k of censure was brought to an abrupt termination by a very
annoying incident. Mr. Hamblin had halted directly under the weather
fore yard-arm, braced up so as to take the wind on the beam. Before he
had reached this point of his remark, a new fellow by the name of
Little, remarkable for his agility, dropped from the yard directly upon
the top of the learned gentleman's hat, in fact, sitting down upon his
"tile" as fairly and squarely as though the deed had been done on
purpose, bringing with him the slack of the weather clew-garnet.

The professor was prostrated to the deck by the weight of the little
seaman,--for Little's name precisely described his stature,--while the
unfortunate boy was thrown forward flat upon his face.

"O, I'm killed, I'm killed!" cried Little, rising with much real or
apparent difficulty, and pressing one hand upon his hip.

"You rascal, you!" roared Mr. Hamblin from the inside of his hat, as a
dozen boys sprang forward to pick him up.

The professor was not a fashionable man, and did not wear a hat which
would simply rest upon the top of his head, or which would pinch the
depository of his ancient lore, and the weight of the student had
pressed it far down over his eyes. With some labor he extricated his
learned pate from its imprisonment, and glanced with dismay at the
hat--a new one which he had bought in Antwerp to replace the one he had
lost overboard in the hurricane.

"You scoundrel!" repeated the _savant_, when he had removed the
mutilated tile.

"He didn't mean to do it, sir," said Perth, pointing to the bloody face
of Little; "he's almost killed himself."

"Are you hurt, Little?" demanded Mr. Lowington, rushing forward when he
discovered what had happened.

"Yes, sir; almost killed," groaned the poor boy, making the wryest face
a boy ever made, and twisting himself into a contortion of body which
none but an India-rubber youth like himself could have accomplished.

"Pass the word for Dr. Winstock," added the principal, anxiously. "Are
you much injured, Mr. Hamblin?"

"I believe there is a conspiracy to take my life," growled the
professor, without replying to the direct question.

"Are you hurt, sir?"

"Not so much in body as in my feelings," answered Mr. Hamblin, holding
out his damaged hat. "It was done on purpose, sir."

Dr. Winstock now appeared on the forecastle, and as Little seemed to be
the greater sufferer, he attended to his case first. He examined the
face o