"Good Lord, we're lost!" gulped out Mr Stokes as we all floundered together on the grating forming the floor of the engine-room, where fortunately the flood had washed us, instead of hustling us down the stoke-hold below, where all three of us would most inevitably have been killed by the fall. "A boiler's burst and the ship broached-to!"

"Not quite so bad as that, sir," sang out the voice of Grummet in the distance, the thick vapour lending it a far-away sound. "The vessel is recovering herself again, and the cylinder cover's blown off, sir— that's all!"

"All, indeed!" exclaimed the old chief in a despairing tone as he staggered to his feet, enabling Mr Fosset and myself to rise up too—an impossibility before, as he was right on top of us, and had served us out worse than the water had done. "Quite enough damage for me, and all of us, I think!"

"How's your arm, Mr Stokes?" asked Mr Fosset as the atmosphere cleared a little and the engine-room lights glimmered through the misty darkness that now enveloped the place. "I hope it hasn't been hurt by your tumble?"

"Oh, damn my arm!" cried the other impatiently, evidently more anxious about the machinery than his arm. "Have you shut off the steam?"

"Yes, sir," replied his subordinate calmly. "I closed all the stop valves up here the moment I knew what had happened; and the men below in the stoke-hold have cut off the supply from the main pipe, while Mr Links has gone into the screw well to disconnect the propeller."

"Very good, Grummet. So they be all right down below?"

"All right, sir."

"Thank God for that! How about the fires?"

"Drowned out, sir, all but the one under the fire boiler on the starboard side."

"You'd better look after that, to keep the bilge-pumps going, or else it'll be all drowned out, with this lot of water coming down the hatchway every time the ship rolls! I do hope the skipper will lie-to and keep her head to sea until we can get the engines going again, though I'm afraid that'll be a long job!"

Before Grummet could reply to this, Stoddart, the second officer, or rather engineer, came scrambling down from the saloon, where he had been assisting Garry O'Neil in making poor Jackson comfortable, the escape of the steam having evidently told its own tale to an expert like himself.

Although a younger man than Mr Stokes, his brains were considerably sharper and he was a better mechanic in every way; so now, when, after examining the damage done to the cylinder, he made light of the accident, instead of groaning over it like the old chief. Mr Fosset, I could see, and with him myself also, who shared his belief, saw that the injury was not irreparable and that it might certainly have been worse.

"Of course it can't be done in a day!" Stoddart said; "still it can be patched up."

"That's all very well," interposed Mr Stokes, holding to his despondent view of the situation. "But I'd like to know how you're going to get that cracked cover off the cylinder with the vessel rolling like this!"

"Oh, I'll manage that easy enough," said the energetic fellow in his confident way. "I've done worse jobs than that in a heavy sea. Why, I'll lash myself to the cylinder if it comes to the worse and unscrew the cover nut by nut, shifting my berth round till I have it off. Then if Grummet will see to getting the portable forge ready, and some old sheet iron or boiler plates for working and making into a patch, and if Links will turn out some new bolts and screws with the lathe, we'll have everything in working order before we know where we are!"

"Bravo, my hearty!" cried Mr Fosset, lending Stoddart a hand to lash himself to the cylinder, while Grummet held a screw-wrench and other tools up to him. "You ought to be a sailor, you're so smart!"

"I prefer my own billet," retorted the other with an air of conscious power. "I am an engineer!"

Mr Fosset laughed.

"All right!" said he good-humouredly. "Every one to his trade!"

"Humph!" groaned Mr Stokes, who was leaning against the bulkhead, "looking very white about the gills," as Grummet whispered to me. The steam gradually dispersing and the lights burning more brightly, enabled us to see his face better. "I suppose there's nothing I can do?"

"No, nothing, sir," answered Stoddart, busy at the moment with the first nut of the cylinder cover. "You can very safely leave matters to Grummet and me! And Mr O'Neil told me as I left the maindeck that you ought to go to your cabin and lie down, so as to rest your arm, or it might mortify, he says, when he would not answer for the consequences, you understand, sir?"

"Ah, that settles the matter; I won't give our amateur sawbones a chance of lopping it off, as I daresay he'd like!" said poor Mr Stokes, with a feeble attempt at a joke. "Yes, I'd better go to my cabin, for I see I'm not wanted here; and, to tell the truth, I've an aching all over me, and feel rather tired and faint."

"Then off you go to the doctor at once," cried Mr Fosset, catching hold of him by his uninjured arm and leading him towards the hatchway again, the ship being pretty steady for the moment.

"You and I, too, Haldane, ought to be on deck helping the skipper and the rest, instead of stopping here, hindering these smart fellows at their work. Come along with me, my lad!"

Leaving Mr Stokes at the door of the saloon in charge of Weston, the steward, the first mate and I proceeded along the waist to the bridge, where we found Captain Applegarth pacing up and down in his customary jerky, impatient way, like the Polar bear in the Zoological Gardens, as I always thought.

"Well," he said to Mr Fosset, bringing himself up short in front of the rail on our approach, "how are matters getting on below—badly, I'm afraid?"

The first mate explained. Spokeshave, who was at the other end of the bridge, coming up to listen, as usual, to the conversation.

"That's good news, indeed!" said the skipper on hearing how Stoddart had set to work to repair the damage. "I thought the engines were completely broken-down. If it weren't for poor Jackson, who, O'Neil told me just now, was in a bad way, I think we'd got out of the scrape pretty well, for the old barquey is comfortable enough now, and, though there's a heavy sea running and it is still blowing stiff from the north'ard and the west'ard, the sky is clearer than it was, and I fancy we've seen the worst of the gale, eh?"

"I'm sure I hope so, sir," replied Mr Fosset, not committing himself to any definite expression of opinion in the matter. "It has given us a rare good doing all round while it was about it, at an rate!"

"Aye, it has that," said the skipper. "The old barquey, though, has come through it better than any one would have supposed, with all that deadweight amidships, considering that she broached-to awhile ago and got caught in the trough of the sea the very moment the machinery below gave out. By George, Fosset, we had a narrow squeak then, I can tell you!"

"I can quite believe that, sir," said the other, looking round about and aloft, sailor-like, as he spoke. "For my part I feared the worst, I'm sure. However, all's well that ends well, and the old barquey looks first rate, as you say, sir, in spite of all she's gone through. She rides like a cork."

She certainly was a capital seaboat and lay-to now as easily as if she were at anchor in the Mersey, though the wind was whistling through the rigging and the ocean far and wide white with foam, bowing and scraping to the big waves that rolled in after her like an old dowager duchess in a ball room, curtseying to her partner.

During the long time the first mate and I had been down below in the stoke-hold, the skipper had lowered the upper yards and housed her top- masts, getting her also under snugger canvas, the fore and mizzen topsails being set "scandalised," as we call it aboard ship, that is, with the heads of the sails hauled up, and their sheets flattened taut as boards, so as to expose as little surface as possible to the wind, only just sufficient to keep the vessel with her head to sea, like a stag at bay.

Opportunity had also been taken, I noticed, to secure the broken engine- room skylight in a more substantial way than formerly, and so prevent any more green seas from flooding the hold, the opening having been planked over by the carpenter, and heavy bars of railroad iron, which formed part of our cargo, laid across, instead of the tarpaulin that was deemed good enough before and had given way when Mr Stokes—poor man— and the first mate and myself got washed down the hatchway by a wave that came over the side, crumpling the flimsy covering as if it were tissue paper.

Altogether, the outlook was more reassuring than when I had gone below; for although a fierce northerly gale was howling over the deep, making it heave and fret and lashing it up into wild mountainous billows, the heaven overhead was clear of all cloud, and the complaisant moon, which was at the full, but shining with a pale, peaceful light, while numerous stars were twinkling everywhere in the endless expanse of the firmament above, gazing down serenely at the riot of the elements below.

It was now close on midnight and Garry O'Neil came on deck to take the middle watch, it being his turn of duty.

"Well, doctor," said the skipper, anxious to hear something about the invalids, "how're your patients?"

"Both going on capitally; Jackson sleeping quietly, sir, though he can't last out long, poor fellow!"

"And Mr Stokes?"

"Faith, he's drivin' his pigs to market in foine stoil; you should only hear him, cap'en!" answered the Irishman, looking out to windward. "Begorrah, ain't it blowin', though, sir! Sure, as we used to say at ould Trinity, de gustibus non est disputandum, which means, Mister Spokeshave, as yo're cockin' up your nose to hear what I'm after sayin', it's moighty gusty, an' there's no denyin' it!"

The skipper laughed, as he generally did at Garry's nonsensical, queer sayings.

"By George, O'Neil! I must go down and have a glass of grog to wash the taste of that awful pun out of my mouth!" he cried, turning to leave the bridge for the first time since he had come up there at sunset. "You can call me if anything happens or should it come to blow worse, but I shall be up and down all night to see how you're getting on."

"Och! the divvle dout ye!" muttered the Irishman in his quizzing way, as the skipper went down the ladder, giving a word to the boatswain and man at the wheel below as he passed them on his way up. "Ye niver give a chap the cridit of keeping a watch to himself!"

Soon after this I, too, left the deck and turned in, Garry O'Neil telling me he did not want me on the bridge and that I had better sleep while I could, a permission I readily availed myself of, tired out with all I had gone through and the various exciting episodes of the evening.

There was no change in the weather the following morning, the wind even blowing with greater force and the sea such as I had never seen it before, and such a sea as I hope never to experience again; so, in order that the ship might ride the more easily and those below in the engine- room better able to go on with the repair of the cylinder than they could with the old barquey pitching her bows under and then kicking up her heels sky high, varying her performances by rolling side to side violently, like a pendulum gone mad, the skipper had all our spare spars lashed together, and attaching a stout steel wire hawser to them, launched the lot overboard through a hole in the bulwarks, where one of the waves had made a convenient clean sweep, veering the hawser ahead with this "jetsam" to serve as a floating anchor for us, and moor the ship.

By this means we all had a more comfortable time of it, the old barquey no longer shipping water in any considerable quantity and there being less work below in the way of clearing it, all of the bilge-pumps, fortunately for us all, Stoddart and the engine-room staff were able to keep going; otherwise we must have foundered long since!

The gale continued without abatement all that day and the next, the second since our mishap, when, late in the afternoon the wind began to go down, veering from the north-west to the north, and so on, back to the eastern quadrant.

Soon after this, just before it got dark, an English man-of-war hove in sight, and, seeing our disabled condition, signalled to ask whether we required any assistance.

Through the clumsiness of Mr Spokeshave, who had charge of our signal department and showed his cleverness by hoisting the very numbers of the flags giving the skipper's reply, that, though our engines were temporarily broken-down, they were fast being repaired, the captain of the man-of-war could not understand him; and so, fearing the worst, ranged up under our stern to see what help he could render, in what he evidently considered, from Spokeshave's "hoist," to be a pressing emergency.

"Ship ahoy!" he shouted through a speaking trumpet from his quarter-deck aft, which was on a level with our bridge, the vessel, a splendid cruiser of the first-class, towering over the comparatively puny dimensions of the poor, broken-down Star of the North. "Shall I send a boat aboard with assistance?"

"No, thank you very much," replied our skipper, taking off his cap and returning the greeting of the naval officer. "We've got over the worst of it now, sir, and will be soon under weigh again, as the weather is breaking."

"Glad to hear it," returned the other, who could read our name astern as she lay athwart us. "Where are you bound to?"

"New York, sir," sang out the skipper. "Twelve days out from England. We've been disabled forty-eight hours."

"Hope your engines will soon be in working order," sang out the handsome officer from the deck of the man-of-war, giving some other order at the same minute, for I heard the shrill sound of a boatswain's pipe and the rattle of feet along her deck. "Please report us when you reach your destination."

"What name, sir?"

"Her Majesty's ship Aurora, on passage from Bermuda to Halifax."

With that he waved his hand, and her white ensign, whose blood-red cross of Saint George stood out in bold relief, dipped in parting salute to our vessel, which reciprocated the compliment as the man-of-war bore away on her course to the northward, a group of officers rollicking round their captain on her deck aft and gazing at us as she moved off rapidly under a full pressure of steam, evidently admiring our skipper's wonderful sea anchor.

As the noble ship glided away through the still tempestuous sea against a strong headwind, a thing of beauty and of might—such a contrast to us lying there, almost at the mercy of the seas—I could not help thinking of the wondrous power of mind over matter displayed in our grand ocean steamers, and what a responsibility rests upon their engineers!

How little do the thousands of passengers who yearly go to and fro across the Atlantic know, or, indeed, care to know, that their comfort and the rate at which they travel through the water—they who talk so glibly of making the passage in such and such a time, be the sea smooth or rough, and the wind fine or contrary—that all this depends on the unceasing vigilance of the officers in charge of the vessel, in which they voyage!

Do they even think, I wondered, that while they are sleeping, eating, enjoying themselves and doing what they please on board, even grumbling at some little petty defect or shortcoming which they think might be prevented, the engineers below, in an atmosphere in which they could not breathe, are incessantly watching the movements of the machinery and oiling each part at almost every instant of time, moving this slide and that, adjusting a valve here and tightening a nut there, ever cooling the bearings and raking at the furnaces and putting on fresh coal, this being done every hour of the day and night through the passage from land to land? Have any of them realised the fact that these same engineers and their able assistants, the firemen and oilmen and trimmers, the whole stoke-hold staff, so to speak, run a greater risk of their lives, in the event of an accident happening, than any one else in the ship, as, should a boiler or cylinder burst they may be scalded to death before the noise of the explosion could reach those above? Or again, should the vessel strike on a rock, the compartment below in which perforce they are compelled to work deep down in the vessel's bowels will fill, from the very weight of the engines, quicker than any other part of the ship, most probably, when those confined below must necessarily be liable to be drowned, like rats in a hole, without the chances of escape possessed by the passengers and hands on board.

"No, I don't suppose any one even thinks of such things," said I to myself as I left the bridge and went towards the saloon to ask how poor Jackson was, uttering my thoughts unconsciously aloud as I reflected, and now that I considered their responsibility, thought how much poor old Mr Stokes, with his broken arm, and Stoddart and the others must have on their minds! "Hullo, who is that?"

It was Weston, the steward, who spoke.

"I wish you'd come and look at Jackson, sir," he said. "The poor chap wore all right when Mr O'Neil comed down jist now, and a sleepin' still as when you seed him awhile ago. But all of a suddink he starts up as he hears you a comin' down the companion-way, sir, and is jabbering away like anythink!"

"Oh, but," I exclaimed, "why did you leave him?"

"I wor afeard he'd jump overboard, or try to do somethink awful!"

"Nonsense! the very thing you are there for to prevent," said I, going into the cabin, where I saw the poor fellow trying to get out of the cot. Turning angrily to Weston I repeated again, "You shouldn't have left him for one moment in this state!"

"But, sir, I wanted to hail Mr O'Neil or somebody; I thought I oughter 'ave summun by to 'elp me, in case he becomed desperate-like, and I couldn't make no one hear on deck, and that's why I comed when I knowed you was a-passing along, sir."

This was unanswerable logic, though Weston always had an answer for anything and everything.

Poor Jackson, though, did not look as if he would be "desperate" again in any shape or form.

That he was delirious I could see at a glance, for his eyes, great wild eyes, were wide open, staring at vacancy, fixed on the bulkhead that divided the cabin from the captain's, which was just beyond; and he was very much excited, sitting up in the cot and, gesticulating violently with both his hands, and waving his arms about as he repeated some unintelligible gibberish over and over again, that I could not make out.

Presently he looked at me very straight as if he recognised me, and afterwards spoke a little more coherently.

"Ah, yes, sir, I recollect now," he said at last. "You're Mr Haldane, I know; but—where's the little girl and the—the—dog?"

"Why, Jackson, old man," I said, speaking soothingly to him, "what's the matter with you? There's no girl or dog, you know, here. Don't you know where you are, my poor fellow?"

He got quite savage at this. There's no reason in delirium!

"Of course I know where I am," he screamed out, making a grab at Weston, as he writhed in torture from the internal and violent inflammation which must have set up. "I'm in—hell. I—can—feel—I—am—I am— burning—all over—inside me—here. And you? Oh, yes—I know you!"

This paroxysm left him again after a moment, and he lay back on his pillows, only to sit up the next minute again, however.

He now pointed his finger in the direction of the sea through the porthole, gazing earnestly as if he saw something there.

"The ship has come for me again—as—it did t'other night—you know—you know?" he said in agonised whispers. "There—there,—can't you see it now? sailing—along—as—Mister—Haldane—said,—there with a—a— signal—of—distress—flying—the—flag—half-mast high! Why,—there it is,—now, as plain as—plain—can be; and, see—see they're—lowering— a—boat,—look,—for me,—to take me aboard. Lend us a hand,—mate. I wants to halloo—to 'em and I—feels so bad—and—I can't, I can't—move myself. Hi,—there!—Ship ahoy! Wait—a—minute—can't you? Ship ahoy!—I'm—coming—I'm—comi-ing. I'm—"

Then, raising his eyes to heaven, and drawing a long deep breath, something between a sob and a sigh, a breath that was his last, poor Jackson fell back on the pile of pillows behind him, stone dead!



CHAPTER NINE.

WE SIGHT THE STRANGE CRAFT AGAIN.

"That's number one!" said old Masters, the boatswain, meeting me at the door of the saloon as I came out on deck, Weston having already told him the sad news. "Master Stokes'll foller next, and then you or hi, Master Haldane, for we be all doomed men, I know, arter seein' that there ghost-ship!"

I made no reply to the superstitious old seaman's ominous prediction, but as I made my way forward to the bridge, to inform Captain Applegarth and the others of what had happened, I could not help thinking how strange it was that poor Jackson should have recalled, at the very moment the spirit was quitting his crippled body, the fact of my sighting the ship in distress, and the account I had given the skipper of what I had seen on board that mysterious craft!

Mr Fosset, or some of the hands who accompanied him, must have taken down the yarn to the stoke-hold, only just before the unfortunate man met with his terrible accident, though I had no doubt that he must have seen the man-of-war through the port hole of the cabin, which was right opposite his bunk, as she brought up under our stern to speak to us earlier in the afternoon, and the sight of HMS Aurora had, somehow or other, amid the wanderings of his unconscious brain, got mixed up with the remembrance of what he had previously heard concerning the vessel I had seen at sunset the two days prior.

It was now getting dark, the evening closing in quickly, and, what with the dying man's queer talk and the boatswain harping on the same theme immediately afterwards, I confess I felt far from comfortable, my nerves being in a state of constant tension from the painful scene in the cabin that I had just witnessed, while the gloomy shades of the night that were fast enwrapping us, the dull roar of the ever-breaking sea and the groaning of the ship as she rolled, like a living creature in pain, all worked on my overtried fancy and made me almost afraid of my own shadow as I slipped and stumbled along the sloppy deck, my mind being in a complete whirl till I reached my goal—the bridge.

"What's the matther, me bhoy?" asked Garry O'Neil, who was speaking to the skipper, the two examining a chart in the wheel-house, the light from the doorway of which fell on my face. "Faith, ye look quite skeared, Haldane, jist as if ye'd sane a ghoast, sure!"

I mentioned what had happened, however, and he at once dropped his chaffing manner, looking as grave as a judge.

"Begorrah, it's moighty sorry I am to hear that, now!" said he in a more serious tone. "Sure, and he was a foine, h'ilthy man entirely, barrin' that accident, bad cess to it! He moight have lived till a hundred, an' then aunly died of auld age; for he'd the constitution of an illiphent. Faith, I never saw such a chist and thorax on a chap in me loife before!"

"Poor fellow!" observed the skipper. "He seems to have gone off awfully sudden at the last. I thought you said he was getting on well when you went down to see him awhile ago?"

"Bedad, I did that, sir; father's no denyin' it," answered the Irishman, off-hand. "But I niver s'id he'd git over it, cap'en. I tuld ye from the first he couldn't reciver, for he was paralysed, poor craytur', from the waist downwards, and had a lot of internal injury besides. It was aunly bekase he was sich a shtrang man that he's lasted so long, sir. Any one else would have died directly outright afther the accident, for he was pretty well smashed to pieces!"

"Strange!" muttered Captain Applegarth, who, although hasty of temper sometimes, was a man of deep feeling. "Sunday night again and that man dead! Only a week ago, this very evening, he came up to me here as I was standing by the binnacle to ask about some carpenter's stores that were wanted in the engine-room. He and I then got talking, I recollect, it being Sunday, I suppose, of religious matters. He imagined himself— poor chap—a 'materialist,' as they call themselves, but his arguments on the point were very weak. He argued that there was no hereafter, no future state; the heaven and hell spoken of in Scripture, he suggested, being the happiness or punishment we meet with below here, while living, in accordance with our own lives."

"Faith!" said Garry O'Neil, who was not a deep thinker, not troubling himself much about anything beyond the present. "That's a puzzling question; but I, for one, wouldn't care to be of that way of thinkin', sure, sir."

"That question however, poor Jackson has solved, long ere this!"

As Captain Applegarth uttered these words, solemnly enough, the fireman's ravings, when in the agonies of death, came back to me, and I thought that, if confident in his materialism when in health and strength, his creed had not altogether eased his mind at the last, when I saw him raise his eyes, for a few minutes, to heaven in prayer.

That night the gale, which had moderated considerably during the afternoon, assailed us again with renewed vigour, as if old Boreas had put a fresh hand to the bellows, as sailor folk say.

It began in the middle watch, when the wind suddenly veered to the southwards, and it came on to blow great guns, causing the skipper the utmost uneasiness, as he feared we would break away from our spar anchor, when, disabled as we were, a steamer in a storm without the use of the engines being no better off than a baby in arms deprived of its nurse, it seemed almost impossible to prevent the vessel from broaching- to, in which case she would more than likely founder with all hands.

Consequently, not a soul turned in the livelong night, the port and starboard watches both remaining on duty, with Captain Applegarth and Mr Fosset on the bridge, while Garry O'Neil relieved the boatswain, who now had eight men under him in charge of the wheel, where the utmost caution and the greatest vigilance were necessary to keep the old barquey's head to the sea. I had fearfully hard work, too, for the big waves ever and anon leapt up over her bows, burying the fo'c's'le in clouds of spray and spent water that came pouring down into the waist and rushing aft, flooding the whole deck almost up to the gunwhales taking everything movable overboard, the boats being lifted off the chocks amidships even and swept away, and the cook's galley in the forward part of the deckhouse got badly damaged.

This was in the height of the storm, just before daybreak, about two bells in the morning watch, or five o'clock AM.

Our poor old barquey then rolled so much that the skipper thought the wire hawser attached to the spars had parted and that we were at the very mercy of the tempest. So certain, indeed, was he, that he yelled out for all hands to make sail, with the idea of trying one last desperate venture and beard the winds with our puny canvas.

Fortunately, however, there was no need for us to essay this futile expedient, breaking the force of the billows as they reared up in their colossal grandeur to annihilate us and keeping us steadily facing their attack; and presently, shortly after six bells, when we really experienced pretty nearly the worst of it, there was a muttered growl of thunder, accompanied by a lightning flash that illuminated the whole of the heavens from pole to pole, and then rain came down in a deluge, the wind dropping, as suddenly, with a wild, weird shrill shriek of disappointed rage that wailed and whistled through the rigging, and then quietly died away.

Of course the sea did not quiet down all at once, old Neptune not being easily pacified after being stirred up to so great an extent, and the waves ran high most of the day, while the sky was overcast and the ocean of a dull leaden colour; but towards evening it cleared up and, the water being a bit calmer, the captain thought it a fitting time to bury poor Jackson.

All the hands were mustered on deck, the engineers and stokers stopping their busy repairing work below, which they had kept at night and day without intermission ever since our breakdown, and coming up with the rest of the crew to pay the last tribute of respect to their departed comrade, even Mr Stokes, though he was still in a very weak state of health and had his head and broken arm bandaged up, insisting on being present, Garry O'Neil and Stoddart supporting him between them for the purpose.

Then the body of the unfortunate fireman, enclosed in a hammock covered by the ship's ensign and having a pig of ballast tied to the feet to ensure its submersion, was brought up from the cabin where he had died, and placed on a plank by the gangway where the waves had washed away our bulwarks, leaving a wide open space.

Captain Applegarth read over the remains the beautiful prayers of the Church Service appointed for the burial of those who die at sea, all of us standing bareheaded around.

A faint gleam of light from the setting sun, away on our port bow, shone through a mist of cloud that obscured the horizon to windward; and, as this disappeared, the skipper came to the end of the viaticum, when, at a signal from the boatswain, the plank was tipped and poor Jackson's body was committed to the deep with a sigh of regret at his untimely end, and the devout hope that though his earthly voyage had been cut short, he might yet reach that haven where there are no accidents nor shipwrecks, and where seas swallow not up, or stormy winds blow!

Some little while after this a slight breeze sprang up from the southward and westward, bringing a cool feeling with it, and I shivered as I stood on the bridge looking out over the dark waste of waters, feeling rather melancholy, if the truth be told.

"That's a bad sign, Master Haldane," said old Masters close to my ear, making me jump, for I did not know he was there. "They say that when a ship chap shivers like that there, it be meaning that somebody or summit be a-walking over his grave!"

"Stave that, bo'sun!" I cried impatiently. "You're a regular old Jonah, and enough to give a fellow the creeps!"

"Ah, you may try to laugh it off, Mister Haldane," he retorted in his lugubrious way. "But, as I says to ye last night, says I, when that poor chap kicked the bucket as we've just been a-burying on, we ain't seen the end on it yet. I misdoubts the weather, too, sir. There's a great bank of cloud now rising up to win'ard, and I fancies I heard jist now the sound o' thunder ag'in."

"Thunder?" I exclaimed. "Nonsense!"

"No, Mister Haldane, it ain't no nonsense," said the old fellow solemnly. "You ain't known me to croak afore without re'sin, and I tells ye I don't likes the look o' things to-night. There's summit a- brewin' up over there, or I'm a Dutchman!"

"What's that, bo'sun?" cried the skipper, coming up on the bridge at the moment to look for the chart of the North Atlantic, which he had left in the wheel-house the night before, and overheard the old growler's remark. "Got the Flying Dutchman on the brain again?"

"No, sir, I weren't talking o' that," replied Masters. "I was a-saying to Master Haldane that it were precious misty and thick to win'ard and I feared thunder over there."

"Thunder! thunder your grandmother!" cried the skipper testily. "I've pretty sharp ears, bo'sun, and I have heard none to-night. Have you, Haldane?"

"N-n-o, sir, not thunder," I answered, listening attentively for a moment. "Stay, sir, though. I do hear something now, but the sound seems more like firing in the distance."

"What, guns?"

"No sir, more like rifle shots, or the discharge of a revolver firing quickly at intervals."

Captain Applegarth thereupon listened attentively, too, in his turn, while Masters went out to the end of the bridge and peered out over the side to windward with rapt gaze.

"By George, yes, you're right, boy!" cried the skipper the next moment. "I can hear the shots quite plainly, I do believe. Hullo, there! What the deuce is going on over there, I wonder?"

There was reason for exclamation.

At that instant the dark mass of cloud on the horizon, towards which we were all looking, was rent by a flash, and we could see, standing against the black background in vivid relief, the masts and spars of a large full-rigged ship.

She was evidently burning a "flare-up" to attract attention, and, ere the light waned, I noticed that her yards were all a cock-bill and her sails and rigging torn and disordered; while, stranger still, she had her flag astern hoisted half-mast high—the French tricolour, too!

Both the boatswain and I, simultaneously, involuntarily, uttered a cry of dismay.

The vessel in sight was the very identical ship I had seen three nights before, flying the same signal of distress; and here she was now, sailing, as then, four points off our weather bows and eight before the wind, which was, as I've already said, blowing a light breeze from the southward and westward.

What new calamity did this second appearance of the "ghost-ship," as the old boatswain called her, portend to all of us?

Aye, what, indeed!

Time alone could tell.



CHAPTER TEN.

MYSTIFICATION.

Old Masters turned his face towards me as the fleeting vision became swallowed up in the darkness that now obscured the sky to the westwards, and I saw that he looked horror-struck, staring into space spell-bound.

As for me, I cannot express what I felt, because I am unable to describe it fully.

"There, there!" I exclaimed, clutching Captain Applegarth's arm in nervous horror. "There she is again!"

But the skipper, although startled by the sudden appearance of the mysterious vessel in the first instance, as his ejaculation on catching sight of her showed, evidently did not regard her in the same light as the boatswain and myself.

"Why, Haldane, what's the matter with you, my lad?" he said in a joking way, "You seem all of a tremble; and, by George, you grip tight!"

"I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure," I stammered out, trying to pull myself together as I released his arm. "But—but—did you—did you—see her, sir?"

"See that ship just now? Yes, of course I did. I suppose she sighted us lying here like a log and wanted us to report her or something, though why they lit that flare-up over her stern I am sure I can't imagine. They couldn't expect us to read her name at that distance. She must have been close on five miles off!"

"But, sir," I cried out quickly. "She's the same!"

"The same what, Haldane?"

"Why, the ship in distress, sir, that I sighted at sunset on Friday night just before our breakdown."

Captain Applegarth whistled through his teeth.

"My good lad," he said incredulously, "that's simply impossible!"

"Well, sir, you may not believe me," I urged, rather nettled that he should put me down in this way, "but I declare to you she is the identical vessel I saw that evening, as I told you at the time, and of which we went in chase till the gale stopped us and our machinery gave out! I cannot doubt the evidence of my own eyes, sir."

"My dear boy," replied the skipper, in kinder tones than I expected to this outburst, for he was a hot-tempered man generally, and disliked anything like argument from his officers when he had once said his say, being of the opinion that his word should be last. "Just reflect a moment and let your own natural good sense decide the point. How can it be likely that the vessel you asserted you saw on Friday night, hundreds of miles away from here, should come across us now under precisely similar circumstances, considering all that has happened since?"

"She's the same ship, sir, nevertheless," I maintained stubbornly, though I was a bit puzzled on my own account, mind, by his putting the case so strongly. "The vessel I saw on Friday night was a full-rigged ship, with her sails knocked about and had her ensign hoisted half-mast high at the peak, and this one seemed the same in every particular. I did not notice all that when she burnt the flare-up just now. The light only lasted an instant."

"There is something in that, certainly, Haldane," answered the skipper, wavering a little, I thought, in his ideas. "Still, when one is inclined to believe in a thing, the imagination is often a great aid in turning a wish into a certainty."

"Besides, sir," I continued, wishing to clench my argument, "if we were driven out of our course by the gale, she might have been similarly affected, and the winds and currents might have brought us together again."

"That's possible, but not probable," he rejoined. "I've known two bottles of the same weight dropped overboard from the same ship at the same hour, and—"

"Well, sir?"

"One was found landed on the Lofoden Isles, off the coast of Norway: the other came ashore at Sandy Point, in the Straits of Magellan!"

He laughed when he said this, apparently thinking he had utterly settled the matter, but I checkmated him with his own theory.

"The very uncertainty of the action of the currents of the Atlantic which you instance, sir," I said, "shows that what you think impossible might be very possible, and the strange, weird vessel that I saw three nights ago might have come within sight of us again."

"That's one for you, Haldane," acknowledged the skipper very good- naturedly, for he was a fair man when anything was laid clearly before him. "But, recollect, no one saw this ship distinctly but yourself. I couldn't say of my own knowledge what rig she was, and I certainly didn't see any flag or sign of distress. I only saw something that looked like a ship burning a flare-up in the distance—that's all."

"Beg pardon, sir," whispered old Masters, stepping up and touching his cap ere he addressed the skipper, "but I seed the ghost-ship, too, sir, the same as Master Haldane, sir."

The skipper wheeled round and stared at him.

"Ghost-ship, man! What do you mean?"

"I means that there ghost-ship that hove in sight jist now and which have passed us afore, sir. She be sent as a warning to us, I knows, and as a Christian man, Cap'en Applegarth, I takes it as sich!"

The old seaman spoke so earnestly that the skipper, although he had hard work to keep himself in, answered him without ridiculing his extraordinary delusion, as he held it to be.

"I am a Christian man, too, I hope, bo'sun," he said. "I believe in a divine power above, and put my trust in a merciful providence; but I can't believe in any of your queer supernatural visitations, whether as warnings or what not!"

"Not if you seed the same blessed thing three times?"

"No; not if I saw it a hundred times!" he roared out impatiently.

"Ah, seein' is believin', I says," whined old Masters, not a whit shaken on the point, in spite of the skipper's scepticism. "Master Haldane seed it, and I seed it, and poor Jackson seed it."

"Indeed?" cried the skipper. "I did not know he had been on deck before the accident."

"It wore arter that, sir, that he seed the ghost-ship," said the old boatswain in reply to the implied question. "It were jist afore he died."

"Just before he died!" repeated Captain Applegarth indignantly, as if he thought he was being made a fool of. "Why, man, the poor fellow was out of his mind then, and besides, never stirred out of his cabin!"

"Ah, but he had the warnin' jist the same, for Weston, it was, told me as how Jackson seed the ship and cried out when he lay there a-dyin'. Bulkheads can't keep sperrits out, sir."

"Nor in, either, as I know to my cost," returned the skipper drily. "Your friend Weston is pretty familiar with them, if they come in his way, I fancy! Stuff and nonsense, bo'sun; how can you believe such rubbish? The other night you imagined the reflection of our own vessel, when that meteor came by, to be a ghost-ship, as you call it in your absurd folly; and to-night, when that craft to win'rd passed and lit a flare-up, hanged if you aren't at it again with your ghost-ship! By George, it makes me sick, Masters, to think that a grown man and a good seaman like yourself should be such a confounded ass!"

"Hass or no hass, there she wer'," said the old fellow doggedly. "But here comes Mr Fosset, sir. He were on the poop aft when that vessel passed as I speaks on. Ax him what he thinks of her and if she weren't the same full-rigged ship as Master Haldane and all of us seed?"

"I will," replied Captain Applegarth promptly; and on the first mate approaching nearer, he hailed him. "I say, Fosset, what did you think of that ship just now?"

The other's answer, however, bewildered the skipper more than Masters and I had done previously.

"Ship!" said the first mate. "What ship?"

"That vessel that lit the flare-up awhile ago."

"I didn't see any flare-up!" replied Mr Fosset, "and certainly no ship has passed us to my knowledge since I've been on deck."

"By George, I don't know who or what to believe," exclaimed Captain Applegarth, looking from the one to the other of us. "You've set my very brains wool-gathering between you, with your 'vessels in distress' and 'ghost-ships'; I'm hanged if I won't go down to the engine-room and have a little practical common sense knocked into me, as well as see how they're getting on with the repairs to the machinery!"

So saying, the skipper went below, and, as there was nothing particular for me to do on deck, I followed his example. Instead of proceeding down to the engine-room, however, I only went as far as my bunk and turned in, wondering what the morrow would bring forth. I was haunted, though, by strange dreams all through the night, continually waking up and then getting to sleep again in snatches, only to wake up again immediately after I had dropped off.



CHAPTER ELEVEN.

IN THE GULF STREAM.

"It's a dead calm, sir!" I heard Mr Fosset sing out next morning outside the door of the skipper's state room, which opened out of the saloon, close to my berth, when he went to call him at four bells, in obedience to orders given overnight. "The gale has completely blown itself out, and there's only a little cat's-paw of a breeze from the south'ard."

"Humph!" yawned the skipper from within. "That's a good job, Fosset. I think we've had enough wind to last us for a blue moon!"

"So say I, sir," agreed the other with much heartiness. "I wouldn't like to go through the same experiences again, by Jingo!"

"Nor I," came from the other, evidently about to turn out from his bunk. "I'll be on deck in five minutes or so, Fosset."

The first mate, however, would not take this for a dismissal, having apparently further important information to give and which he at once proceeded to disclose.

"Do you know, sir, I think we're in the Gulf Stream," he said in an impressive tone. "There's a lot of the weed knocking about round the ship."

"Gulf-weed?" exclaimed the skipper's voice again from the cabin, sounding a bit muffled as if he were in the act of pulling his shirt over his head. "Are you certain?"

"Aye," affirmed the other. "There's not the slightest doubt about it. It's as plain as a pike staff, sir."

"The deuce it is!" said the skipper in a louder key, showing that my surmise had been correct as to the progress of his toilet, and that his head was now unloosed from its bag-like envelope. "By George, I can't make it out at all!"

"There's no getting over the fact, sir," persisted the first mate. "We're quite surrounded by the weed. I saw it well the first streak of light at two bells, on suddenly looking over the side, sir. There's Mr O'Neil up on the bridge now, and he has noticed it too!"

The skipper, to judge from the voice that came from his cabin and the way he was banging his boots and other things about, was as much mystified by Mr Fosset's unexpected announcement as he had been the previous evening by the sight he and I and the boatswain had seen.

He was also angry, I know, so I thought it good for me to turn out likewise from my bunk as speedily as possible, it not being advisable under the circumstances to be "caught napping."

"By George, I can't understand it!" repeated Captain Applegarth crossly. "If we're in the Gulf Stream, all I can say is, we must have drifted a wonderful distance in the last two or three days. Why, man, the current is seldom perceptible above the fortieth parallel!"

"I know that, sir," replied the first mate; "but if you recollect, sir, from the lunar observation Mr O'Neil took on the night of the breakdown, we were then as far south as 41 deg. 30 minutes, and we've been drifting south-east by east ever since."

"Well, Fosset, I'm hanged if I know where we are, after the bucketting- about we've had since last Friday!" said the skipper, who now came into the saloon, where I, already dressed, was hurriedly having a cup of cocoa and bite of biscuit Weston had just brought me in from the pantry. "I feel half inclined to believe now in the old superstition about it being an unlucky day, though I always used to laugh at the notion!"

"There are plenty aboard who believe queerer things than that!" said Mr Fosset drily, with a meaning glance in my direction, eyeing my cocoa as if he rather fancied a cup himself. "I say, Haldane, that cocoa smells good!"

"It's not half bad, sir," I replied grinning. "Perhaps you would like some too, sir. Weston's got a lot more inside here, hot, just fetched from the galley!"

"I don't mind if I do have a cup," said he. "Will you join me, cap'en?"

"No, thanks; I'm too worried. I'll wait till breakfast," said the skipper, turning to go up on deck by the companion-way and hitching his cap off the hook by his cabin door. "You won't be long, I hope, eh?"

"I'll follow you up in a jiffey, sir, as soon as I have swallowed a toothful of this warm stuff to keep out the cold. Hi, steward?"

"Aye, aye, sir?" answered Weston, promptly putting his head out of his pantry, where he had been listening. "Cup of cocoa, sir?—yezzir."

"I say, Fosset," said the captain, who had lingered near awhile, as if in deep thought, as he stood with one foot on the lower step of the companion as if he were trying to recollect something, "I say, we must make some points to-day on the chart, you know!"

"Yes, sir. I don't think there'll be any difficulty about that. Do you?"

"No; the sun ought to be pretty clear at noon with a morning like this— clear enough, at all events, for us to find out the latitude and longitude."

"Just what I said to Spokeshave, sir, before I came down to call you awhile ago."

"Quite so."

"Aye, 'quite so,' sir."

Whereupon both sniggered at the skipper's apt mimicry of Master Conky's pet phrase, which Captain Applegarth pronounced in the little beggar's exact tone of voice, so like indeed being the imitation that I nearly choked myself while swallowing the balance of my cocoa, as I hastily drained my cup and rose to follow the skipper up the companion-ladder to the deck.

As Mr Fosset had said, there was a dead calm on the bosom of the deep, for the slight swell that remained after the gale on the previous evening, even up to the time of my going down below, had quite disappeared, the surface of the water being as smooth as glass as far as the horizon line and all aflash now with the rosy hue of sunrise to the eastward. The sky still preserved, however, the pale neutral tints of night in the west, and up to the zenith, where it merged into a faint and beautiful seagreen that lost itself imperceptibly in the warm colouring of the orient, which each moment became more and more intense in hue, heralding the approach of morn.

At last, up jumped the glorious orb of day, proudly, from his ocean bed, came with one bound as it were, a veritable globe of liquid fire, flooding the vast distant heaven and sea with a wealth of light and radiance that seemed to give life to everything around.

"There, Haldane," said Captain Applegarth, pointing over the taffrail at a lot of straggling masses of quasi-looking stringy stuff that came floating on top of the water close by the ship, resembling vegetable refuse discarded from Neptune's kitchen garden. "That's the gulf-weed Mr Fosset was just speaking about to me."

"Indeed, sir, I can't say much for its appearance. It looks more like a parcel of cauliflowers run to seed than anything else, sir!"

"Yes, that's not a bad simile of yours, my lad," he replied, moving nearer to the side and sending his keen sailorly glance alow and aloft, examining our old barquey to see how she fared after the storm. "If I can remember rightly, I think one of our best naturalists has given a similar description of it. Yes, that's the gulf-weed, or sargassum, or fucus natans, as the big guns variously call it in their Latin lingo. A rum sort of tackle, isn't it?"

"Yes, it does look funny, queer stuff, sir," said I, for I had never had the opportunity of noticing it before, all my voyages hitherto backwards and forwards across the Atlantic having been outside the limits of the uncanny looking gulf-weed. "Does it grow in the sea, sir? It looks so fresh and green."

"Well, that depends how you take it, my lad," returned the skipper rather absently, his attention being fixed on something forward, about which he evidently could not quite make up his mind, as there was a slight puzzled expression on his face. "You see, it is all through those long-winded chaps, who won't be content with what the Creator gives them, but must put a cause and reason for everything beyond God's own will and pleasure, and who lay down arbitrary rules of their own for the guidance of Dame Nature, though, between you and I and the binnacle, Haldane, the old lady got on well enough for a good many scores of years—I'd be sorry to say how many—without their precious help! Now these gentlemen, who know everything, will have it that the gulf-weed grows deep down at the bottom of the sea and that only the branches and tendrils, or leaves, so to speak, float on the top and are visible to us."

"How strange, sir," said I. "Just like an aquarium plant. It is strange!"

"It would be, if true, for they would have to possess uncommonly long stems, as, in the Sagossa Sea, in the centre of the Gulf Stream, where the weed is most plentiful and to be seen at its freshest and most luxuriant growth, the recorded depth of the water is over four miles!"

"That is not likely, then," I observed in reply to this—"I mean, sir, the fact of its growing up from the bottom of the sea."

"Certainly not, my boy. Another wise man, of the same kidney as the long-winded chap of the theory I've just explained, says that the gulf- weed in its natural and original state grows on the rocky islets and promontories of the Florida coast and that it is torn thence by the action of the great Atlantic current that bears it many miles from its home; though, strangely enough, I have never seen any gulf-weed growing on rocks in the Gulf of Florida or in any of the adjacent seas, nor has any one else to my knowledge!"

"Then you do not believe it grows to anything at all, do you, sir?"

"No, I don't. My opinion is that it is a surface plant of old Neptune's rearing and that the warm water of the Gulf Stream breeds it and nourishes it, for at certain times it seems partly withered, and this could not be due to accident. The weed, I believe, is a sailor, like you and I, my lad, and lives and has its being on the sea, no matter what your longshore naturalists, who don't know much about it from personal observation, may say to the contrary. Hullo! though, my boy, look forrad there! Where has our spar anchor gone? I thought I noticed something and could not make out at first what it was. Look, youngster, and see whether you can see it!"

I was equally puzzled for the moment, for although our good ship rested as peacefully on the bosom of the deep as if she were moored, the raftlike bundle of spars, to which she had been made fast the night before, was now no longer to be seen bobbing up ahead, athwart our hawser as then.

Where could our wonderful floating anchor have gone?

The next moment, however, I saw what had happened, the mystery being easily explained by the calm.

"They've floated alongside, sir," I said. "I can see them under the counter on the port side, sir."

"Yes, of course, there they are, exemplifying the attraction of gravitation or some other long-winded theory of your scientific gentlemen," replied the skipper, who seemed to have got science on the brain this morning, being violently antagonistic to it, somehow or other. "Ah, Fosset, see, our anchor's come home without weighing. I think you'd better have the spars hauled on board and rig up the sticks again, now that they've served our time in another way—aye, and served it well, too."

"Aye, aye, sir," said the first mate, who had come up after us on the poop, looking, I couldn't help noticing, all the better for the good and early breakfast he had just finished. "I thought of getting them in just now, but waited to call you first."

"Well, you needn't wait any longer, Fosset," rejoined the skipper. "Pass the word for the bo'sun forrad."

"Yes, yes, sir. Quartermaster, call Masters!"

"Bo'sun, pipe all hands to hoist spars aboard!" These orders were roared out by Mr Fosset in rapid succession, and then in equally rapid sequences came the boatswain's whistle and hail to the men down the hatchway just along the deck.

All had a rare time of it, and an amount of "yoho-hoes-hoing" went round that it would have done anybody's heart good to hear; the first mate was bellowing out his orders and old Masters seeing to their proper execution by the busy hands and active feet, the skipper meanwhile standing on the poop, superintending matters with his keen eye, and woe to the lubber who bungled at a hitch or left a rope's end loose or brace slack!



CHAPTER TWELVE.

BOAT AHOY!

By the time the sun was near the meridian our top-masts were up and the upper yards swayed aloft and crossed, making the old barquey all ataunto again and pretty nearly her old self, our broken bulwarks and smashed skylight betraying the only damage done by the storm, on deck, at all events.

"I 'calculate,' Fosset, as our Yankee friends would say, we may now cry spell O!" observed the skipper, who was highly pleased with the progress made in refitting the ship. "Tell the bo'sun to pipe the hands to dinner, and you and I had better go up on the bridge and see what we can do in the way of determining our position on the chart. That gulf-weed must have lost its bearings, I'm sure. It seems impossible to me that we could have drifted so far to the south as to bring us in the Stream!"

"An observation will soon settle the point, sir," replied the first mate, passing the word to Masters to knock off work. "Run down, Haldane, and get my sextant for me, there's a good chap! I left it on the cabin table, all ready. You'll find it there!"

"Belay, there!" sang out the skipper, as I started off towards the companion-way. "You may as well bring mine, too, while you're about it. Two heads are better than one, eh, Fosset?"

"Yes, sir, perhaps so," rejoined the other, before I got out of earshot. "It seems, though, as if we're going to have three on the job; for here comes Mr O'Neil with his sextant under his arm, evidently bent on the same errand!"

I soon was back with the instruments for the other two, and presently all three were at work taking the sun's altitude and measuring off the angle made by the luminary with the horizon.

A short delay ensued from our clocks being fast on account of our having drifted to the eastward, of where they had last been set.

Then all at once Mr Fosset sang out.

"It's just noon, sir, now. The sun's crossing the meridian!"

"All right, make it so," replied the skipper. "Bos'un, strike eight bells."

"Aye, aye, sir," came back from old Masters away forward, and then followed the melodious chime of the ship's bell that hung immediately under the beak of the fo'c's'le. "Ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting, ting-ting."

"Now," going into the wheel-house, "let us look at the chronometer and see what Greenwich time says, and then tot up our reckonings!"

The two others followed him into the little room on the bridge, sitting down to a table in which the track chart of the ship's course lay, and all were busy for some few moments calculating and working out our latitude and longitude.

I was standing by the doorway after bringing up the correct time of the chronometers, which the skipper kept locked up in his own cabin to prevent their being meddled with, and I could see he looked puzzled, adding up and subtracting his figures over and over again, as if he thought he must have made some error, though he found that he invariably came to the same result.

"Well, Fosset," he cried at length, unable to restrain himself any longer. "What do you make it?"

"39 deg. 20 minutes north latitude sir, and 47 deg. 15 minutes west longitude."

"Faith, an' I make it the same, sir," also put in Garry O'Neil, the twain having worked out the reckoning long before the poor skipper. "Both of us agree to the virry minnit, sure, lavin' out the sicconds, sir!"

"By George!" exclaimed the skipper. "It's even worse than I thought."

"How, sir?" asked Mr Fosset with a smile on his face, no doubt chuckling to himself at being cleverer and wiser than Captain Applegarth, who would not believe we were in the Gulf Stream. "Don't you think us right, sir?"

"Oh, yes, Fosset; I agree with you myself. The reckoning is right enough, but father's the devil to pay!"

The skipper couldn't sacrifice the joke, though he was terribly put out.

"See here," he continued, "jabbing," with great noise and force the compasses with which he was measuring off our position, into the chart, as if that was in fault, while Fosset and O'Neil laughed. "Look where we are! I shouldn't have thought it possible for us to have been driven so far south, right into the Gulf Stream, as we are, for the current generally runs to the nor'-east'ards below the Banks."

"The stream has done it, though, sure enough," said Mr Fosset; "that and the gale, for the one has drifted us to the coast and the other pressed us down southwards; and between the two we're just fetched where we are, sir!"

"Well," replied the skipper, shrugging his shoulders, "you were right, Fosset, and I was wrong this morning. Let me see, though, how we have fetched here, if we can trace our course so far, from when we last took the sun."

"Sure, an' that was Friday, that baste of a day!" interposed Garry O'Neil, pointing to a place on the chart. "I worked at the rickonin' and I put it down meself, marking it with a red pencil."

"Yes; here it is, 42 deg. 35 minutes north latitude, and longitude 50 deg. 10 minutes west," said the skipper. "I worked it out also, on my own hook, and you and I tallied, if you recollect?"

"Of course we did, the divvil doubt it, sir," answered the second mate in his usual Irish fashion. "Thin, sor, we ran for five hours from that p'int on a west by south course, going between ten and twelve knots; for, though I didn't say it meself, Mister Fosset tould me the wind was freshinin' all the toime, so that we must have travelled about sixty miles, more or less."

"So that brings us to this blue mark here?"

"Yes, sor, to 42 deg. 28 minutes north, and 51 deg. 12 minutes west."

"Then we sailed right before the wind, due south?"

"Sure, an' we did that same afther Mister Haldane's will-o'-the-wisp for three hours, bedad!"

"Oh, Mr O'Neil," I pleaded, "please leave me out of it. I'm sure I've seen and heard enough of the ship already!"

"Be aisy, me darlint! It's only me fun, sure; and I mean ye no harrum," said he in his jocular way. "Arrah how can I lave ye out of the story when ye're the howl h'id and tail of it, sure, and without ye there'd be none to tile. Yes, cap'en, dear, sure, an' as I was a-saying when Haldane broke in upon me yarn, thray hours on this southerly course brought us here right where ye see me little finger, now!"

"About 51 deg. 5 minutes west longitude and 41 deg. 40 minutes north latitude. How did you get this, eh?"

"Faith, sor, the ould moon looked so moighty plisint that night that I took a lunar or two, jist to divart mesilf with, when Spokeshave wint below and there was nobody lift to poke fun at, sure!"

"A very useful sort of amusement," said the skipper drily. "And I see, too, you've put in the distance we've run, by dead reckoning, as about another fifty miles or so?"

"Yes, sor. The bo'sun hove the log ivery half hour till the engines stopped, an' he made out we were going sixteen knots an' more, bedad, so he s'id, whin we were running before the wind with full shtame on."

"That was very likely, O'Neil," replied the skipper, "but, after that, we altered course again, you know!"

"In course we did, sor, an' you'll say it marked roight down there on that line! We thin sailed west, a quarter south by compass, close- hauled on the starboard track, for two hours longer after you altered course ag'in an' bore up to the west'ard, keeping on till the ingines bhroke down, bad cess to 'em!"

"When was that?" asked the skipper slowly. "I was so worried and flurried at the moment that I forgot to take the time."

"Four bells in the first watch, sor," replied the Irishman quickly. "It was after we'd brought up poor Jackson from below, as Stoddart, the engineer, faith, was a sittin' near, jist before me, attindin' on the poor chap in the cabin, whin the rush of shtame came flyin' up the hatchway, faith, an' the sekrew stopped. We both of us looked at the saloon clock on the instant, sure, an' saw the toime, sor."

"That is the last mark on the chart, then?" said the old skipper meaningly, pencil and compass in hand, and still bending over the tell- tale track map spread out on the wheel-house table. "Since that, nobody knows how we've drifted!"

"Faith, no one, sor," returned Garry O'Neil, thinking the question was addressed to him. "Only, perhaps, the Pope, God bless him, or the Imporor of Chainy!"

All laughed at this, Captain Applegarth now losing his preoccupied air as if there were nothing to be gained, he thought, by dwelling any longer on the past.

It was wonderful, though, how we had drifted in the short interval, comparatively, that had elapsed since we became disabled!

As Mr Fosset had been the first to find out in the morning the Gulf Stream—that great river that runs a course of some two thousand miles in the middle of the ocean, keeping itself perfectly distinct from the surrounding water through which it flows, from its inception as a current in the Caribbean Sea to its final disposal in the North Atlantic—had first carried us in an easterly direction after we had broken-down so utterly; while the strong nor'-westerly gale, aided probably by the Arctic current, running due south from the Polar regions and which disputes the right of way with the Gulf Stream some little distance to the southwards of the great Banks of Newfoundland, had pressed upon the helpless hull of the Star of the North, bearing her away whither they pleased.

So, unable to resist either the winds or the waves, these combined forces had driven her off her course at an oblique angle, thus converting the nor'-easterly, or easterly drift proper, of the Gulf Stream into a true sou'-westerly one, taking us from latitude 41 deg. 30 minutes north and longitude 51 deg. 40 minutes west, where we were on the previous Friday night, when we were forced to lie-to, to our present position on the chart.

To put the case more concisely, the Star of the North had been carried for the distance of four degrees and a half exactly of longitude backward on her outward track to New York and some two degrees or thereabouts to the southwards, placing us as nearly as possible in the position the skipper had already indicated, a direction of some five hundred miles more or less from our proper course and about midway between Bermuda and the Azores, or Western Islands.

While Captain Applegarth was explaining this, as much for my benefit and instruction, I believe, as anything, a thought occurred to me.

"Are we not now, sir, in the track of all the homeward-bound ships sailing on the great circle from the West Indies and South American ports?"

The skipper looked at me steadily, "smelling a rat" at once.

"I suppose, Haldane," he said somewhat sternly, "you want to get me back to that infernal ship again? Not if I know it, my lad. As you told Mr O'Neil just now, we've all had enough and to spare of that vessel and the wild-goose chase she has led us from first to last. I won't hear another word about her, by Jingo!"

Just then old Masters, who had gone up in the foretop to set something right which had struck his sailor eye as not being altogether as it should be aboard the Star of the North, raised his arm to attract the attention of those on deck below him.

"Hullo, there, bo'sun!" called out the skipper, seeing him, for he seldom kept his glasses away from the rigging of the ship and things aloft. "What's the row, eh?"

"I sees summit to win'ard, sir."

"By George!" exclaimed the skipper in a tone that made every one laugh who heard, all but Masters; the coincidence was so comical after what Captain Applegarth had said only a minute before. "Not another 'ghost- ship,' I hope!"

"No, sir," growled the boatswain rather savagely. "It bean't no ghost- ship this time, though she ain't far off, I knows, to my thinkin'!"

He added the last words as if speaking to himself, but I heard him, and his remark stopped my mirth instanter.

"What is it, bo'sun, that you do see, then?" cried the skipper impatiently; "that is, if you see anything at all beyond some vision of your own imagination!"

"I ain't dreaming," hailed back old Masters, not quite catching what he said. "I sees summit as plain as possible out to win'ard. Aye, it be a-driftin' down athawt our hawser, too, cap'en. Why, hullo! I'm blessed. Boat ahoy!"



CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

IN THE NICK OF TIME.

"A boat!" exclaimed Captain Applegarth, his jesting manner changing instantly to one of earnest attention. "Where away?"

"On our starboard beam, sir," sang out Masters from the foretop. "About two points off, I fancies, sir."

"I can't see her," said the skipper, looking in the direction the boatswain had indicated. "I thought she was close-to from your hailing her."

"She's further away now than I thought, sir!" shouted old Masters in reply to this, after having another squirm over the topsail yard. "I'm blessed, though, if I ain't lost her, with the ship's head bobbing all round the compass. No; there she be ag'in, sir. No—yes—yes. There she is, about a mile or so off, sir, I'm thinkin'."

"By George, Masters, you think too much, I think!" the skipper retorted angrily. "You don't seem to know what you're saying, and I believe you've gone off your chump since you saw that 'ghost-ship,' as you called it! Go aloft, Haldane, and see what you can make of this blessed boat he says he sighted!"

I was already in the weather shrouds before the skipper gave me this order, and in another minute I was on the top beside the boatswain, who pointed out silently to me a little black speck in the distance apparently dancing about amid the waves, which were beginning to curl before an approaching breeze that was evidently springing up from the westwards. Fortunately, I had a pair of binoculars in my jacket pocket, and I immediately levelled the glasses at the object in view.

"Well, Haldane!" at last sang out the skipper impatiently from the end of the bridge, where he still stood, looking up at me with his chin cocked in the air. "What do you make it out to be, eh, my lad?"

"It's a boat sure enough, sir," I shouted down to him, without taking my eyes off it. "She's a long way off, though, sir, and I think she's drifting further away, too."

"The deuce!" exclaimed Captain Applegarth. "Can you see any one in the boat?"

"No—no—not distinctly, sir," I replied after another searching look. "Stay; I do—I do think there's a figure at one end! and, yes—yes—I'm sure I noticed something that appeared like a movement, but it might have been caused by the rocking of the sea."

"But don't you see anybody, or can't you make anything else out?"

"Only the boat, sir, and that a breeze seems coming up from the westward. I see a white line on the water along the horizon. That's all I can see, sir!"

"Well, that's not much use to us," he growled below, beginning his customary "quarter-deck walk" up and down the bridge. "I wish some one would come up from the engine-room to say they had repaired the cylinder and that we could go ahead again!"

Almost as soon as he spoke thus I noticed Mr Stokes, who I thought was lying down in his cabin, coming towards the forepart of the ship where we were, from the direction of the engine-room hatchway.

"Hullo, Stokes," said the skipper, catching sight of him at once with his eagle eye that seemed to take in everything that went on, whether his back was turned or not. "I thought you were on the sick list still, and ill. You oughtn't to be bustling about so soon after your accident, my dear fellow!"

"No, but I feel better!" replied the old chief, who, although he was still pale and shaky, had a more cheerful look on his face than the day before, when he appeared decidedly ill. "I've been down below and I'm glad to say Stoddart and the other artificers, who I must say have worked well without me, you will be glad to know, have got the cylinder cover on again. They've made a splendid job of it!"

"Stoddart himself is a splendid fellow," said the skipper enthusiastically. "Aye, and the rest of your staff, too, my dear Stokes. By George, you've brought us good news!"

"But that isn't all, cap'en," cried the old fellow, beaming over with a broad smile of quiet enjoyment at the surprise the skipper showed. "They say below that they'll be able to start the engines as soon as there's a full head of steam on! Now what do you think of that, sir? Isn't that good news?"

The skipper looked ready to embrace our fat chief, and I believe only refrained from giving this expression of his joy by the sight of poor Mr Stokes' bandaged arm, which was still in a sling.

He contented himself, therefore, with patting him tenderly on the back and walking round him admiringly, like a cat purring round a saucer of cream.

"By George!" he cried. "I feel as pleased as if my grandmother had left me five thousand pounds!"

"I wish she had," laughed the old chief. "I would ask to go shares!"

"And so you should, my boy; so you should," repeated the skipper with much heartiness, and as if he really meant it. "How soon do you think we shall be able to start, eh?"

"Very soon, I think, sir. The after-boiler fires were lit early this morning and they've been getting up steam ever since."

"That's good!" cried the skipper, stopping in his excited walk up and down the bridge, which he had again resumed, being unable to keep still, when he looked up, caught sight of me and hailed me.

"I say, Haldane?"

"Aye, aye, sir?" I sang out from the top, where I had remained with the boatswain on the look-out, and hearing likewise all that transpired beneath. "What do you want, sir?"

"I hope you're keeping your eye on that boat, my lad. If she is there we may be able to overhaul her yet, if you don't lose sight of her!"

"No fear of that, sir," I shouted back, pointing with my finger in the distance. "There she is, still to win'ard, pretty nearly flush with the water."

"Then she really is there all right, my lad. Keep your eye on her."

The funnels had been emitting smoke for some time without our having paid much attention to the fact, the fires of the fore-boilers having been kept in and banked ever since our breakdown, in order to work the pumps and capstan gear when required; but now steam, I noticed, came out as well as smoke, and I could hear it plainly roaring up the waste pipe, besides making a fearful row.

Presently another sound greeted my ears and made me jump.

It was that of the electric bell in the wheel-house, giving warning that those below in the emporium wished to make some communication.

Mr Stokes went to the voice-tube that led down thither from the bridge.

"What's the matter?" he roared into the mouthpiece so loud that I heard every word he uttered, although a-top of the mast. "Anything wrong?"

I couldn't of course catch the reply that came up the pipe; and it certainly was not a satisfactory one, for Mr Stokes turned round at once to the skipper, who immediately stopped his quarter-deck walk to hear what the chief had to say.

"They've corrected the propeller, sir," he exclaimed with a chuckle that made his fat form shake all over; "and Stoddart says he's only waiting for your signal to close the stop valves and let the steam into the cylinder."

"By George, he shan't wait a minute longer!" cried Captain Applegarth, moving the engine-room telegraph. "Go ahead, my hearties, as soon as you please! Hullo, there, forrad, I want a hand here at the wheel. I suppose the steam steering gear is all right again now?"

"Oh, yes, sir," replied Mr Stokes to this. "Grummet fixed that up on Sunday afternoon, he told me. I am sure it was done. I remember he was doing it when that man-of-war came alongside and spoke you."

"Strange I didn't see him at the job; he must have been pretty smart over it!" replied the skipper. "But I'm very glad it is done, though."

In answer to the skipper's signal a sudden blast of steam rushed up the funnel abaft the wheel-house, and I could feel the ship tremble as the shaft began to revolve and the propeller blades splashed the water astern with the familiar "thump-thump, thump-thump."

All hands joined in a hearty cheer, to which Masters and I in the top lent what aid our lungs could give.

"Steady amidship, there," sang out the skipper as the old barquey forged ahead once more. "Steady, my man."

"Aye, aye, sir," answered the foremost hand, Parrell, who had come from the fo'c's'le to take the first "trick" at the steering wheel on the bridge. "Steady it is."

"How does the boat bear now, Haldane?"

"Two points off our starboard bow, sir," I replied to this hail of the skipper. "She's about three miles off, I think, sir."

"All right," he shouted back to me. "Port your helm, there!"

"Aye, aye, sir," repeated Parrell. "Port, sir, it is."

"We're rising her fast now, sir," I called out after a short interval. "There's a man in the boat; yes, a man, sir. I can see him quite plainly now, and I'm sure I'm not mistaken!"

"Are you quite sure, my lad?"

"Quite sure, sir. And he's alive, too, I'm certain. Yes, sir; he moved then distinctly. I could see him plainly. Why, the boat is so near now that you ought to see it from the deck."

"And so I can, by Jingo, Haldane!" replied the captain, peering out ahead himself with a telescope from the end of the bridge. "I fancy I can see a second figure, and it looks like another man, too, lying down in the bows of the boat, as well as the figure at the stern, who seems to me to be holding up an oar or something!"

"Yes, there is, sir," I called out, stopping on my way down the rigging to have another look. After a pause I exclaimed, "I can see both of them, and with my naked eye. I can see them now!"

"Well, then, you'd better come down from aloft. Tell your friend, the boatswain, to come down as well. He'll be wanted at the fo'c's'le when we presently come up to the boat, as I trust we shall!"

"Lucky Masters saw the boat, sir," said I when I reached the deck and up to the skipper's side again. "But even more fortunate it is for the poor fellows that our engines are working again, sir, for otherwise we could not have been able to get up to the boat and save them."

"It isn't luck, my boy," observed Mr Stokes, whom the death of poor Jackson and his own narrow escape from a like fate had led to think of other matters besides those connected with his mundane profession. "It's Providence!"



CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

AN APPEAL FOR AID.

"Aye, that's the better way of looking at it," chimed in the skipper, raising his arm at the same time from his station at the end of the bridge, where he was conning the ship. He then called out sharply, to enforce the signal.

"Luff up, you lubber, luff!"

"Luff it is, sir," rejoined the helmsman, rapidly turning round the spokes of the little steam steering wheel. "It's hard over now, sir."

"Steady there," next sang out the captain. "Steady, my man!"

"Aye, aye, sir," repeated the parrot-like Tom Parrell, bringing the helm amidships again. "Steady it is!"

"By George, we're nearing the boat fast!" cried the skipper after another short pause, during which we had been going ahead full speed, with a quick "thump-thump, thump-thump" of the propeller and the water foaming past our bows. "Starboard, Parrell! Starboard a bit now!"

"Aye, aye, sir," came again the helmsman's answering cry from the wheel- house. "Starboard it is, sir!"

"Keep her so. A trifle more off. Steady!"

"Steady it is, sir!"

"Now down with it, Parrell!" sang out the skipper, bringing his hand instanter on the handle of the engine-room gong, which he sounded twice, directing those in charge below to reduce speed, while he hailed old Masters on the fo'c's'le. "Hi, bo'sun! Look-out there forrad with your rope's end to heave to the poor fellows! We're just coming alongside the boat."

"Aye, aye, sir!" replied Masters promptly, keeping one eye on the skipper on the bridge and the other directed to the little craft we were approaching, and now close to our port bow. "We're all ready forrad, sir. Mind you don't run her down, sir. She's nearly under our forefoot."

"All right, bo'sun," returned the skipper. "Port, Parrell!"

"Port it is, sir," repeated Tom Parrell. "Two points off."

"Steady, man, steady," continued the skipper, holding his hand up again. "Boat ahoy! Stand by. We're going to throw you a rope!"

At the same instant Captain Applegarth sounded the engine-room gong again, bringing the Star of the North to a dead stop as we steamed up to the boat slanting-wise, the steamer having just sufficient way on her when the screw shaft ceased revolving, to glide gently up to the very spot where the little floating waif was gently bobbing up and down on the wave right ahead of us, and barely half a dozen yards away, drifting, at the will of the wind, without any guidance from its occupants, who seemingly were unaware of our approach.

"Boat ahoy!" shouted the skipper once more, raising his voice to a louder key. "Look-out, there!"

The men in the bows of the boat still remained in the same attitude, as if unconscious or dead; but the other in the stern-sheets appeared to hear the skipper's hail, for he half-turned his head and uttered a feeble sort of noise and made a feeble motion with one of his hands.

"Now's your time, bo'sun!" cried Captain Applegarth. "Heave that line, sharp!"

"Aye, aye, sir," roared out Masters in his gruff tones. "Stand by, below there!"

With that the coil of half-inch rope which he held looped on his arm made a circling whirl through the air, the end falling right across the gunwales of the boat, close to the after thwart, where sat the second of the castaways, who eagerly stretched out his hand to clutch at it.

But, unfortunately, he failed to grasp it, and the exertion evidently being too much for him, for he tumbled forward on his face at the bottom of the boat, while the rope slipped over the side into the water, coming back home to us alongside the old barquey on the next send of the sea, the heavy roll of our ship when she brought up broadside-on, as well as the weight of the line saturated with water, fetching it in to us all the sooner.

"Poor fellows; they can't help themselves!" cried the skipper, who had watched the boatswain's throw and its unsatisfactory result with the deepest interest. "Bear a hand there, some one forrad, and have another try to reach them. The boat's drifting past, and we'll have to go astern to board her in another minute, if you don't look sharp!"

Having climbed into the fore-rigging, however, so as to have a good look at the boat and its occupants as we neared them, I was quite as quick as the skipper to notice what had happened, having, indeed, foreseen the contingency before it occurred.

So, ere Masters or any of the other men could stir a hand, having made up my mind what to do, I had seized hold of part of the slack of the line that remained inboard and, plunging into the sea, swam towards the boat.

A couple of strokes, combined with the forward impetus of my leap overboard, took me up to the little craft, and in a jiffey I had grasped the gunwale aft and clambered within her, securing the end of the line I had round one of the thwarts at once, amid the ringing cheers of the skipper and my shipmates in the old barquey, who proceeded to haul us up alongside without further delay, tugging away at the tar rope I had hitched on, yo-heave-hoing and hurrahing in one and the same breath right lustily!

So smart were they, so instantaneous had been the action of the moment during the episode, that we were close in to the ship's side and under her conning, immediately below the port end of the bridge, where the skipper stood leaning over the rail and surveying operations, before I had time actually to look round so as to have a nearer view of the unfortunate men whom we had so providentially rescued.

When I did though, one glance was enough.

I was horror stricken at the sight that met my eyes.

The man whom I had observed when we were yet some distance off to be lying huddled up in the bows motionless, as if dying or already dead, I now saw had received a horrible wound on the top of his head that had very nearly smashed in the skull, besides almost severing one of his ears which was hanging from the cheek bone, attached by a mere scrap of skin, the bottom boards of the boat near him being stained with blood that had flowed from the cut, and his hair likewise matted together with gore. Oh, it was horrible to see! He was not dead, however, as I had thought, but only in a state of stupor, breathing heavily and making a strange stertorous sound as if snoring.

His fellow-sufferer aft, who did not appear to have suffered so much as his comrade, had seemingly swooned from exhaustion or exposure; as, on my putting my arm round him and lifting up his bent head, the man opened his eyes and murmured something faintly in some foreign lingo—Spanish, I think it was; at any rate a language I did not understand.

But I was unable to notice anything beyond these details, which I grasped in that one hurried glance; for as I was in the act of raising up the poor chap in the stern-sheets, the skipper hailed me from the bridge above.

"Below there!" he sang out. "How are the poor fellows? Are they alive, Haldane?"

"They are in a bad way, sir," I replied. "They've got the life left in them and that's all, I'm afraid!"

"Neither dead, then?"

"No, sir."

"Bravo! 'whilst there's life there's hope,'" cried the skipper in a cheery tone. "Are they quite helpless, do you think, Haldane—I mean quite unable to climb up the side?"

"Quite unable, sir," I answered. "One's unconscious, and I don't think the other could move an inch if he tried!"

"Then we must haul 'em up," said Captain Applegarth, turning to Masters, who had popped his head over the bulwarks and was now looking down into the boat, like the rest of the hands on board. "I say, bo'sun, can't you rig up a chair or something that we can lower down for the poor fellows?"

"Aye, aye, sir," responded old Masters, drawing in his head from the bulwarks and disappearing from my view as I looked upwards from the stern-sheets, where I was still holding up the slowly-recovering man. "I'll rig up a whip from the foreyard and we can let down a hammock for 'em, tricing up one at a time."

"Stay, cap'en," cried Mr Fosset as the boatswain went bustling off, I suppose, though of course from my position I could not see him, to carry out this plan of his. "The davits here amidship are all right, as well as the tackle of our cutter that had got washed away in the gale. Wouldn't it be easier to let down the falls, sir, and run up the boat all standing with the poor fellows in her as they are?"

"By George, the very thing, Fosset!" exclaimed the skipper, accepting the suggestion with alacrity. "It will save the poor fellows a lot of jolting, and be all the easier for us, as you say. Besides, the little craft will come in handy for us, as we're rather short of boats just now!"

"Short of boats, sir!" repeated the first mate ironically as he set to work at once, with the help of a couple of the hands who jumped to his side to assist him the moment he spoke, casting off the lashings of the davits so as to rig them outwards, letting go at the same time the hooks of the fall blocks and overhauling the running gear. "Why, sir, we haven't even the dinghy left intact after that clean sweep we had from the wave that pooped us!"

"Oh, aye, I know that well enough," said the skipper drily. "But, look alive now, Fosset, with that tackle, and don't be a month of Sundays over the job! Send down two of the cutter's crew to overrun the falls and drop down into the boat. They can help Haldane in holding up that poor chap astern and also bear a hand in hoisting up."

"All right, sir; we're just ready," shouted back the first mate as he gave the word to let go. "Lower away there with the slack of those falls. Easy, my man, gently does it!"

In another instant down came the fall blocks, with one of the hands hanging on to each, the men alighting "gingerly" on the thwarts of the boat in the bow and stern of the little craft, which became immersed almost up to the gunwales with the additional weight.