ir. You're skipper now, and he must obey orders. It'll do
us all good."

"Well," said Rodd, "it doesn't seem a very cheerful time to ask people
to sing in the dark; but perhaps it will brighten us all up."

"Ay, ay, sir!" came from the rest.

"Am I to, Mr Rodd?" said the man appealingly; and after a little more
pressing he struck up in a good musical tenor the old-fashioned sea song
of "The Mermaid," with its refrain of--

"We jolly sailor boys were up, up aloft,
And the land lubbers lying down below, below, below,
And the land lubbers lying down below!"

right on through the several verses, telling of the sailors'
superstition regarding its being unlucky to see a mermaid with a comb
and a glass in her hand, when starting upon a voyage, right on to the
piteous cry of the sailor boy about his mother in Portsmouth town, and
how that night she would weep for him, till the song ended with the
account of how the ship went down and was sunk in the bottom of the sea.

It was a wild sad air, sung there in the branches of that tree amidst
the darkness and night mist, and in spite of a certain beauty in the
melody the singer's voice assumed a more and more saddened tone, till he
finished with the water seeming to hiss more loudly through the lower
branches and the inundated trunks around, and then there was a sharp
slapping noise on the surface of the stream that might very well have
been taken for plaudits.

Then there was a strange braying sound like a weirdly discordant fit of
laughter; and then perfect silence, with the darkness more profound than
ever.

"I'm blessed!" came at last from Joe. "Hark at him, Mr Rodd. He calls
hisself a messmate! Ast him, I did, to sing us a song to cheer us up.
Why, it was bad enough to play for a monkey's funeral march. It's all
very well for you others to join in your chorus about jolly sailor boys
sitting up aloft, but what about poor me sitting all the time in a cold
hipsy bath, as they calls it in hospitals, expecting every moment to
feel the young crocs a-tackling my toes? Why, it's enough to make a
fellow call out for a clean pocket-handkerchy. Here, some on you, set
to and spin us a yarn to take the taste of that out of our mouths."

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX.

THE DOCTOR PRESCRIBES.

And so that awful night wore on, one story bringing forth another, and
the spinning of one yarn being followed by the spinning of one perhaps
longer.

It was anything to relieve t