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now suspected he had strength ened his nerves a little with a glass of grog.-"However, Poll might take a flight the time the other was below, you know, sir, if she only knowed where he might rise again. Still a gull would be her chance as for that no diving in a gull, your honour."

will ye-I

there, take my oar now, can make nothing of it, I can't pull a-head at all-it has been all back water with me;" and so saying he made his obeisance, and slunk away amongst the people, slewing his head from side to side, and smiting his thigh, as if he were saying-" Poo, poo, you see the captain won't understand, do as you will-indeed, he does not want to understand, you see."

"But, my good man"-I was not over well pleased with what I thought I had discovered, especially with the freedom of the jest, if jest it was meant for " will you, I again ask you, come to the point, Dogvane-what would you be at ? I can't stand all day palavering here, unless you know your own mind," and I turned away. My rebuke seemed to rouse Dogvane, who, making a sudden effort, sung out quick and sharp

"Then the parrot's overboard and drowned, sir. And the monkey is drowned too, sir, and the old cat is dead below with the damp and cold, and we shall all be starved for want of a pet, sir.-D-n your eyes, Jack Lennox, will that serve your turn,

now ?"

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Oh, I see, I see," said I. "There," said Dogvane, giving a skip, and turning ajoyful countenance over his shoulder to the group behind him-" There, his honour sees-did not I tell you so ?-why, I thank your honour-we all thanks you kindly, sir; and such care as we shall take of him-oh, my eye! But all I says is, thank your honour again in the name of the whole bunch of He made his salaam, and he and his tail turned to bundle forward.

us."

"I guess I know now what you would be at, Dogvane," said I, my tone approaching to a shrill shout in order to arrest his retreat. On this the old quartermaster hove about, his face evincing great chagrin and vexation at the idea, that after all his lucid explanation, I was still unenlightened. "I presume," I continued, "that having lost all your pets"

"Ah yes, sir-that's it."

"That having lost all your pets, you want to ask me for the sheep that we have picked up."

No, no, no,"-ran amongst the men; and old Dogvane slid out with a jet of tobacco juice-" D-n the sheep entirely-but, Jack Lennox,

The marine, on the retreat of the quartermaster, now came forward as a reserve, and in good set terms, leaving his northern accent out of the account, preferred a request on behalf of his shipmates, not for the sheep, but in the destruction of all the other pet creatures during the gale, he made out a strong case, which could only be met by my giving up the child, which he promised should succeed the defunct monkey, Dicky Phantom; and “although we all know his name to be Will Howard,” said he, in conclusion, "we request your permission, sir, to christen him afresh, and to give him the same name, as a tribute of respect to the poor brute, who has hitherto afforded us so much amusement."

I was a good deal tickled at all

this.

"But, men, you all heard Sir Oliver desire the child to be sent on board the frigate."

Here several voices grumbled"Why, they have two monkeys on board, and a kangaroo, and a hog in armour, and-oh, surely, they won't grab him too."

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Why, sir, we must leave it to you," said Lennox; "if the Commodore is in earnest in taking Dicky Phantom from us, surely he will spare us one of the monkeys. But I am sure no one will take such care of him as I should here, sir.”

66

"Very well," said I, "I will see what can be done; in the meantime, get the child ready to go in the boat when I go on board to dinner. But where are his clothes ?-you can't send him in that rig?"

The marine laughed. "Why, sir, his own clothes are all torn in pieces, and he has no others made; indeed, our sail-maker says he could no more make a petticoat than a lady's gown.'

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There was no help for it; and at

half past two, Donovan and I found ourselves in the stern-sheets of the small boat, with Dicky Phantom sitting between us, dressed out like a Lilliputian boarder. As we pulled on board, I had time to look more minutely at the equipment of the boy. As already mentioned, he was dressed in trowsers, check shirt, and little tarpawling hat, with the word Midge painted in large letters on a scroll on the front of it; but they had now added a little cutlass, ground down from a piece of iron hoop, and bound round his waist by a black belt, and as a tiptop finish to his equipment, they had fastened an oakum queue to his curly wig, that hung down over the waistband of his little breeches. My natural bashfulness was sorely tested, when we got alongside, and found the ship swarming in all directions with busy grinning faces, wherever they could get a squint at us, and our little passenger; and when I stepped on deck, I had not the courage to take the child up, but left him in the boat.

"How are you, Mr Brail-glad to see you, Mr Donovan, I hope you are better," said Sir Oliver. We made our acknowledgments. "Where is your little passenger, Mr Brail; have you brought him on board ?"

"Why, yes, Sir Oliver, he is in the boat alongside, but the people have so monkeyfied him, that he is scarcely presentable on the quarterdeck."

was

"Never mind, hand him uphand him up-let us see him." And poor little Dicky Phantom straightway transferred from the stern-sheets of the boat to the frigate's deck, amidst a buzz of laughter from officers and men.

The poor child was frightened, and ran crying to me, when Sir Oliver, with his innate right feeling and kindliness of heart, asked me to bring him down into the cabin, which I did, where the little fellow soon became quite at home, and began to amuse himself with some books of plates, and little Chinese figures, that Sir Oliver took out of a locker for his entertainment.

I related the particulars of my interview with his parents and kinsfolk on board the ship, which moved the kind old man exceedingly; but

dinner was now announced, and Dicky was handed over to Lennox, who had come on board in the novél capacity of dry nurse. I could see the whole crew clustered on the gun-deck, in expectation of his coming out of the cabin; and the moment he made his appearance,― "Lennox, pass him forward."-"I say, Jack, Jack Lennox, lend him to me, man. "Oh! d-n my eyes, man, do lend us a spell of the piccaniny."-" No, no-hand him to me first-here to me, man-I bespoke him, Jack, before Bill, there," resounded on all hands; and the two monkeys and hog in armour were as dust in the balance compared with Dicky Phantom. We sat down to dinner. Mr Donovan, and old Sprawl, along with one of the mates, were present, and every thing went on very much as usual.

"We must endeavour," said Sir Oliver, "to find out that poor little fellow's family and relations when we get to England, but what are we to do with him until we get there?"

I cheerfully offered to keep him on board the Midge.

"You are very good, Mr Brail, but in so small a hooker it would be inconvenient, so I shall make shift the best way I can here."

I laughed and said, "that next to a round-robin had been signed by the Midges, petitioning you would let them have the boy for the cruise, sir, in consequence of their having lost the ship's monkey and parrot." I noticed the Commodore's servant prick up his ears at this, and that same evening, before we got away from Gazelle, a deputation waited on Sprawl to offer both monkeys and the kangaroo, and the hog in armour, to the Midges, in fee simple, in exchange for Dicky Phantom. The Commodore had recovered his looks and spirits greatly since I last saw him, and gave us some of his old stories that I had heard before certainly. They were chiefly relating to the countries on the borders of the Mediterranean, and the following tickled me a good deal at the time:

Sir Oliver had been one of old Sir J. D's lieutenants on that station, and it was his watch on deck on a certain forenoon-" a fine fresh breezy day, clear and sunshiny, and the

ter's wig, Sir J, and the porker
belongs to the ward-room.'
"Fill the maintopsail again,' rap-
ped out the knight.
Poor pig-
poor pig-can't be helped-can't be
helped pity the master should
lose his scratch though, but it can't
be helped, Captain R- can't be
helped. So fill away the maintopsail
again, Captain R—

Alas and alackaday, both the pig and the wig were drowned!"

old T―― was cracking along on the starboard tack, with the Island of Malta broad on the lee bow, about ten miles distant, or thereabouts. She was going about nine knots, as near as could be, and the admiral was walking backwards and forwards with me on the weather-side of the quarterdeck. It happened that the captain's servant was an inveterate stutterer, although a steady good man, and we had not continued our perambulations above a quarter of an hour, when this functionary rushed up the ladder in great haste, and apparently in a great quandary, and thus addressed, or rather at tempted to address the admiral :"Sir-sir-sir-Jo-Jo-Jo.' "What does he mean?' said the admiral, startled by the energy of the man's gestures. "Your pi-pi-pig. Your wi-ing, Donovan having returned for his wi-wig, over-over-over.'

"Here the poor fellow got into convulsions, and walloped his arms about like the sails of a wind-mill, making signs that some body or thing was overboard. The captain came on deck and saw what was going on, Sing, you lubber, sing,' and straightway he of the impediment gave tongue in a clear and melodious pipe, as follows:

"The admiral's pig is overboard, is over-
board, is overboard,

His pig and his wig are overboard,
Heave-to, or they'll both be drown'd.'

"Man the fore clew garnets,' sung out old Blowhard-back the main topsail, Captain R, back the main-topsail-lower away the jollyboat. Quick, Captain R--, quick.' "Here the old flag-officer's own servant came up to him, as he was straining his neck where he stood on the aftermost carronade, to see, over the hammock-cloths, what was becoming of the pig and the unfortunate scratch.

"There, there they are both are astern,' he sung out. 'There's my poor wig bobbing at me.' (The origin of bob wig?) It will choke some dolphin, or I am a Dutchman, before evening. And the pig, oh, my poor pig!

"Please you, Sir J- ,'chimed in the functionary, it is a false alarm. That stuttering blockhead has made a mistake; it is the mas

Mr Donovan being now well enough to resume his duty, remained that evening in the frigate, but I returned, towards nightfall, with my tiny topman, to the Midge, and great was the buzz of joy amongst the Midges, at getting back Dicky Phantom.

We were sitting at breakfast on deck under the awning, next morn

traps, the frigate's boat was towing astern, when the carpenter having already got a little chair so contrived that when lashed to the leg of the table, he could not fall out of it, Dicky Phantom was part and portion of our society.

The frigate was about a mile to the northward of us, looming like a seventy-four, and glimmering through the hot blue haze that hung over the horizon, and circumscribed our view on all sides, for it was stark calm. The sun shone down with true tropical intensity; the heaving swell was like a sea of molten silver, and every now and then a dolphin would leap close to us, while as from the side of a watery hill a shower of flying-fish would spring out and shoot across a liquid valley, until they dropped like a discharge of grape into the next billow.

Nothing nourishes one's grogdrinking propensities so much, or spoils one's beauty, as the reflection of the sun from the glass-like surface of the calm sea within the tropics. His direct rays are in some measure warded off by your hatbrim; but were you even to turn up your ugly phiz at him, and stare him in the face, they would have comparatively no effect, to the fierceness of their heat second-hand in this way. Oh, the sickening effect of the afternoon's glare, thus reflected and flashed up into your face, under the snout of your chapeau, which here

proves no defence, like a battery taken in reverse, until your eyes are blinded, and your cheeks rouged and roasted, and your neb peeled, like an ill-scraped radish, leaving the under-skin so tender, that breaking on the wheel is comfort to blowing your nose. Cold cream-cold cream. Oh, for a pot of it, ye gods! I have before said, we were not, where we sat, much above four feet out of the water, and several flying fish had come on board that morning, and just as I was helping Dicky to a little water, to wash down the soaked biscuit that, through Lennox's kindness, he had been feeding on, dash-a flying fish flew right against Dennis Donovan's cheek, and dropped walloping and floundering into his plate.

"Blazes, what is that?"

"Oh, what a beautiful leetle fis!" said the child.

But Dennis, honest man, did not recover his equanimity during the whole meal. Immediately after breakfast, he prepared to go on board of the Gazelle, and to part company regularly, when one of the men who was looking out astern, sung out in a low tone, as if afraid the fish should hear, “A shark, sir, close under the stern." We gently hauled the frigate's boat alongside to be out of the way, and, on looking over the tafferel, there was the monster, sure enough, about three feet below the surface of the clear green water, eyeing us with the greatest composure.

As if in no ways daunted, but as determined to have a nearer and better view of us, he gradually floated up, until his dorsal fin was a foot out of the water, and his head but just covered by it. We instantly got a hook baited, and let down. The fish was about twelve feet long; and, as I leant over the low stern of the vessel, when she sank on the fall of the swell, I could have touched the monster's head with a handspike. There was something very exciting in being on terms of such intimacy with a creature who would have thought it capital sport to have nipped you in two.

He eyed the bait and the hook, and then drew back about a yard from it, and ogled me again, as much as to "Not to be had so clumsily, Massay,"

ter Brail; but if you would oblige me with one of your legs, now, or even an arm, I would vastly prefer it to the piece of rancid salt pork you offer me, on that rusty piece of crooked iron there."

Here again he reconnoitred the bait, and then looked up, with a languishing eye, at little Dicky Phantom, that Lennox was now holding on the tafferel. "Ab," again said sharkee to himself, I make no question, “ah, that's the thing I want. What a morsel that would be!" and he made one or two rushes hither and thither, as one has seen a dog do, before settling down steadily on end, to look up at the morsel an urchin is tanta lizing him with.

At length, seeing I was so unaccommodating, so inexorable as not even to oblige him with a limb, and that Dicky Phantom was altogether forbidden fruit, he made an angry rush and vanished below the counter.

"Poo, confound him, he can't be hungry," quoth Mr Weevil the purser, who had hold of the line, as he pulled it in, hand over hand, until the bait was close under foot, when, just as it was rising out of the water, the shark, finding that it must be either salt junk or no fare, made a sudden grab at the bait, gorged it, and dashed off with it, and, alack-adaisy, with the purser also; for, dreaming no harm, he had taken a turn round his left arm, as he hauled in the line, which, by the sudden jerk, ran; and if Lennox and old Drainings had not caught him by the heels, he would have been overboard. And there was the hideous fish, walloping, and floundering, and surging about, within a fathom of the purser, who was hanging over the stern, like a side of beef laid in, at sailing, for sea stock, his head dipping into the water every now and then, as the vessel rose and fell, while he struggled, and spluttered, and twisted, in a vain attempt to get his arm loose; while the shark backed and backed like a restive horse, and dragged and jerked about until I thought the purser's fin would absolutely have been torn from his shoulder.

All this while, the crew were like to explode with laughter, while poor Weevil roared, "Haul me in, for Heaven's sake, or he will swallow me-haul". -Here his head would

sink into the water, and his sentence end in a great coughing and spluttering, until, just as he was on the point of being suffocated, out his nob would be dragged again by the pitching of the vessel, so as to enable him to renew his shouts for succour. At length the shark being a good deal exhausted, was brought close under the stern, when I sent two bullets, from my double-barrelled Manton, through his head, right between his

eyes.

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Ah," quoth old Drainings the cook, "that has settled him, or the devil is in it; so lend a hand, Lennox," (the marine had hold of one of the purser's legs, and the artiste! the other,) "so lend a hand, Lennox, and, during the lull, let us bouse in Mr Weevil. Ho, yo, yo, yo, oh!"

The wounded shark had borne the loss of his brains with great composure, but the instant he felt the renewed pull at the pork in his maw, as if he had been only stunned, he started off at a tangent as strong as ever, and, before you could say Jack Robinson, the purser's starboard leg was whipped out of Jack Lennox's clutches; but the one to port being in old Drainings' iron claws, was held fast by the cook, for he was a great ally of Weevil's.

"Don't, for Heaven's sake, let me go, Mr Drainings," roared Weevil, "don't, "-splutter, splutter-ohcough, cough. The little vessel at this moment sended heavily, giving a strange sort of swinging lurch or wallop, and, as if shaking her sides with laughter, again dipped his head a foot under water.

As the poor purser rose with a jerk to the surface, the shark, having had momentary scope to sink, kept his own so resolutely, that clip, as a climax to the fun, the old cook was torn from his hold, and away he went, still clinging to the purser's leg, and if his own had not been seized by Lennox and myself, he would have been overboard also. I was now like to die with laughter. I could scarcely keep my hold; as for speaking, it was out of the question, for the shark, and purser, and cook, like a string of Brobdingnag sausages, were floundering in the calm water, close under our counter, all linked together, not quite "ladies' chain," by the way, although, from the half-suffocated exclamations of

two of the links, it might not inaptly have been called, "Chaine des Dames." Oh, fie! Benjie Brail. However, the matter was now getting serious.

"Mr Peake, that boathook there, quick, bring the boathook." Little Joe was no admirer of Weevil's, and, as he made believe to hook him by the waistband of the breeches, as he struggled in the water, he contrived to dig the sharp point of the instrument into his stern-frame more than once; and at length, when he did catch him, it was by nothing that would hold, but by one of the pockets of his coat, which instantly gave, and out flew into the water, his snuffbox, pockethandkerchief, and a nondescript pouch of seal-skin, rolled up.

"Lord save us, dinna drown the spleuchan," exclaimed Lennox, as it dropped into the sea.

"Hook him again,” shouted I.

"Oh Lord, captain, haul me in, haul me in, or I must let go Mr Weevil's leg," sung out cookey.

"Don't, for. Heaven's sake, do that thing, my dear Mr Drainings," roared the purser. Here Joey caught him again with the boathook, by the cape of his coat; and, with the assistance of two men, he had got him a foot or two out of the water, when, screed, the cloth, which was of no kindred to that which composed Bailie Jarvie's skirts,-gave way, and down he plumped again souse, and the splashing and struggling, and cursing and coughing, and blowing of fish and men, were renewed with twofold extravagance, until by a fortunate dig the iron hook was finally passed through the head-band of his nether garment, and the canvass fortunately holding, we hauled him in, with Drainings still sticking to him like grim Death, or a big sucker-fish; then, by slipping down a bowling knot over the shark's head, and under his gills, we hoisted him in on deck, which he soon had all to himself entirely; I really expected he would have stove it in with the lashing of his tail. We hammered him on the head until we had crushed it to mummy, but, like many other strange fish, he appeared to get on as well without brains, as with. In fine, he would have taken the ship from us out and out, had old Shavings not watched his opportunity, and nicked him on

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