was with a liberal misplacement of "h's"
that should have proclaimed him an Englishman of purest Cockney type. At
the same time his language was freely interspersed with Irish "ochs" and
"shures"; while the "wees" and "bonnys," oft recurring in his speech,
should have proved him a sworn Scotchman. From his countenance you might
have drawn your own inference, and believed him any of the three; but
not from his tongue. Neither in his accent, nor the words that fell from
him, could you have told which of the three kingdoms had the honor of
giving him birth.

Whichever it was, it had supplied to the Service a true British tar: for
although you might mistake the man in other respects, his appearance
forbade all equivocation upon this point.

His costume was that of a common sailor, and, as a matter of course, his
name was "Bill." But as he had only been one among many "Bills" rated on
the man-o'-war's books,--now gone to the bottom of the sea,--he carried
a distinctive appellation, no doubt earned by his greater age. Aboard
the frigate he had been known as "Old Bill"; and the soubriquet still
attached to him upon the spar.

CHAPTER III.

THE SERPENT'S TONGUE.

The presence of a ship's topsail-yard thus bestridden plainly proclaimed
that a ship had been wrecked, although no other evidence of the wreck
was within sight. Not a speck was visible upon the sea to the utmost
verge of the horizon: and if a ship had foundered within that field of
view, her boats and every vestige of the wreck must either have gone to
the bottom, or in some other direction than that taken by the
topsail-yard, which supported the three midshipmen and the sailor Bill.

A ship _had_ gone to the bottom--a British man-of-war--a corvette on her
way to her cruising ground on the Guinea coast. Beguiled by the
dangerous current that sets towards the seaboard of the Saaera, in a dark
stormy night she had struck upon a sand-bank, got bilged, and sunk
almost instantly among the breakers. Boats had been got out, and men had
been seen crowding hurriedly into them; others had taken to such rafts
or spars as could be detached from the sinking vessel: but whether any
of these, or the overladen boats, had succeeded in reaching the shore,
was a question which none of the four astride the topsail-yard were able
to answer.

They only knew that the corvette had gone to the bottom,--they saw her
go down, shortly after drifting away from her side, but saw not