very fair measure of success; he would now, therefore, ship the whole of
them for the passage, if they chose, paying them ordinary seamen's wages
from the commencement of the voyage.  So good an offer was not to be
lightly refused; and, after a few minutes' consultation together, the
men unanimously declared their willingness to accept it.  This made the
rest of the business quite plain sailing for the skipper; and, closing
with the _Umhloti_, he hailed Mr Bryce to say that he intended to send
him home in charge, and that he was to ascertain how many of the men
then with him would volunteer to return to England.  A crew of fourteen
hands, all told, was soon made up, Tim Parsons and two of the
apprentices being of the number; and just as night was closing down the
two vessels parted company, Captain Blyth, Ned, and the saloon
passengers taking advantage of the opportunity to send home letters to
their friends, the skipper taking the precaution to enclose them all in
his dispatch to his owners, lest Mr Bryce, in his indifference, might
neglect to post them.  It may as well be mentioned here that the
_Umhloti_ arrived safely in England about a fortnight later than the
passengers and crew who had abandoned her; and that the letters she
carried duly reached their destination.

The changes rendered necessary by this drafting off of so large a
proportion of her crew involved certain promotions on board the _Flying
Cloud_, in which promotion Ned, to his intense gratification, was made a
sharer, he being appointed acting second-mate _vice_ Mr Willoughby, who
was promoted to the post of chief, whilst Williams was made boatswain's-
mate.

The ship being now once more close-hauled, with the south-east trade-
wind blowing steadily, and only a very moderate amount of sea running.
Miss Stanhope regarded the occasion as propitious for the perfecting of
herself in the art of steering; and she accordingly practised with great
assiduity.  Ned, of course, by virtue of his promotion, was no longer
required to take his trick at the wheel--he was now the officer in
command of the starboard watch--but Sibylla did not allow that
circumstance to interfere in the least with her plans; on the contrary,
she rather made it subservient to them.  For, whereas she had before
been obliged to wait for her lesson until Ned's trick came round, she
now simply watched her opportunity, and whenever she saw that the young
man had nothing very particular to do, she would go up to him and say,
"Mr Damerell, is it convenient for you to give me a steering-lesson?"
Whereupon Ned would make a suitable response, and, accompanying the
young lady aft, would say to the helmsman "Here, Dick, or Tom, or
Harry", as the case might be, "go forward and do so and so; Miss
Stanhope wishes to give you a spell.  When she is tired I will let you
know, and you can come aft again and relieve her."  Upon which the
seaman, with an inward chuckle and much carefully suppressed jocularity,
would shamble away for'ard, fully convinced by past experience that he
need think no more about the wheel until his trick should again come
round.  By the time that the ship had run through the south-east trades,
Sibylla could steer her, when on a wind, as well as the best helmsman on
board; and, proud of her skill, she then began to long for the
opportunity to try her hand with the ship when going free.  This
opportunity came, of course, in due time; and, though the fair
helmswoman at first found the task far more difficult that she had ever
imagined it could possibly be, she soon developed such extraordinary
skill that Ned's prophecy at length became literally fulfilled, Captain
Blyth gradually getting into the way of turning to Miss Stanhope when
any exceptionally fine steering had to be done--as, for instance, when
some contumacious craft ahead persistently refused to be overhauled--and
saying, "I am afraid there is no resource but to invoke your aid, my
dear young lady; we shall never overtake yon stranger unless you will
oblige us with a few of your scientific touches of the wheel."
Whereupon Sibylla, looking very much gratified, would make some laughing
reply, and forthwith take the wheel, keeping the bows of the _Flying
Cloud_ pointing as steadily for the strange sail as though they had been
nailed there, always with the most satisfactory result.

It was perhaps only a natural consequence of Ned's assiduous "coaching"
of Miss Stanhope in the helmsman's art that the formal relations usually
subsisting between passengers and officer should to a certain extent
have given place to a kind of companionship, almost amounting to
_camaraderie_, between these two young people.  The seamen were almost,
if not quite, as quick as their skipper in detecting what was going
forward; and it is not very surprising that, with their love of romance,
they should forthwith regard the handsome young mate and his pupil as
the hero and heroine of an interesting little drama.  This view of the
affair afforded the men for'ard intense gratification.  Ned was
exceedingly popular with them; and the tars regarded the conquest with
which they so promptly credited him almost as a compliment to
themselves, and a triumph to which each might claim to have contributed,
even though in ever so slight and indirect a way.  It will be seen later
on that this fancy on the part of the crew was the means of placing
Sibylla in a most trying situation.

A few days later a sad fatality occurred.  The ship was somewhat to the
eastward of the Cape, going nine knots, with her topgallant-sails
furled, the wind blowing very fresh from the northward, and a
tremendously heavy swell running.  Captain Blyth, the mate, and Ned were
all on the poop, busy with their sextants, the hour being near noon,
when, the ship giving a terrific lee-roll, Mr Willoughby lost his
balance, and, gathering way, went with a run to leeward.  Whether the
accident was due to the poor man's anxiety to preserve his sextant from
damage or not can never be known, but certain it is that, from some
cause or other, he failed to bring up against the light iron protective
railing which ran round the poop, overbalancing himself instead, and
falling headlong into the water.

A shriek from the ladies, who witnessed the accident, and the shout of
"Mate overboard!" from the helmsman caused the skipper and Ned to lay
their instruments hurriedly down on deck and run aft to the lee quarter,
where the first thing they saw was the unfortunate man's hat tossing on
the crest of a sea about a dozen yards astern.

"He can't swim a stroke," exclaimed Ned to the skipper; and then, before
the latter could stop him, the gallant fellow took a short run, and
plunged headlong into the foaming wake of the ship.

"Down helm!" exclaimed the skipper to the man at the wheel, springing at
the same time to the lee main-brace, which he let fly.  The men forward,
meanwhile, having heard the cry of "Mate overboard," rushed aft to the
braces, and in another minute the ship was hove-to, with her mainsail in
the brails.

This done, Williams, who was perhaps the keenest sighted man in the
ship, sprang into the mizen-rigging, and, making his way with incredible
rapidity into the top, stood looking in the direction where he expected
to see the two men.

"D'ye see anything of them, Williams?" shouted the skipper.

"Yes, sir; I can see _one_ of them," was the reply; "but which one it is
I can't tell.  It must be Ned though, I think, for he seems to be
swimming round and round, as though looking for the mate."

"Keep your eye on him, my man; don't lose sight of him for a single
instant!" shouted the captain.  Then, turning to the men, who were
clustered together on the poop, he exclaimed: "Now then, men, what are
you thinking about!  Out with the boat, my hearties; and be smart about
it!"

The men moved to the tackles and threw the falls off the pins down on to
the deck, talking eagerly together meanwhile; then one of them turned,
and, stepping up to the skipper, said:

"Who is to go in the boat, sir?  I must say I don't care about the job;
and the others say the same.  We don't believe we could get away from
the ship's side in such a sea as this."

Captain Blyth stamped on the deck in his vexation and despair.  It was
only too true; the boat would to a certainty be stove and swamped if any
such attempt were made; and that would mean the loss of more lives.
What was to be done?  Leave two men to perish he would not, if there was
any possible means of saving them.

"Can you still see either of them, Williams?" hailed the captain.

"Yes, sir; I can still see the one I saw at first; but not the other,"
was the reply.

"We _must_ pick him up, if possible," exclaimed the skipper.  "Up helm,
my man; hard up with it.  Man the main-braces, and fill the topsail!"

At this juncture Sibylla, who had not heard the first part of the
skipper's speech, stepped up to Captain Blyth, ashy pale, and gasped:

"What are you going to do, captain?  Is it possible you are going to be
inhuman enough to leave that poor fellow there _to die_?"

"No, my dear," was the answer.  "I am going to save him, if it is in
human power to do so.  You go below, now, like a good girl, and persuade
the others to go too; this is no sight for a woman to look upon."

But Sibylla could no more have gone below than she could have flown.
She walked aft, and stood at the taffrail with tightly-clasped hands and
starting eyes, looking eagerly astern, her whole body quivering with an
agony of impatience at what seemed to her the tardy movements of the
ship.

As a matter of fact, however, the _Flying Cloud_ had never proved
herself more handy, or been worked more smartly than on that precise
occasion; had she been sentient she could scarcely have yielded to her
commander's will more readily than she did.  Keeping broad away until
she had good way on her the skipper watched his opportunity, and,
signing to the helmsman, the wheel was put over, and the ship flew up
into the wind, tacking like a yacht, Williams at the same time making
his way up on to the royal-yard, in order that the main-topsail might
not interfere with his range of vision.  In effecting this change of
position, notwithstanding his utmost care, he contrived to lose sight of
the diminutive speck on the surface of the water; and when Captain Blyth
again hailed, asking him if he still saw it, he was compelled to answer
"No."  An anxious search of about a minute, however--a minute which
seemed an age to Sibylla--enabled him to hit it off once more, and he
joyously hailed the deck to say that the person--whoever it might be--
was still afloat and broad on the lee-bow.

"Keep her away a couple of points," commanded Captain Blyth; "and pass
the word for the boatswain to muster all the light heaving-line he can
lay his hands upon.  Range yourselves fore and aft along the lee
bulwarks, my lads, and let each one stand by to heave a rope's-end with
a standing bowline in it as soon as we get near enough.  How does he
bear now, Williams?"

"Straight ahead, sir.  Luff, or you will be over him!  It is Ned, sir."

"Luff!" said the skipper.  "Man the main-braces, some of you, and stand
by to heave the main-yard aback."

Captain Blyth then sprang upon a hen-coop, and peered eagerly out ahead.

"I see him!" he eagerly exclaimed at last.  "Back your main-topsail.
Luff, my lad; luff and shake her!  So, well there with the main-braces,
belay all; and stand by fore and aft with your ropes'-ends.  Look out,
for'ard there; now _heave_!  Missed him, by all that's clumsy!  Try you,
the next man.  Missed again; line not long enough.  Steady, men, steady,
or you'll lose him yet.  Now, look out, Ned, my lad!  Heave, boatswain,
and let us see what you can do.  _Well_ hove!  Pay out the line, pay out
smartly--ha! lost it.  Tut! tut! this will _never_ do.  Well done! he
has it this time!  Let him slip it over his shoulder; that's well.
_Now_ haul in--handsomely, my lads--and mind you don't lose him."

Half a minute more and poor Ned, gasping for breath, speechless, and too
exhausted to stand upright, was dragged triumphantly up over the side
and seated on the deck, where, of course, all hands instantly crowded
around him.  Doctor Henderson, however, promptly interfered, and, taking
charge of the patient, was soon able to pronounce that, barring
exhaustion, the poor fellow was all right; upon which the anxious little
crowd dispersed, Sibylla retiring to her state-room, locking herself in,
and gaining relief to her overwrought feelings by abandoning herself to
a perfect tempest of hysterical tears.

Under the doctor's skilful treatment Ned was soon sufficiently restored
to answer a few questions, when he stated that though he had remained
continuously on the watch from the moment of his rising above the
surface after his first plunge to almost the moment of his being picked
up, he had never caught a single glimpse of the mate, and that it was
his impression the unfortunate man must have been hurt in his fall, and
that he had never risen above water again.  Notwithstanding this
statement the ship was kept hove-to for another half-hour, with a man on
the look-out on each topgallant-yard; when, nothing having been seen of
the missing man during that time, Captain Blyth reluctantly gave up the
search, and, wearing round, the ship once more proceeded on her voyage.



CHAPTER SIX.

THE SPRINGING OF THE MINK.

The deplorable fatality mentioned in the last chapter necessitated a
further rearrangement of the official duties on board the _Flying
Cloud_; Ned being advanced still another step and made acting chief-
mate, or "chief-officer" as it is the custom to dub this official in the
merchant service, whilst another apprentice--a very quiet, steady young
man named Robert Manners--was promoted to the post of second-mate thus
rendered vacant.  Although these two posts--the most important and
responsible in the ship next to that of the master--were now filled by
two young men whose united ages fell short of forty years, the
arrangement appeared to work in the most thoroughly satisfactory manner.
The lads performed their onerous duties efficiently; the crew were as
orderly and obedient as heretofore, and not a single sinister omen or
indication manifested itself to arouse anxiety in the mind of the
skipper.  To add to Captain Blyth's satisfaction, the island of New
Amsterdam was sighted and passed on the morning of the tenth day
succeeding the loss of the unfortunate Mr Willoughby, and that, too, in
a direction and at an hour which precisely verified the prediction of
the captain, who rather prided himself upon his skill and accuracy as a
navigator.

For several nights previous to this occurrence the skipper had been
losing a great deal of rest; he had been too anxious to sleep, knowing
that during his absence from the deck the ship was in absolute charge of
one or the other of two lads whom he remembered, as though it had been
but yesterday, joining him without a particle of experience.  But as day
after day, and night after night passed, and he saw what excellent use
those two lads had made of the training and instruction he had so
conscientiously bestowed upon them, he had gradually grown less anxious.
And now, with fine weather, a fair breeze, and New Amsterdam sighted
and passed, the poor fagged skipper once more knew what it was to enjoy
an easy mind; and as he bade Ned "good-night" on the poop, about five
bells in the first watch, he announced, in tones loud enough to be
distinctly heard by the man at the wheel, that he intended to treat
himself to a whole night's sleep, and that he was not to be called or
disturbed unless for something out of the common.

When, therefore, about three o'clock next morning, he was aroused from
sleep by a gentle tap at the outer door of his state-room, Captain
Blyth's first coherent thought was: "I wonder what is the matter now!"
It was nothing to do with the weather--unless the sky had assumed a
threatening aspect--for, by long force of habit, he had acquired the
power of detecting, even during his soundest sleep, any such important
change in the state of the elements as a material increase of wind or
sea, and, though the sleep from which he had been aroused was as sound
as it ever falls to the lot of a seaman to enjoy, he had been quite
conscious all the time that neither the sough of the wind in the rigging
nor the steady swinging motion of the ship had become intensified.  It
was, therefore, in a somewhat peevish tone that he inquired:

"Well, what is the news?"

"Will you please step for'ard, sir, and see what ails Bob--young Mr
Manners, I mean, sir?" said a voice which the skipper recognised as
belonging to one of the seamen.  "He's on the fo'c's'le-head, a cussing
and carrying on as if he was mad, sir; and two of the hands is holding
him down so's he sha'n't fling hisself overboard."

"Whew!" whistled poor Captain Blyth in dismay.  "All right, my man; I'll
be out there in a brace of shakes!  What can be the matter with the poor
lad?" he soliloquised, as he hastily drew on his most necessary
garments.  "A fit, perhaps, brought on by over-anxiety.  Well, I won't
disturb anybody until I see what it is; then, if necessary, I must rouse
out Dr Henderson."

And, as he came to this conclusion, the worthy man softly opened his
state-room door and stepped out on deck.

The night was dark, there being no moon, whilst the star-lit sky was
almost blotted out by the squadrons of fleecy cloud which swept with
stately motion athwart it.  Yet there was light enough to reveal to the
skipper a dark blot on the forecastle, which he knew to be a cluster of
men; and toward these he hurriedly made his way.  Before he could reach
them, however, two bare-footed men stepped softly out behind him from
the galley; and whilst one seized and pinioned his arms behind him, the
other flourished a large-headed, short-handled hammer over his head
whilst he whispered fiercely in the ear of the paralysed skipper:

"Give but a single outcry, and I'll spatter your brains about the deck."
Then he added, somewhat more gently: "No harm is intended you, Captain
Blyth, but we mean to have the ship.  We _will_ have her; and were you
to raise an alarm it would only cause bloodshed, which we are most
anxious to avoid.  Where's Nicholls?  Here, Nicholls, this man is your
prisoner; get the bilboes and clap them on him.  And--mind--I shall hold
you responsible for his safekeeping!"

"But--but--Williams," stammered poor Captain Blyth, who now identified
the speaker, "what is the meaning of all this?  I--I--don't understand
it!"

"No time to explain now," was the answer.  "Tell you all about it later
on if you care to hear.  Come, lads, away aft with us, and let us secure
our other prisoner!"

In obedience to this command, the mob of mutineers who had clustered
about the door of the forward deck-house--into which the unfortunate
skipper had been thrust--melted away, and Captain Blyth found himself
left alone with his jailer and young Manners, the latter being bound
hand and foot, and lying gagged in one of the bunks which had been
vacated when the steerage passengers were drafted into the forecastle.

In the midst of his bewilderment and dismay the skipper still retained
enough presence of mind to note, by the light of the single lantern
which illuminated the place, that his young subordinate was suffering
severe discomfort from the presence of the gag--a large belaying-pin--in
his mouth; and, turning to the man Nicholls, he pointed out that, unless
the crew wished to add the crime of murder to that of mutiny, it would
be advisable to remove the gag at once.

"Well, sir," said the man, civilly enough--he was one of the former
steerage passengers--"I don't know what to do about that.  I'd be
willing enough to take the thing out of the young gentleman's mouth, but
my orders are strict; and if anything was to happen through my meddling
you may depend upon it I should be made to suffer for it."

"If that is what you are afraid of, my good fellow," said the skipper,
"you may remove the gag at once.  Nothing _shall_ happen, I promise you.
The crew have possession of the ship, safe enough; and, bound hand and
foot as we two are, we can do nothing to recover her.  So out with it at
once, my man, unless you wish to see the poor lad suffocate before your
eyes."

This was enough; the gag was at once removed, the skipper at the same
time cautioning Manners against any ill-timed attempt to raise an alarm,
and then Nicholls was questioned as to the reasons for the mutiny.

"Well, sir," was the reply, "I don't rightly understand the ins and outs
of the thing, myself; but Williams has been talkin' to the men, and,
accordin' to his showin', labourers and mechanics and sailors have been
robbed and cheated out of their rights time out o' mind.  So the long
and the short of it is that we've all took a solemn oath to stand by one
another in an attempt to get what rightfully belongs to us."

"What rightfully belongs to you?" exclaimed the skipper in bewilderment.
"I don't understand you, my man.  You surely do not pretend to say that
_I_ have defrauded you of anything to which you are entitled?  A certain
amount of wages is, of course, due to you in respect of work already
performed; but it is the custom to pay seamen only when they arrive at
the port of discharge--"

"Oh, yes, sir; we understands all that, of course," interrupted
Nicholls.  "It ain't that at all, sir; it's--"

Captain Blyth, however, was not destined to learn just then what "it"
was, for at this point the conversation was broken in upon by the
reappearance of a party of the mutineers, headed by Williams, and having
poor Ned among them as a prisoner.

"There, Ned, there's the skipper.  In you go, my lad, and stow yourself
alongside of him; and that will complete the party," exclaimed Williams
cheerfully, as he thrust the lad unceremoniously through the doorway of
the deck-house.  "Now take the gag out of his mouth," he commanded; "but
I caution you," he continued sternly, addressing himself particularly to
Ned, "that if either of you utter a single outcry I'll blow his brains
out without hesitation."  And as he spoke he drew from his pocket a
revolver which he began deliberately to load.

"You are carrying things with a high hand, my fine fellow!" observed
Captain Blyth fiercely; "but I warn you at once that you are only
preparing a halter with which to hang yourself.  The fact that something
is wrong on board here will infallibly be discovered by the first man-
of-war which falls in with us, and your punishment will speedily follow.
Hear me, men," he continued, raising his voice and addressing the crew
generally; "I don't in the least understand your motive for behaving in
this extraordinary fashion; but cast me and my two mates adrift, and I
promise you on my word of honour that I will listen patiently to
whatever complaint you may have to make, and will redress any wrong
which you can show has been done you."

"Spare your breath, skipper," answered Williams quietly.  "We haven't
done this thing in a hurry, and we're not to be talked out of it in a
moment; and perhaps the sooner you understand that the better.  No, sir;
we've no fault to find with you or anybody else aboard here.  The fault
lies with them who've robbed, and cheated, and ground down the likes of
us for centuries; and the time has now come when the few of us as
belongs to this ship's fo'c's'le intend to help our selves to what we've
as good a right as anybody to have.  As to punishment, why, we've agreed
to take our chances about that; and as to men-o'-war, how many have we
fell in with, so far, this voyage?  We'll take our chances about them
too.  Josh Williams may be no scholar, cap'n, but he knows a thing or
two--he knows enough to be able to take care of his own neck, and of the
necks of them that trust him too."

"My good fellow, you don't in the least know what you are talking
about!" exclaimed Captain Blyth.

"Enough said, sir--enough!" interrupted Williams.  "All the talking in
the world won't undo what's done.  We've put our heads into the noose,
but we're not fools enough to sway away upon the yard-rope; so you may
spare yourself the trouble of further talk, and us the trouble of
listening to you.  Now the present time is as good as any to tell you
what our plans are so far as you are concerned; so please pay attention.
We're all hands averse to bloodshed, and we intend to work our business
without it, if possible--you understand, _if possible_!--so, instead of
cutting your throats and heaving you overboard, we're going to land
_you_, Captain Blyth, on some island or another where you'll be able to
pick up a living, but from which you won't be likely to get away until
long after we've done with the ship.  Young Manners there we shall clap
ashore on some other island four or five hundred miles away from you,
skipper; and the passengers we shall put ashore somewhere else, where
they'll not be likely to get us into trouble or to send trouble after
us.  As for Ned, here, we intend to keep him with us to navigate the
ship."

"Do you?" ejaculated Ned.  "Then understand at once and for all that I
decline to remain with you.  What! do you suppose I will mix myself up
in any way or associate with a pack of rascally mutineers?  I'll see you
all hanged first!"

"Well crowed!" ejaculated Williams approvingly with a hearty laugh.  "My
eyes, lads, what a skipper he'd make for us if he could only be
persuaded to join!  But we won't ask you to do that, Ned," he continued
in the same bantering tone.  "You can follow your own inclinations in
that matter--join us or not, just as you please; but remain with us and
navigate us you _shall_ and _will_, whether you like it or not."

"Never!" declared Ned resolutely.  "You may pitch me overboard if you
choose, but I will never do a single hand's turn to help you in any
way."

Williams did not appear to be in the least disconcerted at this
declaration; he simply sat down by Ned's side and whispered earnestly
for some minutes in the lad's ear.

As the communication progressed poor Ned first flushed deeply, then grew
as ashy pale as the sunburn on his cheeks would permit; his eyes dilated
with horror, and when Williams had finished the lad struggled to his
feet and gasped out:

"You villain! you infernal scoundrel!  Cast off my lashings, and, lad as
I am, I will thrash you before all hands for daring to make such an
infamous proposal to me!"

For the first time that night Williams showed signs of anger, but,
quickly checking himself, he said:

"Well, if that card won't take the trick, I have another that will!"
And again he sat down and resumed his whispering.

It was evident by the expression of his countenance that this time Ned
was not only horrified but also thoroughly frightened; and when Williams
ceased the poor lad hung his head and murmured in a scarcely audible
voice:

"Enough! you have conquered! though I can scarcely believe you _could_
be so inhuman--to those poor children, too!  But remember! if, after
what you have promised, the slightest insult or injury is offered to any
one of them, I'll--I'll--"

"There, that will do!" interrupted William.  "I've pledged you my word,
boy; and I hope to have you with us long enough to convince you that I
_never_ break it.  But mind!  I must have you faithfully do whatever you
are told to do, in return.  And now, as we thoroughly understand each
other, you may go back to your berth and turn in until morning; and then
I shall expect that when the passengers make their appearance you will
tell them what has happened aboard here, and also mention our intentions
about them.  And be careful to make them clearly understand that, whilst
we are all against bloodshed, the slightest suspicious action on their
part will be looked upon as treachery, and treated as such.  Cast our
new sailing-master adrift there, some of you, and let him go back to his
berth."

Williams' order was promptly obeyed; and Ned, half-dazed, rose to his
feet, advanced to the door, and then stopped.  "What about Captain Blyth
and Mr Manners?" he asked.  "What are you going to do with them?"

"They will have to put up with such accommodation as they can find here
until we have an opportunity to land them," was the reply.  "But make
your mind easy on their account, Mr Damerell; their comfort will be
properly looked after, and no harm will come to them _unless an attempt
is made to retake the ship_.  In such a case as that I won't answer for
the consequences.  The blame for whatever happens must fall upon the
shoulders of them that bring it about."

Ned was obliged to be content with this; and with a heavy heart he
turned and left the deck-house, not daring to look his commander in the
face, and feeling as guilty in his new dignity as though he had
voluntarily thrown in his lot with the mutineers, notwithstanding the
fact that pressure had been brought to bear upon him which he was
equally powerless to avoid or to resist.

Ned's first act, on returning aft, was to enter Captain Blyth's state-
room, with the object of securing the keys of the arm-chests; but the
mutineers seemed to have been beforehand with him, for the keys were
gone.  He next sought the lock-up tin box in which the ship's papers
were kept; but here, too, the mutineers had been ahead of him, for the
box, as also the captain's desk, was missing.  Being thus foiled in the
only matters which occurred to him at the moment, he left the state-
room, closing the door after him as silently and reverently as if the
captain's dead body had been lying there, and reluctantly returned to
his own berth.  Not to sleep, of course, that was utterly out of the
question, the poor lad was so overwhelmed with consternation at the
unexpected seizure of the ship, and with dismay at the way in which he
had been compulsorily identified with the movement, that he just then
felt as though he would never be able to sleep again.  No; sleep and he
were strangers, at least for the time being, so he flung himself down on
the sofa-locker and tried to think.  But for the first half-hour or so
even the power of thought was denied him.  The catastrophe had been so
utterly unattended by any warning that it was like a levin stroke
falling from a cloudless sky, and for the moment Ned found himself
unable to recognise it as an actual fact.  Over and over again he stood
up and shook himself to ascertain whether or not he was really awake, or
whether his disjointed cogitations and the cause of them were only parts
of an ugly dream.  At length, however, his mind grew clearer, the
disastrous reality of the whole business finally asserted itself, and he
then began to cast blindly about him for the means of rectification.
But, alas, the longer he thought about it, the more hopeless did the
situation appear.  He began to see that Williams had only spoken the
simple truth when he asserted that the mutiny was the result of long
premeditation.  They had laid their plans well, the scoundrels! and had
carried them out with such consummate artifice and attention to detail,
that as Ned turned over in his mind scheme after scheme for the recovery
of the ship, it was only to realise that each had been anticipated and
provided against.  At length, baffled and in despair, he gave up,
temporarily, all hope of effecting a recapture, and allowed his thoughts
to turn in another direction.  "What was to become of the passengers?"
True, Williams had guaranteed for them perfect immunity from
molestation, the price of this privilege being on Ned's part true and
faithful service as navigator of the ship for the mutineers, but a time
was to come when the passengers would be landed on some out-of-the-way
spot, doubtless, and exposed to countless perils from hunger, thirst,
exposure, and worse than all, perhaps the nameless horrors of a
captivity among savages!  And yet Ned felt that they would be in even
greater peril so long as they remained on board the _Flying Cloud_.  The
mutineers seemed peaceably disposed for the moment certainly, but how
long would that state of things continue after they had gained access to
the liquor on board?  Ned shuddered as his excited imagination pictured
the scene of bloodshed which might be enacted within the next twenty-
four hours, and he finally began to realise that even falling into the
hands of a tribe of savages might not prove to be the very worst evil
possible for those poor weak women and children.  His next thought was
that they must be got out of the ship with all possible expedition.  Ha!
but that involved the necessity for saying "good-bye"--for a parting!
Well; what of that?  He had said "good-bye" before now to plenty of
pleasant people, both on the Melbourne quays, and on the dock walls at
London.  But, somehow, this time it seemed different; he did not know
how it was, but these people seemed _more_ than friends, the ladies
especially; for them he felt that he entertained a regard as tender,
almost--or quite--as that which he felt for Eva, and this now made the
idea of parting so distasteful to him that, as his mind began to dwell
upon it, the feeling amounted almost to agony.  And this, too, quite
apart from the sensation of indignant disgust with which he regarded
Williams' unscrupulous resolution to involve him and his fortunes with
the future career of the mutineers.  But it should not be; he would
outwit the rascals somehow, and join the little party of passengers when
they were landed, even if he had to steal over the ship's side, drop
overboard, and swim ashore as the vessel sailed away.

Whilst cogitating thus, the returning daylight surprised him; and
shortly afterwards he heard a movement in the saloon which told him that
the gentlemen were about to make their appearance on deck to indulge in
the usual matutinal "tub."

He opened his state-room door and entered the saloon with a cheery
"Good-morning, gentlemen!"

"Good-morning, Mr Damerell," was the equally cheery reply; and then Mr
Gaunt, happening to notice the lad's worn and haggard appearance,
exclaimed:

"Why, good heavens, Ned, what is the matter?  Are you ill?"

"Hush!" said Ned.  "No, I am not ill, Mr Gaunt, but I am in great
trouble and perplexity.  I have passed through a rather startling
experience during the night; and"--in a low tone of voice, so that the
ladies, if awake, might not hear him--"I have bad news to communicate.
Will you kindly step into my cabin for a moment?"

The two gentlemen passed into the state-room and seated themselves on
the sofa-locker, Ned following and closing the door after him.

"Now, Ned, what is it?" asked the engineer.  "If I may judge from the
expression of your countenance the matter is serious; and, if so, out
with it at once.  You need not be afraid of startling us, I fancy."

"You _will_ be startled, nevertheless, I expect," was the reply.  "The
matter is simply this.  The crew have seized the ship, and poor Captain
Blyth and Mr Manners are at this moment close prisoners in the deck-
house for'ard!"

The two gentlemen stared first at each other, and then at Ned, in the
utmost perplexity.  For a moment or two they were both so completely
astounded that neither could find a word to say.  At length, however,
the engineer so far recovered his powers of speech as to ejaculate:

"But--but--good heavens! what will become of the women and children?
And how is it, sir, that, if what you state be true, _you_ are free--as
you apparently are?"

"You are all perfectly safe--I hope and believe--at all events for the
present.  And the price of your safety is a promise on my part to
faithfully navigate the ship to the best of my ability for the
mutineers," answered Ned with quivering lips; and then suddenly and
completely overcome by a sense of his desolate and desperate situation,
the poor lad turned away, buried his face in his hands, and burst into
tears.

Doctor Henderson appeared to be too thoroughly paralysed with surprise
and consternation to say or do anything just then; but Mr Gaunt at once
rose to his feet, and, laying his hand kindly on the young fellow's
shoulder, said:

"There, don't give way, Ned, I ought not to have spoken so harshly, but
I was rather `taken aback' as you sailors say.  Sit down, my lad, and
tell us all about it, and then we must see if we cannot devise a means
to recover possession of the ship, and restore their freedom to poor
Captain Blyth and Mr Manners."

Quickly recovering his self-control, Ned seated himself on the edge of
his bunk, and briefly related to his astonished listeners all that had
occurred during the preceding night, winding up by saying:

"As to retaking the ship, I am afraid there is scarcely a chance of our
succeeding in that, for the entire crew seem to have been completely won
over by that fellow Williams, and to be thoroughly united in their
determination to try their fortunes as pirates--for that, as I
understand it, is what it all amounts to; so you see there are only our
three selves against all hands for'ard--for they seem determined to keep
poor Captain Blyth and Manners close prisoners until they can be landed
somewhere--and what can we three do against so many?  Moreover, I have
been ordered to particularly impress upon you that, whilst the mutineers
are at present extremely averse to bloodshed, anything like a suspicious
action on your part will be looked upon as premeditated treachery, _and
treated as such_.  Those were Williams' very words.  So, whilst I shall
be only too glad to take my part in any feasible scheme which you may be
able to devise, I feel it my duty to warn you that we must all act with
the utmost circumspection."

This announcement made the gentlemen look rather blank again.

"Um!" at length said Mr Gaunt.  "The further we advance with this
business the more serious does its aspect become.  I have no very great
fancy just now for being landed anywhere but at Melbourne; nevertheless,
as matters now are, I can easily conceive a state of things which would
make us glad enough to be all safely quit of the ship, even if we had to
leave her for a raft.  We must be circumspect, as you say, Ned, ay, even
to the extent of not being seen talking much together.  But we will keep
our thoughts busy, and if a scheme occurs to either of us that person
must contrive an opportunity to communicate it as briefly as may be to
the others.  Meanwhile, you will be doing good service if you can manage
to sound the better-disposed portion of the crew, with a view to
ascertaining whether it would be possible to win them back to their
allegiance.  And now, Henderson, the best thing we can do, I think, will
be to return to our respective cabins and break this news as gently as
possible to our wives; they _must_ know it--it would be quite impossible
to long conceal the fact of the mutiny from them--and we are the most
suitable bearers of the intelligence to them.  Well, good-bye for the
present, Ned, and do not forget that you may depend upon us at any hour
of the day or night.  Is not that so, Henderson?"

"Yes, certainly, of course," was the reply.  "I am too much astonished
to say much just now, but I shall not be found wanting when the time for
action arrives.  Good-bye, Ned!"

And with a cordial shake of Ned's hand, the two quiet, unpretending-
looking men filed out and re-entered their respective cabins.



CHAPTER SEVEN.

ANXIOUS DAYS.

Upon learning the news of the mutiny the ladies were, as might be
expected, overwhelmed with consternation and dismay, feelings which were
intensified when it was further intimated to them, through Ned, that
Williams intended henceforward to take up his abode in the cabin, and
that he should expect all the passengers to favour him with their
company at meals, and, in fact, whensoever he might choose to join them.
So impertinent a message naturally excited at the outset a great deal
of indignation; but Mr Gaunt--who seemed to rise to the occasion, and
who, immediately upon the occurrence of the crisis, instinctively
assumed the direction of affairs--soon brought the little party to
reason when they assembled in the saloon for a hurried conference, by
pointing out to them that, for the present, at least, they were quite
helpless, and that, therefore, instead of struggling against what was
unavoidable, their best plan would be to humour the whims of the
mutineers, so long, of course, as they were not too outrageous, and to
quietly bide their time in the hope that an opportunity might present
itself for turning the tables upon the crew.  And he emphasised his
proposition by so many convincing arguments that, when breakfast was
announced by the steward, the entire party presented themselves at
table, the ladies making such a successful effort to conceal their
perturbation as to thoroughly astonish Williams when that worthy made
his appearance and established himself at the head of the table.

"Good-morning, ladies and gentlemen," said he, making a not ungraceful
bow as he seated himself.  "Hope you all slept well."

"Thank you," said Mr Gaunt; "yes, I believe we all enjoyed a fairly
good night's rest; thanks to our ignorance of what was going forward."

"Ah, yes," answered Williams with a somewhat constrained laugh and an
obviously embarrassed manner; "yes, we took the liberty of making a
change or two for the better during the night."

"For the better?" repeated Gaunt.  "Pray how can you demonstrate that
the changes you have effected are for the better?"

"Well, I'll tell you," answered Williams.  "I'm glad you've asked, as it
gives me an opportunity to explain the why and the wherefore of our
acts, and to show you that we are not, after all, quite such villains as
I daresay you now think us.  First and foremost," he continued, "I
suppose I need not point out to gentlemen of your intelligence and
experience that sailors--foremast men, that is to say--lead the hardest
lives and are the worst paid for it of any set of men living?"

"Well," said Mr Gaunt, "without being prepared to go so far as that I
am quite willing to admit that the life of a seaman is a hard one.  But
what has that to do with your mutiny?  In the first place, I suppose you
joined the ship voluntarily; and, in the next, it seems to me, from what
I have seen, that you have been made as comfortable on board here as was
possible under the circumstances.  Your food has been good and
sufficient, your quarters are dry, airy, and comfortable, and surely it
would be difficult to find more considerate officers than Captain Blyth
and his mates?"

"All very true, so far as it goes," answered Williams, "but would _you_
like to be a seaman before the mast?"

"No," said Mr Gaunt, "I frankly admit I should not; otherwise, I
suppose I should have been a seaman, and not a civil engineer.  But the
life was of your own choosing, I presume?"

"Yes, it was, and I don't complain of it," said Williams.  "The thing I
complain of is, that, seeing what a life of hardship and peril ours is,
we do not get paid a half nor a quarter enough.  What would be the use
of ships without sailors to man them?  We are just as necessary to a
ship as her captain; yet look at the difference in his pay and ours!  I
say it is not fair; it is rank injustice; sailors have just been
_robbed_ all these years, and the long and the short of it is that the
crew of this ship means to get back part of what has been stolen from
them by the dishonesty of shipowners."

"But, my good fellow," exclaimed the engineer, "you are taking an
altogether wrong view of the question.  Admitting that you are as
necessary to the ship as her captain, you entirely overlook the
important fact that _one_ captain is sufficient for a ship, no matter
how large she may be, whilst _one_ seaman alone is of very trifling
value; hence the difference in the scale of pay."

It was clear enough from the expression of the mutineer's face that this
view of the question had never before been presented to him; he was
completely "taken aback," and for a minute or two could find absolutely
nothing to say.

"Well!" he exclaimed at last, "it is clear enough that it is no use for
an ignorant man like me to try to argue with an educated gentleman like
you; you are bound to go to wind'ard of me the very first tack, and I
was a fool for attempting it.  But there are other matters which, in my
opinion, fully justify the step we have taken."

"The fellow may _call_ himself an ignorant man, but his language is that
of a person who has enjoyed at least some of the benefits of education,"
thought Gaunt.  But he merely said:

"Indeed!  May I ask what they are?"

"Certainly.  The question is just this.  Why should I, and thousands
like me, have to work and slave for a bare living, whilst there are
others who never do a stroke of work in their whole lives and yet have
houses, and land, and money, horses and carriages--in fact, all that
heart can wish for?  Is this fair, or right, or just?"

"Assuredly it is," was the reply, "and so, I think, you will admit, if
you will give the matter a moment's consideration.  It is not your fault
or mine that you and I do not occupy the enviable position in life to
which you have just referred; it is the fault, if fault there be, of our
ancestors.  They did not happen to be money-getters, and therefore, if
we wish to enjoy the advantages attendant upon the possession of a
fortune, large or small, we must get the fortune for ourselves.  Just
look at the question for a moment from the millionaire's point of view.
If you happened to possess a fortune would you consider it fair or just
that you should be called upon to divide it evenly with everybody worse
off than yourself?  For that, I fancy, is the idea you have in your
mind."

This was another poser which Williams evidently found it wholly
impossible to answer.  He hung his head in deep and perplexed thought
for some minutes, and at length said:

"It is quite impossible for me to argue with you, as I said before; but
the long and the short of it is this, we have made our plans, and we
intend to carry them out, right or wrong.  But you need have no
apprehension for yourselves.  We have no intention to prey upon private
individuals; and though we shall be obliged to land you on some spot
from which it will be impossible for you to escape, we will deliver up
to you the whole of your private property, and also furnish you with
means to protect yourselves and to preserve your lives, so far as we
have the power."

And without waiting to discuss the question further, the mutineer rose
from the table and beat a somewhat precipitate retreat.

"Had you any hope of convincing the fellow?" asked the doctor, when the
little party once more found themselves free to converse unreservedly.

"No, I cannot say I had," answered Gaunt; "but I thought I might so far
shake his purpose as to make him hesitate about his future plans, and so
give us a little more time in which to act.  But it is evident enough
that he has no wish to be convinced; if, therefore, we are to do
anything we must make our arrangements speedily.  Come on deck and have
a smoke, old fellow."

The ladies had no fancy for being left alone just then; the entire
party, therefore, children included, adjourned to the poop.  Williams
was then standing in the waist talking to the boatswain, to whom he
appeared to be giving some instructions; but on observing the movements
of the passengers he signed to Ned, who was standing near, to follow
him, and hastily made his way into the saloon.

"Bring me the captain's charts," he said, as soon as Ned joined him.
The charts were produced; and after carefully looking them over Williams
selected a track-chart of the world, which he carefully spread out on
the table.

"Now, show me whereabouts we are," he said.

Ned indicated the position of the ship by making a pencil dot on the
paper, and a long period of anxious study on Williams' part followed.

"What is the course to the Straits of Sunda?" was the next question.

Ned told him; whereupon Williams left the saloon, and a moment later was
heard altering the course of the ship in accordance with Ned's
information.  He then returned to the saloon, and unrolled a chart of
the North Pacific, which he pored anxiously over for fully a quarter of
an hour, finally huddling the charts all together in a heap, with the
remark, "That will do for the present;" which Ned construed into a token
of dismissal, and accordingly left the cabin.

Day followed day with little or no variety, the weather continuing fine
all the time, and at length the _Flying Cloud_ arrived within a few
days' sail of the Straits of Sunda.  Ned now spent on deck every moment
he could possibly spare from sleep, as he was not without hopes that
hereabout a man-of-war might be fallen in with; and he was resolved
that, in such a case, it should go hard but he would make some effort to
communicate to her the state of affairs on board.

And, as a matter of fact, they actually did sight a frigate on the day
upon which they entered the straits.  But Williams was not to be caught
napping; he too had evidently contemplated some such possibility, and
had taken such precautions as not only rendered it impossible for anyone
to make a private signal, but had also arranged such answers to the
signals usually made on such occasions that the frigate was completely
hoodwinked, and passed on her way without attempting to send a boat
alongside.

This was a terrible disappointment, not only to Ned but also to Gaunt
and the doctor, each of them having confidently reckoned upon a certain
deliverance in the event of a man-of-war being fallen in with.

They now recognised that in Williams, whether educated or not, they had
a man of no ordinary acuteness to deal with; they realised that, though
apparently free as air to act as they pleased, an unceasing watch was
being kept upon them, and they felt that henceforth they must not place
any dependence upon the hope of help from without.  They all, therefore,
individually and collectively too, so far as they had opportunity, began
to plot and scheme; in the hope of being able to hit upon some plan
which might enable them to recover possession of the ship, going even to
the perilous length of sounding the least unpromising of the crew in the
hope of finding at least a few of them open to either persuasion or
bribery.  But it was all of no avail.  The men proved not only
unresponsive but suspicious; and they were also wholly unsuccessful in
their efforts to communicate with Captain Blyth, of whom they could not
get so much as a sight, much less speech with him.

"It is of no use for us to try any further," at last said Gaunt, when
talking matters over with the doctor.  "We have tried our best, but
Williams is too acute and too strong for us.  I have noticed a certain
something in his manner within the last day or two which tells me that
we are standing on very perilous ground, and we must drop the whole
affair before worse comes of it.  We must not forget that the women and
children have only us to look to for protection in this awful strait; it
will never do for us to attempt anything which might result in their
being left to the tender mercies of those ruffians forward.  The only
thing we can now hope for is a speedy and safe deliverance from their
clutches by being landed somewhere; and we must pray that they will be
induced to land us on some spot where we may not only be able to make
ourselves safe, but also to secure the means of living."

Meanwhile the ship passed safely through the Straits of Sunda, along the
south coast of Borneo, and so into the Java and Flores Seas; Williams
maintaining a ceaseless and anxious watch upon Ned as the lad daily
pricked off upon the chart the position of the ship, and frequently
altering the course with the evident object of inspecting certain
islands, probably to ascertain whether they were suitable for landing
his unwelcome guests upon.  Several islands were visited, but none of
them proved satisfactory.  Some were found to be inhabited by savages,
whose demonstrations at sight of the ship were so unmistakably hostile
that it would have been obviously only murder thinly disguised to have
landed any white person there, whilst others seemed deficient in the
means of sustaining life.  Wandering thus about the ocean a fortnight
passed away, and Williams began to grow impatient; so much so indeed
that he at length proposed landing the passengers on the next land seen,
let it be what it would.  But to this the crew would not agree: they
were as yet young in crime, and were determined that, since the
passengers _must_ be got rid of, they should at least be given a fair
chance.  A compromise was at length come to, by which it was agreed that
the search should be continued for three days longer, after which the
unlucky passengers were to be landed on the first land seen, there to
take their chance.  This matter was decided at a council composed of the
entire crew, on the evening of a day whereon no less than three islands
had been fruitlessly visited; and at the close of the discussion Ned was
summoned and the chart consulted.  At Williams' request the area already
examined was pointed out, and then, after much discussion, a course of
due east was decided upon, in order that a new tract of sea might be
explored.  On this course the chart showed a clear sea for something
like three hundred miles ahead of them.  Everybody was therefore much
astonished when at daybreak next morning land was descried right ahead
at a distance of only about ten miles.

The discovery was of course first reported to Williams, who seemed
greatly disconcerted by it.

"Call Ned," said he.

Ned was duly summoned, and soon made his appearance on the topgallant-
forecastle, upon which Williams had already established himself, and
from which advantageous stand-point he was watching the approach of the
ship to the land.

"What do you call that?" demanded Williams, pointing ahead, as soon as
he became conscious of Ned's presence beside him.

"Land--unmistakably land!" exclaimed Ned, shading his eyes with his hand
to get a clearer view.

"And do you know how far the ship has run during the night?" angrily
demanded the mutineer.

"Not far, I should think; perhaps fifty or sixty miles," replied Ned,
glancing aloft and away toward the horizon to note the appearance of sea
and sky.

"And did you not tell me only last night that we had a clear sea to the
eastward of us for something like three hundred miles?  Yet there is the
land; and if it had happened to blow fresh during the night we should
perhaps have run upon it before making it out in the dark.  How do you
account for your being so strangely out of your reckoning?" sternly
asked Williams.

"I am not out of my reckoning," hotly retorted Ned; "and I cannot
account for the appearance of that island except upon the supposition
that this particular portion of the ocean has never yet been thoroughly
examined, and that therefore the island ahead has never been observed
and set down on the chart.  One thing at all events is certain, and that
is that, as I said last night, the chart shows a clear sea a long way
ahead of us."

"Bring the chart to me, and let me have another look at it," growled
Williams.

Ned produced the chart and spread it out on the deck, when Williams
kneeled down and examined it for some time with very evident suspicion,
not scrupling at last to hint pretty plainly his impression that Ned had
deliberately intended to cast away the ship.  Of course Ned indignantly
repudiated any such intention, and at length apparently succeeded in
partially reassuring Williams, who finally grumbled out; "Well, if what
you say be true, the only conclusion we can come to is that yonder
island has never yet been visited by civilised beings; and if that is
the case it is all the more suitable a spot on which to land some of our
useless live lumber.  So go aft and tell the passengers to pack up their
traps at once, as I am about to put them ashore.  And tell the boatswain
to open the after-hatch and to pass these people's dunnage on deck all
ready for sending ashore with them.  I am quite tired of running about
looking for a suitable spot for them, and will look no further.  They
will have to do the best they can yonder, savages or no savages."

Ned hurried aft to the poop, on which the little group of ladies and
gentlemen was congregated, and delivered his message, adding:

"I am very glad--in some respects--that you are going, for I may now
tell you that unconsciously you have been in some sort acting as
hostages for my good behaviour, and I have been dreadfully afraid that
some involuntary slip on my part might complicate matters for you.  When
once you are all safely out of the ship I shall feel more at liberty to
take a few risks, if I can see that any good is likely to arise
therefrom.  I was at first in hopes that Captain Blyth and young Manners
would have been put on shore with you, in which case I would have joined
you, even if I had had to swim for it; but I am afraid Williams--the
scoundrel--intends to land them elsewhere, in which case I am sure it is
my duty to stick to the ship so long as they remain on board.  But, at
all events, I will try to give you the latitude and longitude of the
island before you leave us, for, if I mistake not, you, Mr Gaunt, can
navigate?"

"Yes," said Gaunt, "I am a fairly good navigator, and not a bad seaman,
in an amateurish sort of way, you know.  But do not trouble about the
position of the island.  I have here," producing his watch, "an
excellent chronometer, showing Greenwich time, and books and instruments
among my luggage which, with the aid of sun, moon, and stars, will
enable me to obtain all the information I need.  True, I have no charts;
but I have a capital atlas, which will serve our turn, so far as finding
our way from place to place is concerned.  And now, Ned, whilst we have
the opportunity, let me say that we all thoroughly understand the
peculiar and difficult position in which you are placed on board here,
and that we consider you have conducted yourself admirably and with
remarkable discretion from the very commencement of this deplorable
business of the mutiny.  And if, as is by no means improbable, you
should by and by find yourself involved by your involuntary association
with these mutineers in a situation of difficulty or peril, we shall be
most happy and willing to bear testimony to that effect, if we happen to
be in a situation to do so.  We shall of course endeavour to escape from
our island prison; and should we succeed, our first act on reaching a
civilised country will be to make to the authorities a full and detailed
report of all the circumstances of the mutiny, so that a man-of-war may
be sent out in quest of the ship.  But I think it will be well for _you_
to do the same, for your own sake.  You can perhaps manage it by writing
an account of the transaction, sealing it up in a bottle, and throwing
the bottle overboard when you happen to be in some well-frequented ship
track; not forgetting to state in your report the position of the island
on which we are landed, as well as that of the spot on which poor
Captain Blyth and young Manners may be put on shore.  And now, as we may
not have another opportunity to say it, good-bye, my dear lad, remain
honest and true to your duty, as you have been hitherto, and leave all
the rest to God, who will not allow you to suffer for the faults of
others.  Good-bye, Ned, and God bless and guide and deliver you from all
evil.  Amen."

Gaunt then shook Ned heartily by the hand, after which the others
stepped forward one by one and did the same, each saying a hopeful word
or two to cheer and encourage him under the pang of parting, which it
was evident enough the poor lad felt keenly.  Sibylla hung back until
all the others, the poor children included, had spoken their farewell,
and then she too advanced and held out her hand.  She was very pale, and
the small shapely trembling hand which Ned grasped in his was icy cold;
but however keenly she may have felt the parting under such terrible
circumstances she contrived to maintain at least a semblance of outward
composure, though there was a tremor in her voice which she found it
quite impossible to control.  She murmured a few low half-inarticulate
words of farewell, gave Ned's hand a slight involuntary pressure ere she
released it, and then hastily retreated to her state-room.

As for poor Ned, on releasing Sibylla's hand he turned and staggered out
of the cabin, looking like a man who had been suddenly struck a numbing
blow, and feeling as he might have felt had the saloon been a felon's
dock in which he had just received his death-sentence.  This miserable
parting, though he had been constantly expecting it any time within the
previous fortnight, and though he honestly believed--as he had said--
that he was glad of it, now seemed to have come upon him with startling
suddenness, and it had called up with it an unexpected feeling of bitter
anguish for which he was wholly unprepared, and for which he found it
difficult to account.  It was not, he thought, that he had conceived for
these people an exceptionally warm friendship; he had made many friends
during his sea-going career for whom he had felt quite as strong a
regard, yet when the time for it came he had been able to say farewell
with a cheery voice and a comparatively light heart.  But now it seemed
altogether a different matter; though the sun still shone brilliantly,
as of old, and the warm soft wind still roughened the sapphire sea and
caused it to laugh and sparkle as joyously as ever, the whole world
looked dark, cheerless, and gloomy to him, and he felt as though he had
suddenly become the victim of some terrible calamity.  In the endeavour
to get rid of the horrible feeling of depression which had thus
unaccountably seized upon him, Ned went and hunted up the boatswain, and
delivered Williams' order respecting the removal of the passengers'
baggage from the hold; after which he mounted the poop, on which
Williams had by this time stationed himself.  But, actuated by the new
and peculiar feeling which was just then so strongly asserting itself
within his breast, the lad could think only of the mysterious island
ahead, and of those who were so soon to be landed upon it; and his
imagination, powerfully stimulated as it just then was, already pictured
the little party abandoned there, and reduced to the most primitive
state of self-dependence, given over to battle for their very existence
as best they might: houseless, exposed to a thousand perils, and
destitute of even the commonest necessaries of life until such could be
provided by their own exertions.  There was one--and only one--grain of
comfort to brighten the gloomy prospect as it presented itself to Ned's
mental vision, which was that Mr Gaunt seemed to be a man of infinite
resource; one of those extremely rare individuals who can never be taken
wholly by surprise, and who no sooner find themselves confronted by a
difficulty than they are ready with a remedy for it.  The doctor, too,
though a singularly quiet and unassuming man, struck Ned as one who, his
work once fairly cut out for him, would go manfully through with it.
But what could two men, however resolute, do in the position they would
soon occupy, unless well provided with arms, ammunition, and tools?
And, determined to let slip no opportunity to help those in whom he was
so strongly interested, the lad turned to Williams and said:

"As I suppose you do not intend to turn these people adrift without
arms, or the tools with which to construct for themselves some sort of a
shelter, would it not be well to look up a few things for them at once,
so that the ship may not be detained in a position of danger when the
landing takes place?"

"Arms! tools!" growled Williams.  "Who spoke of supplying them with
either?"

"Nobody," answered Ned; "but you cannot surely be thinking of putting
them ashore without them?"

"Now, supposing that you had the management of this job," snarled
Williams, "what would you give them?"

"Well," said Ned, "I should let them have one of those spare topsails
out of the sail-room; a couple of rifles apiece, including the women,
with plenty of ammunition, two or three axes, a hammer or two, and a few
bags of nails."

"Oh! you would, eh?" sneered Williams.  "And what use do you suppose all
those things would be to them?"

"The sail," said Ned, "would serve them for a tent until they could
build a house, the tools would enable them to build the house, and the
arms would give them a chance to defend themselves if attacked, as well
as to provide themselves with food."

"Well, yes, that's true," answered Williams, rather reluctantly.  "Very
well," he continued, "go and rout the things out; and let me see them
when you have got them together."

Without waiting to give the fellow a chance to change his mind, Ned
hurried off, and summoning the boatswain and his gang to his assistance,
soon had the topsail on deck; after which he procured the keys of the
arm-chest and selected not ten but a dozen rifles, fitted with bayonets,
a goodly stock of ammunition, three new axes with helves complete, a
couple of shovels, two hammers, half a dozen bags of nails, mostly
large, a coil of inch rope, an adze, and a quantity of tinware--as less
liable to breakage than crockery.  And, as a suitable finish to the
whole, he topped off with a case which he routed out from the lazarette,
and which bore on its side the legend "assorted tinned meats."

Breakfast was by this time ready; and on its being announced, Williams
ordered Ned to take charge of the deck, and, in the event of anything
noteworthy occurring, to report to him at once.  Ned was by no means
sorry to be thus left to himself for a short time; but, fully alive to
the exceptional nature of the responsibility laid upon him at that
particular moment, deemed his proper position just then to be in the
fore-top.  And, first procuring his telescope, thither he quickly made
his way.

The ship was by this time within about five miles of the land; and the
first thing the lad noticed, on reaching his more elevated post, was
that the sea was breaking heavily all along the shore.  Hailing the
boatswain, who was on deck, Ned instructed that functionary to report
this circumstance to Williams, who, in consequence, soon made his
appearance on deck again.

"Fore-top, there!" he hailed; "how far are the breakers off the shore?"

"About a mile, I should say," answered Ned.

"Do they look too heavy for a boat to go through them?" was the next
inquiry.

"Yes," answered Ned; "there is nothing but white water all along this
side of the island."

"Very well," said Williams, "stay where you are, and keep your eyes
peeled; we must try the lee side of the island, that's all.  Lay aft
here, my lads, and man the lee braces.  Down with your helm, there, you
sir, and let her come by the wind.  Brace sharp up, my bullies; we
mustn't leave the hooker's bones on yon island if we can help it.  Well,
there! belay all!  How is that, Ned; shall we weather the southernmost
point, think ye?"

"Yes," answered Ned, "and plenty to spare, if there is no current to set
us to leeward."

The island was now to leeward of the ship, stretching along the horizon
on her larboard beam, the northern extremity being well on her quarter,
whilst the southern end, with an outlying reef, lay about three points
on her lee-bow.  Anxious to see and learn as much as possible of the
place which was to be the--possibly life-long--abode of those who had
suddenly seemed so dear to him, Ned again had recourse to his telescope,
with which he forthwith proceeded to carefully scan the island.

It measured, from north to south, about six miles, as nearly as the lad
could estimate it; what its measurement might be in the other direction
it was not then possible to say.  The land was very high, especially
toward the centre of the island; and one of the first things which
attracted Ned's attention was a remarkable cliff, apparently quite
perpendicular, which traversed the island from north to south, seemingly
about four hundred feet high, and which sprang sheer out of the ridge of
a lofty hill which appeared to form the back-bone, as it were, of the
island.  This cliff seemed to Ned to divide the island into two distinct
parts; for it terminated, both to north and to south, in a terrific
precipice falling sheer down to the sea, which foamed and chafed at its
base.  This gave the island a most peculiar appearance, suggesting the
idea that at some distant period of the world's history a mighty
convulsion had occurred, rending the rocks violently asunder and forcing
a portion of them--namely, that which formed the land in sight--far
above the level of the rest.  To the eastward, or landward of the
remarkable cliff already referred to, Ned could see the steep conical
summit of a lofty mountain, apparently about four miles inland; but the
cliff was too high to allow of his seeing any other portion of the
island beyond it.  The land was covered with wood from the base of the
cliff clear down to the inner margin of the beach, and, with the aid of
his glass, Ned could detect the feathery fronds of cocoanut and other
palms, as well as the less lofty foliage of the useful banana.
Meanwhile, the ship had by this time reached a point which enabled the
lad to make out that the long line of breakers which had first attracted
his attention inclosed a bay about a mile wide and nearly that depth,
the water of which was quite smooth and unbroken inside the inner line
of breakers.  And whilst examining this bay, with the idea that a
knowledge of it might be useful to his friends, Ned's eye was arrested
by an object on the inner edge of the reef, and almost in smooth water,
which a more careful inspection showed him to be a wreck.  This
discovery he determined not to report, but to communicate, if possible,
to the little party before they were landed.  And, to make more certain
of being able to do so, he there and then tore a leaf out of his pocket-
book and jotted down a few notes respecting his observations, which he
thought they might be glad to have.

At length the ship handsomely weathered the most southerly extremity of
the island, this proving to be a bold projection in a vertical cliff,
the summit of which towered in some places to a height of nearly sixteen
hundred feet above the sea.  This cliff extended along the whole
southern seaboard of the island, towering highest at the point where it
met the curious transverse cliff before mentioned, and gradually
becoming lower as it neared the eastern end of the island, which now
showed itself to be about eleven miles in length from east to west.
With the exception of the mountain, the conical top of which Ned had
seen over the summit of the transverse cliff, that cliff seemed to be
the highest part of the island; though the rest of it was also hilly,
gradually sloping, however, to the eastward until it terminated in a
beautiful white sandy beach, on which Ned soon saw that a landing might
be effected without difficulty.

As soon as Ned had piloted the ship into a position where she might be
hove-to with safety, Williams called him down on deck, on reaching which
he was summoned aft.

"Now then!" exclaimed Williams, "let's give this cargo"--pointing to
Ned's collection of miscellaneous articles for the passengers'
benefit--"an overhaul.  You seem quite determined that they shall not
want for much, by the look of it."

"Of course not; why should they?" demanded Ned.  "They are not going on
shore to please themselves, but to please you; and it is only right that
they should be supplied with everything necessary to make themselves
thoroughly comfortable.  They ought not to be allowed to want for
_anything_."

Williams admitted that there was some truth in that argument; and, after
inquiring what uses certain of the articles were expected to be put to,
ordered the boat to be lowered and manned, and everything to be passed
down into her.  When this came to be done, however, there proved to be,
with the luggage, too much for one boat; so, rather than incur the delay
which would be entailed by the making of a second trip, Williams, with
many expressions of dissatisfaction and impatience, ordered the second
quarter-boat to be lowered.

At length everything was pronounced to be in the boats; and nothing
remained but for the passengers themselves to pass down over the side.
They had, previously to this, asked and been refused permission to say
farewell to Captain Blyth, there was therefore nothing further to detain
them, and Mr Gaunt now advanced to the gangway, where he paused for a
moment in order to protest formally against being thus landed in a part
of the world from which there seemed little or no hope of their being
able to effect their escape.  The protest was, of course, utterly
ineffectual, as they quite expected it would be--indeed it was only made
because they wished it to be clearly understood by all hands that they
were not leaving the ship of their own free-will--and when the engineer
had finished speaking, all that Williams said in reply was:

"That is all right.  And now, as there is a fairish amount of swell
running, I would recommend you two gentlemen to go down into the boat
first, so as to help the ladies and children down, and to see that none
of them fall overboard."

This was such sound advice that the engineer at once followed it, Ned at
the same time pressing forward, and, under cover of a pretence of
wishing to shake hands with him for the last time, slipped into his hand
the pencil note he had prepared.  The transfer was effected unobserved;
and the doctor next stepping forward, soon found himself safely in the
boat beside his friend.  The children were next carefully handed down by
Ned; after which, at a sign from Williams, first Mrs Gaunt and then
Mrs Henderson followed.  There now remained only Sibylla to complete
the party; and she was in the act of advancing to the gangway, when--to
the unspeakable dismay of those most concerned--Williams, who was
standing on the rail, gave the order for both boats to shove off, at the
same moment leaping down off the rail on deck.  His extraordinary order
must have been anticipated, so promptly was it obeyed; and before even
Gaunt could recover from his momentary surprise, the boats were fifty
yards away from the ship and heading for the shore, whilst the cries of
the hapless deserted girl rang fearfully out over the water after them.

The feeling of dismay naturally excited in the breasts of the
unfortunate passengers by this singular episode was of the briefest
possible duration, and was immediately succeeded by one of vexed
astonishment, that by what seemed like a cruel and inexcusably careless
oversight, a sensitive girl should have been subjected to even the most
temporary alarm; and whilst Mrs Henderson started to her feet with
clasped hands and wide-open startled eyes, Gaunt laid his hand on the
tiller, and jammed it hard over, as he exclaimed authoritatively:

"Back water, the starboard oars! pull, the port! round with her, men!
You have left Miss Stanhope behind!"

The men, looking surprisedly at each other, proceeded to obey the order,
upon which the new second-mate, who was in charge of the boat, started
to his feet, and prefacing the inquiry with an oath, demanded:

"Now then, you sodgers, what are you about?  Who commands this here
boat?  Give way, you swabs, and bend your backs to it, too, or there'll
be trouble for some of you when you gets back to the ship.  It's all
right, sir," he continued, addressing Gaunt; "the young lady is to stay
where she is.  It was all arranged by Williams and a few more of us
about half an hour ago, whilst you was all busy packing up your traps in
the cabin.  The fact is like this here: None of us foremast hands
understands anything about navigation, so we've been obliged to press
young Ned into the sarvice; and we knows as how his heart ain't in the
job, and Williams sort of suspects that he'd play us a scurvy trick if
he dared.  As long as you was with us he was all right, because, d'ye
see, Williams told him that if he played us false you'd be made to
suffer for it; but it suddenly struck him just now that when you was all
put ashore where should we be?  So he and two or three more of us had a
palaver together, and the long and the short of it is that we decided to
keep the young woman with us as a `hostage,' Williams calls it, whereby
we shall keep the whip hand of the lad, as you may say.  So all her
dunnage was passed down into the after-hold again on the quiet, and if
there's anything of hers in either of the boats we've got to take it
back aboard again.  And Williams' very last orders was that I was to be
sure to tell you that you wasn't to worry about the young lady, because
we've all agreed that she shall be treated as a passenger with the
greatest possible respect, and not be interfered with by anybody."

"Oh, my poor sister--my poor lost sister!" moaned Mrs Henderson,
burying her face in her hands as she burst into a passion of hysterical
tears; and whilst Mrs Gaunt did her best to soothe and comfort her
unfortunate friend, Doctor Henderson and the engineer sought by every
means in their power to induce the boat's crew to return to the ship and
give them an opportunity to try their persua

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