"Bob Strong's Holidays" (continued 5)

This made Bob a bit ashamed, and he began to climb down again from the rigging, looking gingerly the while over the side, as if expecting every minute that the terrible monster of the deep which his imagination had pictured would spring up and seize him.

“I—I—was afraid,” he faltered. “I—I—thought it best to get out of the way.”

“So it seems,” said the old sailor grimly. “It’s lucky, though, that every one was not of the same mind; or where would we all be! Dick, where’s that hatchet I gave you this morning to put into the boat?”

“It’s in the after locker, sir.”

“Look smart, then,” cried the Captain excitedly. “Bear a hand and get it at once.”

At this order, Dick, who, like Bob, had thought “discretion the better part of valour,” and got behind the windlass, in order to have some substantial obstacle between himself and the trawl-net which the Captain, with Mr Dugald Strong’s aid, had partly dragged into the well of the cutter, now crawled out from his retreat; and keeping over well to leeward on the other side of the boom, proceeded to the locker in the stern-sheets, from whence he took out a small axe and handed it to Captain Dresser.

“Ha!” ejaculated the old sailor, as he gripped the weapon tightly and belaboured with the back of it, using all the vigour of his still nervous right arm, the bag, or “pocket” of the net, in which the body of some big fish was seen to be entangled; although neither its form nor appearance could be distinctly distinguished, the folds and meshes being so tightly wrapped round it. “I’ll soon settle him!”

“Hold hard!” shouted out Bob’s father, at about the second blow with the head of the axe over the gunwale. “You very nearly cut my arm off then! Lucky for me you were not using the edge of your hatchet.”

“Beg your pardon, I’m sure,” apologised the Captain. “But these brutes are uncommonly tough.”

“More than my arm is,” said Mr Strong ruefully, rubbing this member tenderly. “What sort of beast is it—not a real shark, surely? I always imagined those beggars to be very much bigger.”

“No,” replied the other, satisfied from the net being now still that he had “settled” his victim. “It is what is called a ‘fox-shark,’ or dog-fish.”

“Ah,” exclaimed Bob, climbing down from the rigging now that he saw all danger was over, “I thought I heard it bark just like a dog when you and dad hauled up the trawl.”

“So did I,” chimed in Nellie, likewise coming to the stern again from her place of refuge. “It sounded just like Rover’s bark when he’s sometimes shut up for being naughty.”

“You are both right,” said the Captain, who, with the assistance of their father, had now lifted the beam and net over the side into the well of the boat and was busy unfolding the meshes of the net. “The brute not only barks, but bites, too, if he gets a chance.”

“Oh!” cried Bob and Nell together; and they, with Dick, waited anxiously to see the monster disclosed—a deep-drawn “O-o-oh!”

“There!” ejaculated the Captain a moment after, when he had extracted the dead body of the dog-fish, nearly five feet long, from the net and turned it over with his foot so that they should see its wide shark-mouth and rows of little teeth set on edge, looking like so many small-tooth combs arranged parallel to each other. “What do you say to that for a nibble, eh?”

“Is it any good?” asked the barrister, thinking that the dog-fish had a sort of resemblance to a good-sized pike, with the exception of course of its head, which, however, the old sailor had so battered about with his hatchet that the animal would not have been recognised by its nearest relative. “Not up to much, I should think!”

“Well, I have heard of sailors eating shark on a pinch, but I’ve got no stomach for it myself; and all it’s fit for is to be chucked overboard,” replied the Captain, carrying out his suggestion without further delay, grumbling as he added— “The brute has spoilt our haul, too, confound it, and damaged our net!”

It was as the Captain said, there being nothing found in the pocket of the trawl, beyond the carcase he had just consigned to its native element, save some mud and a few oyster-shells.

Fortunately, though, the dog-fish had not done quite so much harm as he might; and, after mending a few rents by tying them together with pieces of sennet, which the old sailor had taken the precaution of having ready for such purpose beforehand, the trawl-net was as good as ever, allowing them to “shoot” it again for another dredge.

This time it remained down till the tide turned, a good three hours at least; and the hopes of all were high in expectation when they commenced hauling it in.

“What do you think we’ll catch now?” asked Nell. “Eh, Captain?”

“Well, not a whale, missy,” said the Captain, with his customary chuckle, which to him formed almost a part of his speech. “Still, I fancy we ought to pick up something this time better than a dog-fish.”

These doubts were solved anon; for after a terrible long interval of heaving round the windlass, at which Mr Strong groaned greatly, declaring that his back felt broken from having to stoop nearly double so as to keep out of the way of the swinging boom of the cutter, which swayed to and fro as she rolled about in the tideway, the end of the trawl-beam once more hove in sight alongside, bobbing up endwise out of the water.

“Belay!” sang out the Captain on seeing it, taking a turn with a coil of the rope round the windlass-head to secure it, lest it might whirl round and let the trawl go to the bottom again before they could hoist it inboard. “That will do now, Strong; if you’ll bear a hand we’ll get our spoil in.”

Thereupon he and the barrister leant over the side of the boat as before; and, catching hold of either end of the trawl-beam, they lifted it over the gunwale.

The Captain then swished the folds of the net vigorously, so as to shake what fish might have become entangled in the meshes into the pocket at the end, Bob and Nellie, and likewise Dick, watching the operations with the keenest interest. “Now,” cried the sailor, “we shall see what we shall see!” So saying, he and Mr Strong raised up the net pocket, which was a goodish big bundle and seemed, from its heavy weight, to contain a large number of fish, for it throbbed and pulsated with their struggles; when, cutting with his clasp-knife the stout piece of cord with which the small end of the pocket was tied, the Captain shook out its living contents on the bottom boards in the well—Nell giving a shriek and springing up on one of the thwarts as a slimy sole floundered across her foot, thinking perhaps it was a fellow sole!

She was not frightened, however, only alarmed; and, the next moment, she was inspecting with as much curiosity as the others the motley collection that had been brought up from the sea.

“Not a bad lot, eh?” observed the Captain critically, poking the fish about with the end of his stick, which he took off the seat for the purpose. “I see we’ve got some good soles, besides that little chap that took a fancy to you, missy.”

“I didn’t mind it,” said Miss Nell courageously, now that she knew that there was nothing much to be frightened of. “It was cold and wet, poor thing; but I knew it would not hurt me.”

“Ah, but you screamed though!” retorted the sailor waggishly, as he turned to her father. “Say, Strong, do you know what to do with a sole, eh?”

“Why, eat it, I suppose,” replied the other laughing. “I don’t think you can better that, eh?”

“Yes, that’s all right, no doubt,” said the Captain, a little bit grumpy at being caught up in that way. “I mean how to cook it properly?”

“Boil it,” suggested the barrister, at a loss how to answer the question satisfactorily. “I should think that the simplest plan.”

“Boil it?” repeated the Captain in a voice of horror; “boil your grandmother!”

“Well, you must really excuse me,” said the barrister, as well as he could speak from laughing; while Bob and Nell went into fits at the idea of their poor old “Gran” being cooked in so summary a fashion. “I’m good at a knife and fork, but really I don’t know anything of cooking.”

“I see you don’t,” replied the old sailor triumphantly, his good-humour restored at being able to put the other “up to a wrinkle,” as he said; “but I’ll tell you. The best way, Strong, to do a sole is to grill him as quickly as you can over a clear fire. About five minutes is enough for the transaction; and then, with a squeeze of lemon and a dash of cayenne, you’ve got a dish fit for a king! No bread-crumbs or butter or any of that French fiddlery, mind, or you’ll spoil him!”

“I’ll remember your recipe should I ever chance to turn cook,” said Mr Strong. “I should think it ought to taste uncommonly good.”

“By Jove, you shall try it, this very afternoon!” cried the old sailor energetically. “Dick, see that the gridiron is clean, for we’ll want it by and by. Hullo, though, I’m forgetting about the rest of our catch. Let us see what we’ve got.”

While the Captain had been talking to their father, Bob and Nellie had been rummaging in the bottom of the boat, trying to make out the different fish; but, from the fact of all being coated with mud, of which the trawl’s pocket was pretty well filled, in addition to its live occupants, these latter seemed all so similar at first glance as to resemble those two negro gentlemen, Pompey and Caesar, described by a sable brother as being “berry much alike, ’specially Pompey!”

However, the old sailor soon sorted them out.

“Half-a-dozen pair of good soles, eh? That will be a treat for your aunt Polly,” he said to Miss Nell, pitching the fish as he picked them out carelessly on one side. “Some odd flounders, too, I see. They’re nearly as good as our soles; and, I see also a lot of plaice and dabs, which are not bad, fried, when you can’t get anything better in the same line, and—hullo, by jingo, don’t touch that!”

“Why, Captain?” inquired Bob, who had just taken up in his hands a soft, jelly-like, flabby thing that appeared as if it were a little white owl, some ten or twelve inches high, without any particular head or wings to speak of, although it had a short black beak, resembling a parrot’s, projecting from out of its livid-hued fleshy body. “What is it?”

“It’s a cuttle-fish,” cried the old sailor. “Drop it, my boy, at once! or—”

He spoke too late; for at the same moment, the cuttle-fish deluged Bob with the inky fluid which nature has provided it with as a means of hiding its whereabouts in the water from its enemies, and from which the Romans obtained their celebrated “Tyrian dye.”

Nell, also, came in for a share of this over her dress, which did not by any means improve its appearance.

“Never mind, though;” said the Captain to them both, by way of consolation. “What’s done can’t be helped!”

“Ah!” remarked their father slily, “if you had been looking after the net, instead of instructing me in cookery, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“You’re quite right, Strong,” replied the other, with an air of great contrition; albeit his eyes twinkled with fun and his manner was not quite that of a repentant sinner. “I’ve neglected my duties shamefully.”

With these words he set to work anew, disinterring a large skate weighing over twelve pounds from amidst the mud and refuse brought up by the trawl.

The gills of this fish, in the centre of its globular body, had the most extraordinary likeness to a human face; and as the queer-looking creature puffed out these gills, it appeared, as Mr Strong pointed out, just like a fat old gentleman taking a glass of some rare and highly-recommended wine and “washing his mouth out” so as to taste it properly.

“Oh, papa, how funny!” exclaimed Nell. “It is just like that, too! But look, Captain, there’s a ‘soldier crab,’ isn’t it?”

“Yes, my dear, and we’ll keep him for your aquarium; as well as some new sea-anemones and another zoophyte I see here, too. This chap is christened the ‘alcyonium’ by learned naturalists, but is called ‘dead man’s fingers’ by the fisher-folk along shore.”

“What a horrid name!” interposed Nellie, shuddering—“a horrid name!”

“It is so named,” continued the Captain, “because the creature has the advantage of having several bodies instead of one, all radiating from a single stem, like fingers or toes. But now, I think, there’s nothing much of any good left of our shoot, save a few oysters. Those will come in handy presently, eh, Strong?”

“Yes, I shan’t mind,” replied the barrister. “I’m beginning to have an appetite, I think.”

“We’ll have luncheon at once then,” said the old sailor with alacrity, as if this would be a labour of love. “I’m not beginning to have an appetite, because I’ve got one already, and a precious good one, too! Do you think you can pick a bit if you try, eh, young people?”

“Yes, please,” replied Nell. Master Bob’s response was a shout of “Rather,” fully indicative of his feelings; while Dick grinned so much that his face was a study as he said “Y–es, sir, sure-ly!”

Taking all these evidences as proof of the unanimity of the company on the subject, the Captain, all helping, at once set about the preparations for the coming feast. He first, however, tied up the pocket of the trawl again, preparatory to heaving it overboard; so that they could “kill two birds with one stone,” as he said, and be fishing and eating at the same time.

Each had something to do after this important operation.

Dick began by scraping some soles which the Captain selected from the number he had put aside for Mrs Gilmour. Next, Master Bob washed these in a bucket of water he had procured from over the side of the cutter in sailor fashion; and then handing them to the Captain, who officiated as “master of the kitchen,” over the gridiron in the “fo’c’s’le,”—the old sailor cooked away quite cheerfully, in spite of having to bend himself almost in two in the little cabin in order to attend to his task properly, his zeal preventing him for the moment from feeling any inconvenience from stooping so much.

Nell, who had been debarred from any share in preparing the fish or looking after its grilling, which, certainly, she would infinitely have preferred, contented herself with arranging the four small plates which were all that the cutter’s locker contained in the way of crockery-ware, besides a similar number of cups of various hues and shapes.

All of these articles the young lady set out systematically on a board which the Captain fixed across the thwarts to serve as a table; while, as for Mr Strong, all he did in the way of assistance was to set himself down on the most comfortable seat he could find in the stern-sheets, where, lighting his pipe, he beguiled the weary moments until lunch should be ready as best he could, smoking and thinking!

He had not to wait long; for presently, with much dignity the Captain served up his first instalment of soles, which were declared by the barrister to be so good that another cooking was necessary; aye, and another too after that, until there was not a single sole left.

“Poor aunt Polly!” exclaimed Nellie, laughing merrily when they were all consumed, and the bones of the fish chucked overboard to feed their brethren below. “All her soles are gone! What shall we tell her?”

“Why, that we ate them,” said the Captain, starting the laugh, and all joining in.

Dick, who was at the moment devouring the last crust of bread left, after finishing his portion of the fish, nearly choked himself by bursting into a guffaw while in the act of swallowing; so, this necessitated the Captain’s administering to him a cup of sea-water wherewith to wash down the morsel sticking in his throat, which did not taste nice after grilled sole, though the Captain said it was “as good as grog.”

They did not have much sport after luncheon, the next cast of the net bringing up nothing but boulders and mud, besides an old bottle that must have been dropped into the sea years before and, mayhap, went down with Kempenfeldt in the Royal George; for it was encrusted with seaweed and barnacles of almost a century’s growth.

After a bit, seeing that nothing further was to be gained by stopping out at sea, drifting with the tide alternately between the Nab and Warner light-ships, like Mahomet’s coffin between heaven and earth, the Captain hauled up the trawl and bore away back homeward as well as he could with a foul wind, having to make several tacks before fetching the cutter’s moorings off the coastguard-station.

In spite of this, however, they reached “the Moorings” in time for dinner; when, notwithstanding their hearty luncheon, no deficiency of appetite could be observed in any of the party.

Bob and Nellie were, of course, delighted with their experiences of the day; for, in addition to the joys of trawling and festive picnic on the water, which they thought even better than their previous one on land, they brought home a splendid “soldier crab,” who caused much subsequent amusement when admitted to the aquarium, two new specimens of sea-anemones, and the “dead man’s fingers,” whose name made their aunt Polly shiver, the good lady declaring it “quite uncanny, sure.”

Their mother, however, was not quite so well-pleased with the result of the expedition.

“There, I told you so!” she exclaimed, on catching sight of them, with the stains of the cuttle-fish plainly visible on their clothes. “You will never wish to wear this suit again, Bob; and, dear, dear, look at your dress, Nellie!”

“It’s not so bad, mamma,” pleaded she. “I only got a little of it.”

“A little of what?”

“The Tyrian dye, Captain Dresser called it, from the cuttle-fish,” explained Bob, who seemed to treat the matter more lightly than the spoiling of his shirt-front and jacket deserved in Mrs Strong’s opinion. “It’s quite classical, mother—so the Captain said when I got squelched with it.”

“Really, I wish Captain Dresser would not make experiments with his dyes when you two are near him,” said she, very plaintively. “He hasn’t to look after your clothes, as I have.”

Nell smiled at her mother’s mistake, while Master Bob fairly screeched with laughter.

“Why, it wasn’t the Captain who did it,” he shouted out gleefully. “It was the cuttle-fish that squirted over us.”

Then, on the whole story being told her, Mrs Strong exonerated the Captain.

But not so Mrs Gilmour, when she learnt the history of the soles, which had been specially set aside for her and afterwards eaten.

“Oh, you cormorants!” she cried, pretending to be in a great rage. “Fancy eating my soles! Did you ever hear of such a thing? Captain Dresser, I’ll never forgive you!”

“Don’t be so hard-hearted,” said he imploringly. “If you only knew how hungry we were, I’m sure you would forgive us with your usual good-nature.”

“I’m not so certain of that,” replied she. “’Deed, and I won’t.”

“Besides, we enjoyed them so, do you know,” continued the old sailor, chuckling away at a fine rate. “Sure they were mighty fine, ma’am. The best soles I ivver ate, sure.”

“That makes the matter worse, you robber!” she retorted, smiling good-naturedly at his broad mimicry of her Irish pronunciation. “Why, ye’re adding insult now to injury, sure.”

“Never mind, Polly,” interposed her brother, acting as peacemaker between the two. “The Captain will show you how to cook soles properly the next time he catches any.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Gilmour drily, “if he doesn’t ate them first.”

“By Jove, I promise not to do that, ma’am, for I don’t like ’em raw,” replied the offender, keeping up the fun, and not one whit abashed by these comments on his behaviour. “Really, though, ma’am, I think you ought to forgive me now, and banish your hard feelings, as you’ve given me a wigging. Besides, if we did eat all the soles, I’ve brought you home a fine big skate, and lots of plaice, instead.”

“Sure, I’ll consider about it,” said his hostess, showing signs of relenting. “But don’t you think, now, skates are rather out of place in this warm weather, eh, Captain?”

Chapter Twenty Two.

Missing!

“Humph! that makes the rubber,” cried the Captain late one evening, some little time after the events recorded in the last chapter, when they were winding up the day with a game of whist, which had succeeded the nightly battle of cribbage wherewith Mrs Gilmour and the old sailor used to amuse their leisure before the advent of the barrister and Mrs Strong on the scene. “What say all you good people to a trip to Southampton to-morrow? There will be an excursion steamer running there in the morning, starting from the old pier at ten o’clock sharp, I think.”

“All right; now you’ve beaten us, I suppose you want to appear generous, and divert our attention from our defeat,” said Mrs Dugald Strong, with a fine touch of sarcasm, as the Captain chuckled over the odd trick, and collected the spoils of war, in the shape of sundry little fish-counters, which he and his partner, aunt Polly, had won, through the old sailor’s successful manipulation of the cards. “I believe we’ve seen all that is to be seen in the isle of Wight.”

“Indade you have,” corroborated Mrs Gilmour. “We’ve been everywhere in the sweet little place—no wonder it’s called the ‘garden of England’! Sure we’ve seen everything, from the broken grating of the window which poor Charles the First was unable to squaze himself through at Carisbrook Castle, being too fat, poor man, down to the hawthorn-bush at Faringford over against Beacon Down atop of the Needles, where Tennyson used to hide his long clay pipes after smoking them, before going out for his walk on the cliff. Sure, and I don’t think, Dugald, there’s anything more for ye to see there at all, at all!”

“Oh, auntie, you have forgotten ‘little Jane’s’ grave in the pretty old churchyard at Brading, and the cottage in which the good ‘dairyman’s daughter’ lived at Arreton,” chimed in Nellie, who was more romantic. “Yes, and those dear little Swiss villas too, at Totland Bay, aunt Polly, peeping out from the fir-trees and bracken, with the fuchsias like big trees in their front gardens, and the scarlet geraniums growing wild in the hedgerows!”

“Ah,” said Master Bob, “I liked the smugglers’ cave at Ventnor. I wish they hadn’t boarded it up, so that a fellow can’t see where they used to hide the cargoes of silk and lace and kegs of brandy the French luggers brought across from Saint Malo—wasn’t that where they ran them from, Captain?”

“Aye,” replied the old sailor. “They don’t now, though, my boy. Our coastguardsmen are too sharp for that, and the mounseers have to find another market for their goods! But are you all agreed about our paying a visit to Southampton to-morrow, my friends?”

“It’s a long voyage,” observed Mrs Gilmour, who, although she had forsworn her resolve anent excursion steamers in her desire not to interpose any selfish obstacle, such as her own wishes, to the enjoyment of the others during their holiday by the sea in proper seafaring fashion, yet could not forget the Bembridge Belle catastrophe. “Are you sure the vessel is safe?”

“Oh yes,” answered the Captain. “She’s one of the regular boats, and is as safe as a man-of-war.”

“Then we may consider the expedition arranged,” said Mrs Strong, who, being anxious to see the city of the great Saint Bevis, had no objection to the trip up Southampton Water; for, having been already across the Solent, and even voyaged round the Isle of Wight, so to speak, without feeling sea-sick or qualmish, she was confident of being a ‘born sailor,’ as the saying goes, and thus only too pleased to have an opportunity of testing her new experiences further. “If you say it is safe, Captain Dresser, neither Polly nor any of us need be alarmed, I am sure.”

The next morning, as the steamer was advertised to start punctually at the hour fixed, Bob was warned of his not having much time to spare when setting out for his bathe before breakfast with the good dog Rover.

“Oh, I’ll be back in plenty of time,” was his boastful reply. “I’ll take some bread-and-butter with me for breakfast, and get a cup of milk from the apple-woman on the beach; and shall be at the pier waiting for you before you leave the house.”

“Take care, my boy; we’re rather late this morning, and you are running it pretty close,” said his father, looking at his watch, as the young gentleman was scampering through the hall. “You won’t have half-an-hour altogether to spare.”

But, Bob was obstinate, and away he went across the common, with Rover at his heels.

“I know he will be late,” sighed Mrs Strong, looking after him. “I know he will be late.”

“Well, if he is, he will be left behind, that’s all I can say,” said his father, with decision. “I’m afraid Master Bob has too much of his own way; and, it is just as well he should be taught a lesson sometimes.”

Thus giving his fiat, Mr Strong, apparently dismissing Bob for the present from his mind, hurried the preparations of the others, so that they, at least, should be in good time; and, some twenty minutes after the truant had left, he and Mrs Strong and his sister, with Nellie, started for the pier, arriving there just as the Captain came up in a great hurry, stepping along as briskly as he and his malacca cane could get over the ground.

“Where’s Bob?” he at once asked, missing the absentee. “Where’s Bob?”

“He’s gone to bathe,” replied poor Nell, very disconsolately. “He said he’d get here as soon as we did, but he hasn’t come yet, and I’m afraid he’ll be too late.”

“That he will,” said the Captain, looking equally distressed. “I hear the steamer’s bell ringing—in fact, I heard it before, and that made me quicken my movements. The stupid fellow!—Why did you let him go?”

“Wilful would have his way,” answered Mr Strong, shrugging his shoulders. “It is his own fault, and he must suffer the consequences. Come on, you people; I don’t see why we should sacrifice our trip, at any rate.”

Mrs Gilmour and his wife tried in vain to combat the barrister’s resolution, suggesting that the excursion might be postponed; but he would not consent to this for a moment.

“No,” he said determinedly, “this is the only day we could go; for, when the boat next leaves for Southampton, we’ll most probably be back in town.”

So saying, he pushed them all through the turnstile before him, and taking their tickets, including one for Bob, in case he still contrived to turn up in time, led the way to the steamer, which was blowing off her steam alongside the pier, as if in the greatest haste to start.

They were none too soon; for, hardly had they got on board, ere the engine-gong sounded and the steamer’s paddles began to move, the vessel gliding out into the stream as her hawsers were cast-off.

All looked out eagerly, Nellie especially, almost in tears, hoping to the last that Bob would come scurrying up; but, much to the general disappointment, no Bob came, nor did they even have the poor satisfaction of seeing him appear in the distance after the steamer had left the pier.

“Poor Bob!” bewailed Nell, for whom all the fun of the expedition had departed with his absence. “I knew he would be too late.”

“Never mind, missy,” said the Captain to cheer her up, although he, too, felt sorry at the party being thus lessened in numbers; “you’ll see him when we return this evening, and will then be able to tell him of all the fine sights he lost by not going with us.”

But Nell would not be consoled; for, in addition to Bob’s not being with them, Rover was likewise an absentee, while the Captain had left Dick behind to give the cutter a good clean out, as well as perform other duties. He thought that, perhaps, Mrs Strong might not like the boy being brought with them and treated on an equality with her own children; being taken, apparently, everywhere they went, as he had been before. It need hardly be said, though, that such an idea never occurred to Bob’s mother, who knew well how Dick had risked his life to save her son’s; the thought, really, was entirely due to the old sailor’s ultra conscientiousness!

Under these circumstances, therefore, Nellie did not by any means enjoy the trip; nor did the elders of the party, either, seem happy, all appearing to be equally well-pleased after they had seen Southampton, where there was not very much to see after all, and the boat started back for home.

Soon after the steamer passed Calshott Castle and got into the waters of the Solent, late in the afternoon, the comfort of those on board was not increased by their getting into a thick white woolly sea-fog, which had crept over the Isle of Wight from the Channel.

On their reaching the pier at Southsea again, they found the fog had got there before them; and, crossing the common, they could hardly see each other at a couple of yards distance.

Neither the barrister nor Mrs Strong liked the appearance of things, thinking that this mist of the sea resembled one of their own “London particulars,” and betokened a spell of bad weather.

The Captain, however, made light of it.

“Pooh, pooh!” cried he, “it’s only brought up by the south-easterly wind and will be cleared off by the morning, when you’ll probably have a hotter day than ever.”

This allayed Mrs Strong’s forebodings in reference to the weather, and she began to wonder what had become of Bob during their absence.

“He must have found the day very long, poor boy!” she said. “I wonder what he has been doing?”

“Oh, I’ve no doubt he’s been amusing himself,” replied the Captain cheerfully. “I don’t think Bob would remain dull very long if even left alone.”

The same thoughts were passing through the minds both of Nellie and her aunt, although they said nothing; and all were looking forward to their conjectures being solved as to how Bob had passed the time when they should arrive at “the Moorings.”

However, on coming to the house, who should greet them but Rover, who got up languidly from the doorstep, his coat all dripping with wet.

“Poor doggie!” exclaimed Nell, patting him. “Why, you’re all damp with the fog! Your master shouldn’t have been so cruel as to leave you outside. Where’s Bob?”

Usually on being asked this question, Rover’s invariable answer would be a short, sharp, joyous bark; but now, in place of this, the retriever put up his head and uttered a plaintive whine that was almost a howl.

It struck dismay into all their hearts; and on Sarah’s opening the door at the same moment, Nell’s question to the dog was now put to her.

“Where’s Master Bob?”

The girl started back in astonishment.

“Law, mum!” said she, addressing her mistress, Mrs Gilmour. “Ain’t he with you, mum?”

“No,” she replied, much frightened at Sarah’s answer, or rather counter-question; while Mrs Strong grew as pale as death and Nellie clung to her convulsively, Rover’s demeanour having roused their worst fears. “You don’t mean to say you haven’t seen him?”

“No, mum, I thought he was with you,” repeated the housemaid, beginning to cry as if accused of some fault. “I’ve never set eyes on Master Bob since he went out to bathe before you did, mum, this morning!”

“I wonder where the young rascal is?” sang out the Captain in a jovial sort of way, to allay the alarm of the others and hide his own uneasiness. “You’d better get inside out of the damp all of you while I go off to the coastguard-station. I wouldn’t mind betting a brass farthing I’ll find Master Bob there hobnobbing with Hellyer and Dick. He’s very fond of going there to listen to my old coxswain’s yarns when he has got a chance.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Mr Strong, not liking to let him go alone, besides also beginning to feel anxious, adding to his wife— “Go in, Edith! you need not be uneasy. We’ll soon bring back our young truant!”

So saying, he and the Captain, followed by Rover with drooping tail, started for the coastguard-station on the beach.

However, on getting there, their fears, instead of being dispelled, were, on the contrary, alarmingly heightened!

Hellyer told them that he had not come on duty until a late hour in the day; and had then not seen anything of either Bob or Dick.

“The man as I relieved,” continued the coastguardsman, “told me as how he seed two boys in the Cap’en’s boat about midday; and, all at once, arter his dinner, for which he goes into the cabin, you know, he misses the boat and the boys too. But, he doesn’t think anythink o’ this, he says, believin’ they has took her into the harbour.”

“Confound him!” cried the Captain excitedly. “Who was the man? He ought to have known something was wrong when he saw the two lads alone in her like that.”

“He would be a stranger to you, sir,” said Hellyer. “He wer’ a man from the Hayling beat as just come on fresh to jine this station here to-day, sir. He’s a man, sir, of the name of Jones, and rayther soft, like!”

“How unfortunate!” muttered the Captain, while Mr Strong groaned and upbraided himself for his seeming harshness to Bob in the morning. “How very unlucky!”

“Of course,” went on the coastguardsman earnestly, in deep sympathy with both—“the moment the man tells me of this, I knows what happens, seeing that blessed sea-fog a creeping up and the wind falling; and so I goes off to the commander and tells him what I thinks—as how Master Bob and that young Dick o’ yourn, Cap’en, were most likely all adrift and couldn’t fetch in to the land. I—”

“But what did your commander do?” cried the old sailor, interrupting. “Tell me that!”

“Why, sir, he sent word round to all our stations and down to the Dockyard, and he’s telegraphed likewise to the h’island so as how there’ll be a strict look-out kep’ all round the coast for the poor lads.”

“I am very much obliged to you, Hellyer, and to the commander as well,” said the Captain as he and Mr Strong turned away mournfully, retracing their steps back to “the Moorings.” “I’m afraid we can do nothing more now.”

No, nothing more could be done then.

The morning brought no news to gladden their hearts or brighten their hopes.

Matters, indeed, looked worse than had been expected.

For, as the day wore on, reports reached the Dockyard from the different coastguard-stations along the eastern and western coast of the mainland and from the Isle of Wight, whence a strict look-out had been kept on the approaches to Spithead and the adjacent waters of the Channel.

These reports were all to the same effect.

Not a trace had been seen of the missing boat; nor anything heard of Bob and Dick.

It was the same the following day, nothing likewise being then reported; although the search had been redoubled and one of the Government tugs sent out from the harbour to scour the offing.

Hope now gave way to despair before the certainty that stared them in the face, putting possibility beyond doubt.

Everybody believed the boat had been swamped, or run down in the fog, and that Bob and Dick were drowned!

Poor boys!

Chapter Twenty Three.

A Sea-Fog.

“Now,” said Bob to himself, when he got down to the beach after a sharp run across the common, “I must be as spry as possible with my swim, or else I shall be too late for the boat, as dad said I would be, for I really haven’t got much time to spare!”

Unfortunately, however, at the very outset, poor Bob met with obstacles that prevented this praiseworthy intention being effectively carried out. In the first place, Dick, with whom he had always bathed in company since their first involuntary dip together off the castle rampart on the first evening of their arrival at Southsea, was not at their usual trysting-place. Not only that, he was nowhere to be seen in the neighbourhood of the shore.

“I wonder where he can be?” said Bob, continuing his soliloquy in a very disjointed frame of mind, after looking in every direction fruitlessly, and calling out Dick’s name in vain. “I wonder where he can be? The Captain did not say he wasn’t to come with us this morning!”

At last, after wasting some precious minutes thus waiting, he began undressing very slowly, instead of in the usual brisk manner in which he was in the habit of peeling off his clothes, running a race with Dick to see who would get into the water first.

Then, at length, he plunged in to take his swim in a very half-hearted fashion, going in reluctantly and coming out in the same undecided way; while, to make matters worse and further protract his loitering, just as he was beginning to dress again, a nasty spiteful bloodhound, which was prowling by the shore, made a most unprovoked attack on Rover, necessitating his going to his rescue with a big stone—Master Bob hopping up to the scene of action “with one shoe off and one shoe on,” like the celebrated “John” the hero of the nursery rhyme!

Rover was not quite a match for the brute that assailed him; but with Bob’s help, not omitting the big stone, the two “routed the enemy with great slaughter,” the bloodhound fleeing away ignominiously with his tail between his legs, and Rover raising a paean of victory in the shape of a defiant bark as he retreated.

Still, the episode consumed a few more minutes of valuable time; so when Bob had hopped back again to where he had left his clothes to complete his toilet, and then raced down to the pier, it was not only past the hour fixed for the Southampton steamer to start, but she was already well on her way.

In fact, she was just then rounding Gillkicker Point, which juts out from Stokes Bay, bearing away on board her, his father and mother and Nell, besides the Captain and Mrs Gilmour; and not only that, leaving him behind!

Bob did not know how to contain himself.

He was too manly to cry; although he felt a big lump in his throat which made him take several short swallows without gulping anything down; while, strangely enough, something seemed to get in his eyes, for a moment preventing him from seeing anything seaward but assort of hazy mist as he stood listlessly by the head of the pier, trying vainly to discern the excursion-boat, now fast disappearing in the distance!

Presently, however, after remaining there awhile, staring at nothing, the Captain’s favourite maxim occurred to his mind— “What’s done can’t be helped”; and coming to the conclusion that there was no use in his stopping on the pier any longer, since the steamer had left, and there was no possibility of his being able to join the others, he determined to bend his steps in the direction of the coastguard-station, with the hope of finding Hellyer there to cheer his drooping spirits.

Bob’s fates, though, appeared singularly unpropitious for him this morning; for on his arriving anon at the little cabin beyond the castle, which was the Captain’s regular trysting-place, lo, and behold, a strange man was there, who told him that Hellyer was “off duty,” and it would not be his turn “on” again until late in the afternoon. Here was another misfortune!

But there was “balm in Gilead” in store for Bob; for, hardly had the long face that he pulled on learning the unwelcome news of Hellyer’s absence merged again into the ordinary round contour with which his friends were familiar, than, whom should he see coming along the beach, only a little way off, but—who should you think? Why, Dick!

Yes, he had been into Portsmouth, he explained, to take a letter to the Dockyard for the Captain; and now, also in pursuance of the old sailor’s orders, he was about going off to the cutter, which lay at her moorings abreast of the coastguard-station, and only about a cable’s length out, so as to be within easy reach, so that they could haul her up on the shingle in the event of any sudden shifting wind rendering her anchorage unsafe.

Bob at once flew to him with open arms, so to speak; and so did Rover too, the sagacious animal always reflecting his young master’s moods, and having turned as woebegone as a naturally cheerful dog could be since he noticed Bob’s being mopey, he had now resumed his proper tone of bark and mien, wagging his tail at the sight of Dick and thus reciprocating Bob’s feelings.

“Hullo, Dick!” said the latter, when the young yachtsman had approached near enough for them to speak without getting to each other. “What are you going to do aboard?”

“To clean out the yacht ready for another trip, Master Bob. The Cap’en told me to get her done afore he come back.”

“That’s jolly!” exclaimed Bob, brightening up at the prospect of some sort or any sort of expedition in lieu of the one he had missed. “May I come with you?”

“Ees, sure-ly, Master Bob,” returned Dick. “But how comes it you bain’t a-gone wi’ the Cap’en and t’others?”

Bob did not like any allusion to this delicate subject.

“I was too late,” he said abruptly, changing the conversation at once. “How are you going off to the cutter, I see she has got the dinghy towing behind, eh?”

“P’r’aps I’m a-going to swim out to her,” replied Dick, with a grin. “What say you to that, Master Bob, hey?”

“If you do, I will too,” retorted Bob; “although I’ve had my dip already, and very lonesome it was. Why didn’t you come down this morning?”

“I sang out to you jist now, sir, as how I had to take a letter for the Cap’en, who told me as he didn’t think you’d have time to bathe afore starting for the steamer.”

“I thought I had—and missed it!” said Bob ruefully. “But you’re not going really to swim out to the cutter now, Dick, eh?”

“No, no, Master Bob,” cried Dick, his grin expanding into a laugh. “I were only a-joking. There’s a waterman just shoving down his wherry as will put us off to her. Hi, ahoy, there!”

“Hi, hullo!” also shouted out Bob; but the two only succeeded in ultimately attracting the attention of old Barney the boatman, who was rather deaf, and required a deal of hallooing before noticing any one, by setting on Rover with a “Hi, catch him, sir!”

This rather exasperated old Barney at first. However, after some violent explanations they were grudgingly given a passage out to the anchored yacht, Barney grumbling at doing it for nothing!

Rover was not included in the bargain; for, he disdained adventuring his valuable person in a small row-boat, no inducement being ever strong enough to persuade him so to do. He was quite satisfied to swim out after the boys had started off in the wherry, being lugged subsequently on board the cutter by his legs and tail as soon as they fetched alongside.

For some little time after Bob and Dick got on board, both were very busy, Bob dipping overboard a bucket that had a “becket” of rope for a handle, and a longer rope bent on to this with which he proceeded to haul the bucket up again, full of sea-water, wherewith he sluiced the decks fore and aft thoroughly; while Dick, on his part, scrubbed the planks with a piece of “holystone,” then adroitly drying them with a mop, which he could twirl now, after a little experience, with all the dexterity of an old salt!

When the little cutter was thus presently made “a-taunto” by their mutual exertions, they sat down to rest for awhile, Dick sharing his luncheon of bread-and-cheese with Bob, who, of course, had long since consumed the slices of bread-and-butter he had brought out with him for his breakfast.

By and by, on a gentle breeze springing up from the southward and westward, Master Bob, boylike, suggested their slipping the Zephyr’s moorings and going for a little sail out into the offing.

“We needn’t run very far,” he said. “Say, only to the fort there and back again, you know.”

But Dick would not hear of the proposal.

“No, Master Bob, not lest the Cap’en gived orders,” he remonstrated. “Why, he’d turn me off if I did it; and, he’s that kind to me as I wouldn’t like to vex him, no not for nothing!”

“He wouldn’t mind me though,” argued Bob. “Didn’t he say the other day—why, you heard him tell Hellyer yourself—that he’d back you and me to manage a boat against any two boys in Portsmouth, aye, or any port on the south coast?”

“Ees, I heerd him,” reluctantly assented the other; “but that didn’t mean fur us to go out in the boat alone.”

“Well, Dick, I didn’t think you were a coward!” said Bob with great contempt, angry at being thwarted. “I really didn’t.”

This cut the other to the heart.

“You doesn’t mean that, Master Bob,” he exclaimed reproachfully, hesitating to utter his scathing reply. “Ah, you didn’t say as I wer’ a coward that time as I jumped into the water arter you behind the castle.”

“Forgive me, Dick,” cried Bob impulsively, “I was a beast to say such a thing! Of course, I know you are not a coward; but, really, I’m sure the Captain would not mind a bit our going for a sail—especially if he knew, and he does know, about my being left behind all alone while they all have gone off to Southampton in the steamer enjoying themselves!”

This last appeal made Dick hesitate; and, in hesitating thus, he lost his firmness of resolution.

“Well, Master Bob, if we only goes a little ways and you promises fur to come back afore the tide turns, I don’t mind unmooring for a bit; though, mind, Master Bob, you’ll bear all the blame if the Cap’en says anythink about it!”

“Of course I will, Dick, if he does; but I know he won’t say anything. You may make your mind easy on that score!” With these words, Bob sprang forward on the fo’c’s’le and began loosening the jib from its fastenings; while Dick, now that his scruples were overcome, set to work casting off the gaskets of the mainsail, the two boys then manning the halliards with a will, and hoisting the throat of the sail well up.

The jib was then set, its sheet being slackened until Dick slipped the buoy marking the yacht’s moorings overboard; when, the tack being hauled aft, and the mainsail peaked, the bows of the cutter paid off and she walked away close-hauled, standing out towards “No Man’s Fort,” on the starboard tack.

It was now past midday and the tide was making into the harbour; so that, as the wind from the south-west had got rather slight, veering round to the southwards, the cutter did not gain much of an offing, losing in leeway nearly all she got in beating out to windward.

“I vote we let her run off a little towards the Nab,” said Bob, seeing what little progress they made towards the fort; and he, being the steersman, put the helm up, easing off at the same time the sheet of the mainsail; Dick, who was in the bows, attending to the jib. “It’s awful poor fun drifting like this!”

“Mind you turns back agen when the tide begins to run out!” premised Dick. “You promised as we wasn’t to go fur!”

“All right,” replied Bob, “I won’t forget.”

But, now, a strange thing happened.

No sooner had the cutter’s bows been turned to the eastwards, than Rover, who had previously been looking very uneasy, standing up with his hind legs on one of the thwarts and his fore-paws on the taffrail astern, gazing anxiously behind at the land they were leaving, all at once gave vent to a loud unearthly howl and sprang overboard.

“Hi, Rover, come back, sir!” yelled out Bob, at the pitch of his voice—“Rover, come back!”

But, the dog, although hitherto always obedient to his young master’s call, paid no attention to it now, turning a deaf ear to all his whistles and shouts and swimming steadily towards the shore.

“Poor Rover, he’ll be drownded, sure-ly!” said Dick. “Don’t ’ee think we’d better go arter he, poor chap?”

“Not a bit of it!” replied Bob, angry at the dog’s desertion, as he thought it, putting down Rover’s behaviour to some strange dislike on his part to being in the yacht, at all events when she was moving briskly through the water. “He has swum twice as far in the river in London, and I won’t go after him!”

Bob, however, brought the little yacht up to the wind again, watching until Rover was seen to emerge from the sea and crawl up on the beach again; when the cutter’s head was allowed to pay off again, and within a couple of hours or so, although neither of the boys took any note of how the time was going, they had not only passed the Nab but were now nearing the Ower’s light-ship.

Not till then did Dick become aware how far they had reached out, Portsmouth having long since disappeared and even the forts beginning to show hazy to windward; while Selsea Bill loomed up on their port hand.

“Master Bob, Master Bob!” he cried in consternation, never having been so far out before, even with the Captain. “Do ’ee know where we be now?”

“Why, out at sea, to be sure!” said Bob, his face all aglow with delight at gliding thus like Byron’s corsair— “O’er the glad waters of the deep blue sea.”

For his soul certainly was, for the moment, quite as “boundless” and his “thoughts as free,” from all consideration, save of the present—“Isn’t it jolly?”

“Well, I doesn’t know about that,” replied Dick, looking very glum. “I’m a-thinking of the gitting back; which, wi’ the tide a-setting out from the harbour, won’t be so easy, I knows!”

“Nonsense, Dick!” said Bob in his usual off-hand way, though bringing the cutter up to the wind, so as to go about on the other tack. “You’re frightening yourself really, my boy, about nothing! The wind has got round more to the south; so we’ll be able to run back to Portsmouth in no time. The cutter is a very good boat, so the Captain says, on a wind!”

However, “Man proposes and God disposes.”

The wind suddenly dropped, just as the tide turned, the ebb setting out from Spithead towards the east, dead against them; when, instead of running in homewards “in no time,” the cutter, after a time, became becalmed first, and then gradually began to drift out into the open Channel again.

Dick was the first to notice this.

“Look, Master Bob!” he cried. “We aren’t making no headway at all! I don’t see we’re getting any the nearer to the Nab!”

“We will, soon,” replied Bob, all hopeful. “It’s only because the breeze has dropped a bit. Before long, we’ll pick it up again! I think, Dick, we’d better slacken off the sheets and let her bear away more!”

This was done; but, still the Zephyr would not move.

She had net way enough, indeed, to answer her helm; for, her bows pointed west, and south, and east, alternately, as the tidal eddies swayed her in this direction and that.

“I knewed we was doin’ wrong,” remarked Dick presently, after a long silence in which neither of the boys spoke a word. “It’s a judgment on us!”

“A fiddlestick!” retorted Bob. “We’ll only drift about like this for a short time; and, when the tide turns again, it will sweep us back to Spithead like one o’clock!”

“I doesn’t believe that, Master Bob,” said Dick disconsolately, sitting down on a thwart, and looking longingly at a faint speck in the distance which he thought was Southsea; although they were almost out of sight of land now, the swift current carrying the boat along nearly four knots an hour. “We should ha’ tuk warnin’, Master Bob, by Rover. He knowed what wer’ a-coming and so he swum ashore in time, he did!”

“Rover is a faithless creature!” cried Bob hotly. “I’ll give him a good licking when we reach the land again, you see!”

“When’ll that be, Master Bob?”

“Oh, some time or other before night,” replied he defiantly, but Dick could easily tell from his tone of voice that he did not speak quite so buoyantly as before; and his already long face grew longer as the day wore on without the breeze springing up again or any change of circumstances.

They did not pass a single ship near, notwithstanding that they saw several with all their sails set, their loftier canvas catching a few lingering puffs of air that did not descend low enough to affect the cutter. The sight of these vessels moving, however, raised their drooping spirits, Bob and Dick thinking that the wind by and by would affect them, too.

But no breeze came; and all the while they were being carried further and further out to sea.

“Hallo, there’s a steamer!” sang out Bob after another protracted silence between the pair. “I see her smoke easily. She’s steering right for us!”

“Where?” asked Dick. “I doesn’t see no steamer, Master Bob.”

“There!” said the other, pointing to a long white line on the horizon. “There she is, blowing off her steam, or her funnel smoking, quite plain!”

“Lor’, Master Bob!” ejaculated the other, after peering fixedly for a moment where his companion directed him to look. “That arn’t no steam or smoke as ever I seed. It be a cloud, or fog, I knows; or summut o’ that sort, sure-ly, Master Bob!”

Bob, however, would not be persuaded of this, persisting that he was right and Dick wrong.

“I don’t know where your eyes can be!” he said scornfully. “I’ll bet anything it’s a steamer; or, I never saw one!”

But ere another hour had passed over their heads, Dick was proved to be the true prophet; he, the false!

The low-lying bank of vapour, which originally resembled the trail of smoke from some passing steam-vessel on her way down Channel, gradually spread itself out along the horizon.

It then rose up, like a curtain, from the sea; and, stretching up its clammy heads towards the zenith, widened over the heavens until it shut out the western sun from their gaze, making the still early afternoon seem as night.

Creeping over the surface of the sullen water with ghostly footsteps, the mist soon shrouded the boat in its pall-like folds; impregnating the surrounding atmosphere with moisture and making the boys believe it was raining, though never a drop fell.

It was only a sea-fog, that was all.

But it was accompanied by a dampness that seemed like the hand of Death!

Chapter Twenty Four.

“Ship, ahoy!”

“It is the last straw,” says the proverb, “that breaks the camel’s back!”

Bob’s courage had been on the wane long before the white, woolly fog environed them; although, up to now he had endeavoured to brave it out in the presence of Dick, the very consciousness that he was the main cause of their being in such a perilous predicament preventing him from betraying the fears he felt.

But, when this octopus of the air clutched them in its corpse-like grip, breathing its wet vapoury breath into their faces, soddening their clothes with heavy moisture and slackening their energies as it had already damped their hopes of a steam-vessel coming to the rescue, Bob, whose nerves were strained to their utmost tension, at last broke down.

“Oh, Dick!” he cried, bursting into a passion of tears, all the more vehement now from his ever having been a manly boy and in the habit of stifling all such displays of emotion, even when severely hurt, as had happened on more than one occasion in a football scrimmage at school, whence he got the name of Stoic amongst his mates. “Oh, Dick, poor Dick! I’m sorry I made you come with me to your death! I wonder what my mother and dad will say, and Nell too, when they come to learn that we are lost?”

“Don’t ’ee now, Master Bob, give way like that!” said

Dick, the brave lad, forgetting his own sad plight on seeing his unhappy comrade’s alarm and grief. “Cheer up, Master Bob, like a good sort! We bean’t lost yet, ye knows!”

“I’m afraid we are, Dick! I’m afraid we are!” sobbed Bob, as the pair of unfortunates got gradually wetter and more miserable, if that were possible; the density of the atmosphere around them increasing so that it seemed as if they were enveloped in a drenching cloud, this mist of the sea being the offspring of the waters, and consequently taking after its humid parent. “Why, we’re miles and miles away from land, and drifting further and further off every moment! Oh, Dick, we’re lost—we’re lost!”

“Now, don’t ’ee, Master Bob, don’t ’ee!” cried Dick, folding one of his arms, like a mother, round the other’s neck and drawing him towards him to comfort him. “We ain’t a bit lost yet, I tell ’ee, sure-ly. Why, we ain’t at sea as you says at all. We be ounly in the h’offin’ hereabouts.”

This woke up Bob to argument.

“Only the offing, you say, Dick?” he replied, with some of his old dogmatism as they drifted on and on, the ebb-tide that was bearing them away on its bosom lapping against the sides of the boat with a melancholy sound, though almost deadened by the oppressiveness of the damp sea-fog. “Do you know how wide the Channel is ‘hereabouts,’ as you say?”

“No, Master Bob,” said the other lad humbly. “I doesn’t. I ain’t no scholard, as you knows.”

“Then, I’ll tell you,” rejoined Bob triumphantly. “It must be nearly a hundred miles wide here between the French and English coasts!”

Dick, however, was not abashed by this broad statement.

“That mebbe, Master Bob,” he replied modestly, scratching the back of his neck where one of his damp locks of hair tickled him at the moment. “But, I heard the Cap’en say ounly t’other day as how there was so many ships a-passing up and down as a boat adrift wer’ bound to be sighted!”

“But, suppose a hundred ships passed us,” said Bob, who would not be comforted, in spite of all Dick’s efforts. “Why, old chap, they couldn’t see us! The fog would prevent them!”

“Lor’, so her would!” assented Dick, unable to gainsay this argument. “I forgets that, I did, sure-ly!”

After a time, Bob’s sobs ceased and he began to think of something else; something that affected him, for the moment, even more strongly than his fears.

“I’m awfully hungry, Dick,” he said. “Have you got any more bread-and-cheese left?”

“No, not a scrap,” was the melancholy answer. “I giv’ yer half, share and share alike; and I’ve ate every crumb o’ mine!”

“Isn’t there anything in the locker?”

“Nothing, but the Cap’en’s hatchet! Don’t you bear in mind as how I scrubbed her out afore we started?”

“Yes, so you did, I recollect,” replied Bob moodily, his appetite being well-nigh unbearable from its insatiable gnawing. “How do you feel, Dick?”

“I feels as if I could eat the h’elephant we seed in the circus.”

This made Bob laugh hysterically.

“I think I could, too,” he said, between his paroxysms of laughter and sobs. “I never felt so hungry in my life before!”

Another interval of silence followed this confession.

“I’ll tell ’ee what, Master Bob,” observed Dick, on their comparing notes again presently, when both acknowledged to being cold and wet and miserable. “Let us crawl into the cabin and lie down, hey? It’ll be warmer than here, sure-ly!”

“So it will,” cried Bob, getting up and stretching his limbs, which were stiff with cramp from sitting so long in the damp air; the fog around them appearing to get all the thicker as the time passed. “I wonder neither of us thought of that before?”

The two then crept in under the half-deck; and, covering themselves up with the cutter’s gaff-topsail, which had been placed within the cabin along with some spare canvas, dropped off into a sound slumber, forgetting their sad plight and their hunger alike, in sleep, the yacht meanwhile still floating along, down Channel, in a west-by-north direction with the ebb.

Their rest did not last long.

Bob was suddenly awakened from a dream of a wonderful banquet, which he was enjoying, by a sort of rushing gurgling sound; while the boat rocked to and fro at the same time uneasily.

Rubbing his eyes, he started up and listened for a moment.

Then, he shook Dick to arouse him.

“Hullo! Wake up!” he cried. “The wind has sprung up again; and, I think, we’re moving through the water!”

“I’ll soon find out,” said Dick, going outside and putting his hand over the gunwale, calling out the instant afterwards, “You’re right, Master Bob! We be moving, right enough. Aye, so we be, sure-ly!”

“I wonder where Portsmouth is?” remarked Bob, as the two cogitated what was best to be done, their hopes rising with the welcome breeze; although this was only very feeble as yet, not being sufficient, indeed, to blow away the fog that still hung over the sea.

“If we only knew whereabouts we was we’d know where to steer; but we’ve turned about sich a lot, that I’d be puzzled to tell.”

“So would I,” agreed Bob. “But, I tell you what I think. Let us run before the wind. It’ll be sure to bring us somewhere, at all events, in the end!”

“Aye, that it would, sure-ly, Master Bob,” cried Dick, surprised at the other’s cleverness. “I declare I never as much as thought o’ that!”

Thereupon, they wore the little cutter round, she having been previously going like a crab sideways, which fully accounted for the lively motion that had aroused them; and, Bob having stationed himself at the helm, which he had put hard over, Dick mounted up on the fo’c’s’le to act as look-out, in case they should run against anything in the semi-darkness around them, or, more happily still, come in sight of land.

They had not long occupied their respective positions, when Bob’s attention was attracted by a cry of alarm from his companion in the bows.

“Lawks a mussy!” yelled out Dick in accents of unfeigned terror. “I sees a white ghostess a-flying down on us, with big wings like a h’angel!”

“Nonsense, Dick!” cried Bob from aft, trying to peer ahead under the belly of the sail as he was sitting to leeward. “There are no such things as ghosts; and, besides, I don’t see anything at all but the fog and the water!”

“Oh, lawks, Master Bob!” screamed the frightened Dick in answer to this. “Look t’other side and then you’ll p’r’aps believe me. Look t’other side! Look t’other side! I bees afeered! I bees afeered!”

Bob shifted his seat to windward, so as to get a better view forwards and see what had alarmed Dick.

“Why, Dick, it’s a ship!” he exclaimed in an ecstasy of delight the next instant. “What you thought are angel’s wings are the vessel’s sails, though they are angel’s wings to us!”

“Be her a real ship, Master Bob?” asked Dick, having another peep at the suspicious object and still not quite convinced as yet. “Sure-ly?”

“Of course she is, I tell you,” cried Bob. “Look out now and let go the jib-sheet as I luff up. I’m going to lay-to, for the ship is coming up with us rapidly and will run us down if we don’t take care!”

She was diminishing the distance between them quickly enough.

A big ship she looked, too, appearing all the larger from the intervening veil of mist, which magnified her proportions wonderfully, in similar fashion to the “Fata Morgana” seen sometimes in Italian waters.

Like as in the same spectral phenomenon, too, this vessel seemed to be gliding towards them without sound or apparent motion.

She was a veritable phantom of the deep!

There were no lights visible on her, nor did it look as if any one was on the watch.

So far as the boys could judge from the ocular evidence before them, there might really not have been a single soul on board.

But, whether that was the case or no, on she came steadily towards them bow on, emerging bigger and bigger from the ghostly mist, each movement sensibly affecting her and increasing her size; so that, presently, she became a monster ship.

She came too near to be pleasant, however, without sheering either to right or aft.

It looked as if she were going to run them down!

Bob and Dick’s hopes of a rescue paled before the imminent dread of a collision that now stared them in the face—nay, was close at hand.

“Shout, Dick! Shout out with me as loud as you can so as to wake them up on board and make them see us!” cried Bob, letting go the tiller and standing up on top of the stern locker. “Now, all together, Dick! Ship, ahoy! Ship, ahoy!”

Chapter Twenty Five.

Drifting.

“Help, ahoy, look out!” sang out Bob and Dick in chorus, well-nigh paralysed with fright. “Ahoy there, look out ahead!”

But, in spite of their cries, the phantom ship, whose proportions became all the more magnified the nearer she approached, rose upon them steadily out of the mist, growing into a gruesome reality each second, her hull towering over the little cutter as she bore down upon her, like a giant above a pigmy!

“Help, ahoy, look out there!” they once more shouted frantically. “Help—ahoy!”

It was all in vain, though, their shouts and cries being unnoticed.

The next moment the on-coming vessel struck them, fortunately not end-on or amidships, but in a slanting fashion, her cutwater sliding by the gunwale of the cutter, from bow to stern, with a harsh, grating sound and a rasping movement that shook their very vitals—the little yacht heeling over the while until she was almost on her beam-ends.

Had the vessel caught her midships, she would have at once crushed her like an eggshell; as it was, the fluke of one of her anchors, which was hanging from her bows ready for letting go in case of emergency, the barque being not yet clear of soundings, got foul of the cutter’s rigging, sweeping her mast and boom away, the stays snapping under the strain as if they were packthread.

Poor little cutter! She was left a complete wreck and nearly full of water; still rocking to and fro from the violence of the collision, even after the craft that had done all the mischief had again, seemingly, re-transformed herself into a phantom ship and faded away in the mist that hung over the sea, like the creation of a dream!

It was a very bad dream, though; and Bob and Dick gave themselves up for lost altogether.

Their fate, drifting helplessly about, an hour or so before, hungry and miserable, had seemed desperate enough; but their slight sleep, with the subsequent awakening to the knowledge that the wind had sprung up again and was bearing them once more in some certain direction, had restored their courage and revived their hopes.

This courage, too, had became more courageous, this hope more hopeful on the approach of the barque; for, they believed she would take them on board and restore them by and by to their friends, advancing so gallantly as she did towards them, like an angel, so Dick thought.

But, now!

What were the calamities which they so recently bewailed in comparison with the present?

Then, the yacht might have been at the mercy of the mist and tide; but she was still staunch and sound, capable when a breeze blew once more of wafting them home—whereas, now, the little cutter was dismasted and water-logged, nay, even sinking for all they knew!

Thus, their present position was a thousandfold more terrible than the one before.

But, still, only boys though they were, hope did not yet quite desert them.

The indomitable courage of youth triumphed over disaster.

For a few seconds neither could speak.

However, when the ship had disappeared, going away as silently as she had approached them, they bestirred themselves to see what damage the cutter had sustained.

Bob was the first to recall his scattered wits.

“Well, they haven’t sunk us, as I was afraid they would, Dick!” said he. “I wonder if any of the planks are really started?”

“How can we see, Master Bob?” asked Dick anxiously. “So as to know if she be all right?”

“Why, by baling her out,” he answered. “If we lessen the water in her, then we’ll know she’s all right.”

“But if the water don’t go down?”

“Then, we will!” replied Bob rather curtly. “Have you got anything to bale her out with?”

“Well, Master Bob,” observed Dick, grinning, “fur a young gen’leman as is so sharp, you’ve got a orful bad mem’ry! Don’t ’ee recollect the booket as ye helped me fur to wash down the decks wi’ this very marnin’?”

“Dear me, Dick, I declare I quite forgot that!” said Bob, with a laugh, seeing Dick’s grin; for, it was not so dark now in their immediate vicinity, the breeze having lifted the fog slightly from the surface of the water. “Where is the bucket stored?”

“In the locker, joost by ’ee,” was Dick’s response, as he waded through the water and came up to his companion. “Stop, I’ll get ’im for ’ee! I’ll have to make a dive fur he, though!”

“Have you got it?” inquired Bob, after Dick had groped about for some time, popping his head under water and coming up at intervals for breath. “Have you got it?”

“’Ees,” said he at length, lugging out the bucket, “I’ve got ’im!”

Then, they set to work, each using it alternately.

The exertion did them both good, too, standing up as they were to their middles in water; for, it prevented them shivering with cold as they had before done.

Bucketful after bucketful they emptied over the side; and, still they did not appear to decrease the quantity the cutter contained to any appreciable extent, bale they, as they baled, their hardest!

Gradually, however, the after-thwart became clear.

“Hooray!” exclaimed Bob. “We’re gaining on it.”

This inspired them with renewed strength; and, after nearly an hour’s hard work, they had so lessened the water that only a small portion now remained washing about under the bottom boards of the boat, which, recovering all her old buoyancy, floated again with a high freeboard, light as a cork, above the surface of the sea, instead of being level with it as before.

“That’s a good job done!” said Dick. “I wish that theer murderin’ shep hadn’t a-bruk our mast; fur, we’d soon been all right!”

“While you’re about it, Dick,” said Bob, “you might, just as well, wish she hadn’t carried the mast and boom away with her. I don’t believe they’ve left us anything!”

No, the colliding ship had made a “clean sweep” of all their spars and rigging and everything; hardly a rope’s-end remaining attached to the cutter, beyond a part of the mainsheet and a bit of the forestay, which latter was hanging down from the bowsprit, the only spar the yacht had left.

Not a single thing of all her deck-fittings, either, had the little vessel to the good; even her tiller had been wrenched off and the rudder smashed.

Nor were there any oars left in the little craft; though, even if there had been, the yacht was too heavy for boys like Bob and Dick to have made her move at the most infinitesimal rate of speed.

It is true, there was the old gaff-topsail still in the fore-peak, as well as a spare jib; but they had nothing to spread them out to the wind with, or affix them to.

They were, in fact, oar-less, sail-less, helpless!

“I don’t see what we can do,” said Bob, when they had looked over all the boat, in case something perchance might have escaped their notice. “We can only hope and pray!”

“Aye, do ’ee pray, Master Bob,” replied Dick eagerly. “P’r’aps God’ll hear us and send us help!”

So, then and there the two boys knelt down together side by side in the battered boat, that drifted about at the mercy of the wind and sea, imploring the aid of Him who heeds those who call upon Him for succour, in no wise refusing them or turning a deaf ear to their prayers!

By and by, as if in answer to their earnest supplications, the day dawned; when, the mist, which yet lingered over the water, hanging about here and there in little patches, like so many floating islands, was either swallowed up by the sea or absorbed into the air, as if by magic.

Bob and Dick now got some idea as to the points of the compass, even if they were not able to tell precisely where they were; for, as the day advanced, a rosy tinge crept upwards over a far-off quarter of the horizon which they knew instinctively to be the east, the birthplace of all light!

This tint, almost like a blush, spread quickly over the sky, reaching away to the north and again south, coming full in both their faces and making them glow.

The bright hue then gradually melted into a ruddier tone, which first darkened into purple and red and then rapidly changed to a greenish sort of neutral tone that, after an interval, finally became merged into the pure ultramarine of the zenith; for, the heavens were now as clear as a bell, no mist or fog or cloud obscuring the expanse of the empyrean.

A sort of golden vapour then, all of a sudden, flooded the east, which in another second gave place to the red rays of the crimson sun; though the latter did not seem so much to rise, but rather appeared to Bob, who was watching intently the various changes that occurred, to jump in an instant above the sea, glorifying it far and near with its presence and warming it into life,

This warmth soon cheered the boys, as the light banished the despondent feelings inseparable, as a rule, from darkness and, beyond that, the death-like stillness around, which had previously added to their fears, was banished by the new stir and movement observable in everything.

Previously, the sea had risen and fallen tumidly, as if Father Neptune had been asleep and its monotonous pulsation was caused by his deep, long-drawn breathing; but, now, it crisped and sparkled in the sunshine, whilst its surface was broken by innumerable little wavelets, like curls, that grew into swell-crested billows anon, and, later on still, into great rolling waves as the wind got up—this blowing steadily from the eastwards first and then veering round south, following the course of the orb whose heat gave it being.

Nor was inanimate nature only stirring.

Grey and silver sea-gulls hovered over the little cutter, all sweeping down curiously every now and then to see what the boys were doing there in that mastless and oar-less boat out on the wide waters; and, presently, a shoal of mackerel rose round about them, so thickly that Dick thought he could scoop up some in the buckets, only the fish were too wary and dived down below the surface the moment he stretched his arm out over the side beyond his reach.

A couple of porpoises, too, swam by, playing leap-frog again; and, after these, a much larger monster, which might possibly have been a grampus, though Bob could tell nothing about it, not knowing what it was. The movements of all these, with the constantly-changing appearance of the sea, now blue, now green, now brown, as some cloud shadow passed over it, made up a varied panorama such as neither of the two lads ever saw or thought of before!

Ships, also, hove in sight and disappeared on the horizon, their white sails gleaming out in the far-off distance; one moment high in the air as if bound skywards, the next sinking into the curving depths of the sea.

Now and again, too, the smoke-wreath of some passing steamer, coasting along more speedily than the sailing craft, would sacrilegiously blot the blue of the heavens!

But, all the while, though the distant ships might sail along to their haven, and the steamers shape shorter courses to their port independent of wind and tide alike, the poor dismasted, dismantled little yacht was the sport of all alike; first setting down Channel with the ebb, as if going out on a cruise into the wide Atlantic, and then again up Channel with the flood towards Dover.

The boat was ever drifting and tossed about ever, like a battered shuttlecock, by the battledore currents, some four of which contend for the mastery throughout the livelong day in that wonderful waterway, the English Channel; two always setting east, relieving each other in turn, and two west, with a cross-tide coming atop of them, twice in every twenty-four hours, trying fruitlessly to soothe the differences of the quarrelsome quartette!

Chapter Twenty Six.

Despair!

“How hot it be, Master Bob!” said Dick, when the sun had climbed so high that he seemed right overhead, sending down his rays vertically and making it so warm that the boys began to perspire, while they were tormented with thirst. “I be parched wi’ drout and could swaller a gallon o’ spring wutter if I hed the chance!”

“I say, let us have a swim,” suggested Bob. “I’ve heard it will relieve a person suffering from thirst; and, besides, I believe it will do us both good and freshen us up.”

“All right, Master Bob,” said Dick somewhat hesitatingly, in reply to this proposition. “But, ain’t it deep here?”

“Deep! What does that matter?” replied Bob lightly. “Why, Dick, you silly fellow, you forget we always used to swim out every morning into deep water. Ah, I forget, I forget! Oh,—mother, my mother!”

The poor boy broke down utterly again at this point, it having suddenly flashed across his memory that his former swims from the beach were things of the past; and that he might never see his mother or any of the home folk again.

No, never, ah, never again!

Dick, however, once more comforted him, ceasing to dwell on his own pangs of thirst; although the lad’s tongue had swollen to such a size that it seemed too big for his mouth, and his lips were all parched and cracked.

A little later, when Bob had become more composed again, his idea of a battle was carried out, the boys making use of their solitary rope, the end of the broken forestay that was hanging from the bowsprit, to climb back into the boat after they had had a dip alongside.

They were not able to swim far, being incapable of much exertion; but the plunge alone and the immersion in the water while holding to the rope’s-end refreshed them greatly, making them feel stronger, in addition to allaying their burning thirst.

Still, when this great longing was quenched, they were tortured with hunger, Dick actually tearing off one of the soles of his boots and setting to work gnawing it.

Bob kept up his spirits so far as to make fun of this, chaffing his companion and saying that he preferred the way in which the Captain served up his soles to Dick’s!

“Ah,” said the other in reply, “I wonder what the good Cap’en ’ud think if he seed us now?”

“Why, that we were two unfortunate fellows!” replied Bob, becoming grave again in an instant. “I’m sure he would pity us from the bottom of his heart!”

Thus the long day wore on; although, it seemed as if it would never end!

However, when night came round again, they wished they had yet the day; it was so dark, so dreary, so eerie, pitching and rolling about there, carried hither and thither as the tide listed, with never a vista of the wished-for land, with never a sound but the sobbing sea.

Yet, it was wonderful how the boys encouraged each other to bear up and be hopeful, in spite of everything.

Whenever, in the early morning previously and during the day in their respective sufferings, one or the other grew despondent Dick cheered Bob and Bob cheered Dick, as the case might be.

Then, somehow or other, the principal portion of the cheering-up work was borne by Dick; the very brightness and look of everything, even while he noticed them, seeming to have the effect of depressing Bob’s spirits by some unknown association or connection with those at home.

At night, however, it was Bob’s turn to sustain the drooping courage of Dick, who, like most country-bred lads, was intensely superstitious, fancying the darkness to swarm with ghosts and goblins, who were on the watch to devour him; the boy, while bearing up bravely against palpable privations and open dangers, staring them in the face, from which grown men would have quailed, was now affected by silly fears which a baby would have blushed to own!

All through the wearisome hours of the dragging night, whose minutes were as iron and hours like lead, he was constantly starting up in nervous terror; the moan of the sea, the cry of some belated sea-gull, the plunge of a fish in the water, nay even the creaking of the boat’s own timbers, with each and all of which Dick was perfectly familiar, alike arousing his frenzied alarm.

It was, “Lawks, Master Bob! what be this now?” throughout the terrible interval that elapsed between the fading of the twilight on the one day and sunrise on the next. “Lor’, what’s that?”

And, that next day!

The boys were weaker then, for very nearly eight-and-forty hours had elapsed since they had been on board the cutter; forty-eight hours without food, without any regular sleep, without any real rest even, as their attention was always kept on the alert, while, all the time, the peril they were in was sufficient alone to have crushed their every energy!

Hope, undying hope that had kept them up so long, now left them at last. Who could hope against such continual disappointment, with ships all around them sometimes and yet never a one to come near where they floated and drifted and gave way to their despair?

Towards the evening of this day Dick got very weak.

Strange to say, although brought up in the country and accustomed, probably, all his early life, at any rate, to exposure and hard living, Dick was not able to bear up against their present sufferings by any means so well as Bob, who, on this third night of their being adrift, was yet full of vitality!

It was in vain for him, though, to try and reanimate Dick, who, hopeless, and almost helpless, lay down in the bottom of the boat, only asking to be left alone to die.

“I’m a-dying, Master Bob,” he gasped out faintly, when Bob tried to raise him up. “Let me be; let me be!”

“Dying, nonsense,” repeated Bob, pretending to joke about it; though, truth to say, he felt in little joking mood then, being almost as weak as his companion. “You are worth twenty dead men yet, as the old Captain would say!”

But, in spite of all his encouraging words, Dick grew gradually weaker and weaker; until, towards midnight, his breathing became so very faint that Bob could hardly feel it, though kneeling down close beside him and with his face touching that of poor Dick.

“I’m a-dying—Master Bob,” he whispered, in such low accents that Bob had to bend down his ear close to his mouth to hear what he said. “I bees—a-dying—Mas-ter—Bob. I knows—I—be! I—hears—the—h’angels—a-flapping on their wings! I knows they be a-coming—for—me! God—bless—’ee, Mas-ter—Bob! Ah, if—’ee—ever—get—’shore—’gain—tell—Cap’—I—didn’t—mean—no—’arm!”

Soon after faltering out these broken words, Dick fell back insensible in the bottom of the boat.

“Oh, Dick, poor Dick, good Dick!” sobbed out Bob, throwing himself down beside him on the floor of the boat’s little cabin and bursting into an agony of tears. “It is I who have killed you. But for me, you would never have been here at all! Poor, brave Dick, you saved my life, and in return I’ve killed you!”

The torture of mind in which he now was on seeing, as he thought, Dick dead before him, coupled with all he had already gone through, but of which he had taken little heed while he had his comrade to console, now coming together affected Bob’s mind.

He began to wander in delirium, imagining himself not only safe ashore, but in his London home, amid all the surroundings to which he had been accustomed before coming to Southsea and to this sad extremity.

He thought it was Sunday and that he was going to church with his mother and Nell; and that he was late, as usual, and they were calling him to hurry.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” he screamed out in such a shrill voice, attenuated by famine, as hardly to be recognised as human, so shrill that it startled the sea-gulls hovering over the boat. “I’m coming! There’s lots of time, the bells are ringing still! The bells are ringing, I hear them!—Ring—ring—ring—I—hear—I hear—I—”

Then he, too, lost consciousness and fell, like a log, insensible, across the body of poor Dick; the far-off bell which he had fancied to be ringing miles and miles distant from where the boat was floating in the Channel, being the last echo that sounded in his ears as he fainted away.

But, there was reason in his madness.

A bell was ringing; and ringing too realistically not to be real!

Chapter Twenty Seven.

On the Casquettes.

Bob’s hearing was not at fault, this sense of his remaining perfect though his mind was wandering; and so, the unwonted sound that fell upon his ear had got woven amongst his delirious fancies.

It was, without doubt, a real bell, which if it might not summon pious folk to prayer, yet fulfilled almost as sacred a duty, warning, as it did, poor mariners of impending peril and so answering the petition oft put up “for those travelling by sea.”

This ball belonged to the lighthouse-tower erected on the highest peak of the Casquettes, a terrible group of rocks jutting out into the Channel, just off the French coast hard by Alderney, some six miles to the north-west of which island they lie. Rocks that are cruel and relentless as the surges that sweep over them in stormy weather, and which are so quaintly named from their helmet, or “casque”-like resemblance—rocks, concerning which the poet Swinburne has sung in his eloquent verse, that breathes the very spirit of the sea in depicting the strife of the elements:

“From the depths of the waters that lighten and darken, With change everlasting of life and of death, Where hardly by morn if the lulled ear hearken It hears the sea’s as a tired child’s breath, Where hardly by night, if an eye dare scan it, The storm lets shipwreck be seen or heard, As the reefs to the waves and the foam to the granite Respond one merciless word. “Sheer seen and far, in the sea’s life heaven, A sea-mew’s flight from the wild sweet land, White plumed with foam, if the wind wake, seven Black helms, as of warriors that stir, not stand, From the depths that abide and the waves that environ Seven rocks rear heads that the midnight masks; And the strokes of the swords of the storm are as iron On the steel of the wave-worn casques. “Be night’s dark word as the word of a wizard, Be the word of dawn as a god’s glad word, Like heads of the spirits of darkness visored That see not for ever, nor ever have heard, These basnets, plumed as for fight or plumeless, Crowned by the storm and by storm discrowned, Keep word of the lists where the dead lie tombless And the tale of them is not found!”

Hither the boat had drifted in the course of the three days that had elapsed since she had been first becalmed off Spithead, or rather between the Nab and Warner lights; for, it was then that the wind had dropped, leaving her at the mercy of the stream, going whither the current willed.

She had pursued a most erratic course, however, to reach this point.

To commence with, she had floated on the ebb-tide, which for two hours after high-water runs south by west, out into the Channel past the Isle of Wight; the wind, slight as it was, that subsequently sprung up from the eastward, to which point it had veered after the sea-fog had risen, combined with the westward action of the tideway, making the little vessel take almost a straight course across the stream of the current towards the French coast.

When about midway, however, she got into a second channel current, which swept her nearer and nearer to Cape La Hogue.

Then, again, when still some miles out from the land, yet another current took charge of her, bringing her within the influence of the strong indraught which runs into the Gulf of Saint Malo; by which, finally, she was wafted, in a circular way, up to “the Caskets,” or “Casquettes,” to adopt the proper French version.

Here she had arrived at the time of Bob’s delirium, drifting in closer and closer to the rocks, on which the cutter would probably have been dashed to pieces and her fragments possibly picked up anon on the opposite side of the Atlantic, had not fate intervened.

It was in this wise.

The little cutter drifted in near the rocks while it was still early morning; and the reason for the bell on the lighthouse ringing was because some of the mist, or fog, that had been blown across the Channel, yet lingered in the vicinity, as if loth to leave altogether the waters over which it loved to brood.

When, however, the rays of the bright morning sun sent this nightmare of a mist to the right-about, a small French fishing lugger might have been seen working out towards the offing from Saint Malo, giving the “Casquettes” a pretty wide berth you may be sure; those who have to do with seafaring matters across Channel knowing full well of the dangerous race that runs by the fatal rocks, ever seeking in its malice to engulph passing crafts and bear them away to destruction!

Two men were in the lugger; one, as usual, attending to the helm, the other minding the sheets and sitting midway between the bows and stern of the vessel, so as to be handy when required and thus save unnecessary locomotion.

Sailors, it may here be mentioned in confidence, especially those hailing from la belle France, never give themselves more trouble than they can help; which philosophic way of going through life might be studied to advantage, perhaps, by some shore folk!

These mariners, consequently, were taking it very easy, the one forward sitting on the break of the “fo’c’s’le” and smoking a pipe, there not being much to do in the rope-hauling or letting go, as the lugger was only creeping lazily along through the almost still water with the aid of the light breeze then blowing.

Presently, this latter gentleman, casting a casual eye around, spied the poor mastless, derelict-looking little yacht, rolling about in the heavy tide-race that was taking her on to the rocks.

Instantly, sailor-like, he became all animation; taking his pipe out of his mouth and shouting out to his fellow-voyager astern with much gesticulation.

“Tiens, Jacques!” he cried, “voilà un bâteau qui courre sur les brisants!”

“Quoi?” carelessly asked the other. “Vous moquez vous!”

But the one who had first spoken repeated what he’d said, to the effect that there was “a boat drifting on the rocks, and likely to be wrecked.” “Jacques,” however, as his comrade had called him, did not seem much interested in the matter, merely shrugging his shoulders, implying that it was “none of his concern.”

“C’est bien,” said he. “Pas mon affaire.”

The other, though, seemed more taken with the little craft, climbing up a couple of steps into the rigging in order to have a better look at her.

He had not gazed a moment when his excitement became intensified.

“Mon Dieu, Jacques!” he sang out. “Il-y-a quelqu’un à bord! Deux personnes, et des garçons je crois; mais, ils sont morts!”

“Pas possible,” cried the helmsman, showing a little more interest. “Really?”

“Parbleu, c’est vrai! Vire que nous nous en approchions.”

“C’est fait,” exclaimed Jacques, now quite as much excited - as the other, and eager to rescue any one in peril or distress, as every sailor of every nationality always is—that is, a true sailor. “Starboard it is!”

“Babord!” cried out Antoine, as the helmsman called him, telling the latter he was to put the tiller over. “Port.”

Jacques replied by a counter order.

“Toi, Antoine,” shouted he, “lache la grande voile!” meaning him to “slacken off the mainsheets,” whereupon the lugger was brought alongside the wreck of the cutter.