ut to start up and stick them into each other. Some were laughing,
others uttering strange cries; the losers were swearing, and the gainers
shouting with glee. On one side, although there was scarcely room for a
tall man to stand upright, a fiddler was playing, with several men
dancing round him; while another party were collected round a man who
was singing, at the top of his voice, a song which seemed to afford his
auditors infinite amusement. In spite of the strange Babel of sounds,
however, the weary seamen and two boys at length fell back and dropped
off asleep.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

The ship by which Mr Collinson and his companions had been rescued was
the _Poisson Volant_, a privateer fitted out at Port a Petre, in
Dominique. She had had a long run of ill-luck, so the surgeon told him,
and this had put her officers in very bad humour. The dark, stout man
was her captain, of whom the surgeon seemed to stand greatly in awe.

"He would make no scruple of shooting any one through the head who
offends him, and as I have no fancy to be treated in that way, I
purpose, if I can once get on shore, to leave the ship."

This was not very pleasant information; but Mr Collinson hoped to be
able to escape giving the tyrant any cause of offence. Bill Sunnyside
was very hungry, as were his companions, when they fell asleep. He kept
dreaming about feasts, and then at length he thought he was once more at
home, and that his mother had got a capital supper ready for him, and
that she and his brothers and sisters were collected round the table,
and he thought that he himself was, somehow or other, kept out of the
room. The smell of the sausages, however, came through a chink in the
door, and made him feel still more hungry. He could not open the door,
and he could not cry out to ask any one to let him in. Still, there
they all sat, with the sausages bubbling away on the table, and the
kettle hissing on the hearth, and a large loaf of bread and a big pat of
butter, all ready, waiting to be eaten. At length he made a run, and
resolved to burst open the door, when he heard old Grim sing out, and he
found that he had, somehow or other, tumbled over him. His nostrils
were at the same time assailed with savoury odours, and he saw men
coming from the galley-fire with pans and dishes from which wreaths of
steam were ascending. The mess-tables were quickly spread, and the men
began their dinners. Bill and his companions wat