lf full of guineas
apiece, if they'd sail with him, instead of you."

"The scoundrel!" shouted Captain Wilmore. "If I'd caught him at it, I'd
have run him up to the mainyard, as sure as he's alive."

"Ay, cap'en; and I'd have lent a hand with all my heart," said the old
seaman. "But you see he was too cunning to be caught. He went back to
his ship, which was lying a very little way off, for there wasn't a
breath of wind, if you remember. But he guessed the breeze would spring
up about midnight, so he doesn't hoist his boats up, but hides 'em under
his lee, until--"

"I see it all plain enough, Jennings," broke in the captain. "How many
are gone?"

"Well, we couldn't make sure for a long time, Captain Wilmore," said
Jennings, still afraid to reveal the whole of his evil tidings. "Some
of the hands had got drunk on the rum fetched aboard at Madeira, and
they might be lying about somewhere, you see--"

"Well, but you've found out now, I suppose?" interjected his questioner
sharply.

"I suppose we has, cap'en. There's Will Driver, and Joel Grigg, and
Lander, and Hawkins, and Job Watson--not that _he's_ any great loss--and
Dick Timmins, and--"

"Confound you, Jennings! how many?" roared the captain, so fiercely,
that the dog sprang up, and began barking furiously. "Don't keep on
pottering in that way, but tell me the worst at once. How many are
gone? Keep quiet, you brute, do you hear? How many, I say?"

"About fifteen, cap'en," blurted out the quartermaster, shaking in his
shoes. "Leastways there's fifteen, or it may be sixteen, as can't be
found, or--"

"Fifteen or sixteen, or some other number," shouted the skipper. "Tell
me the exact number, you old idiot, or I'll disrate you! Confound that
dog! Turn him out."

"Sixteen's the exact number we can't find," returned Jennings, "but some
of 'em may be aboard, and turn up sober by-and-by."

"Small chance of that," muttered the captain. "Well, it's no use
fretting; the question is, What's to be done? We were short-handed
before--so you thought, didn't you, Jennings?"

"Well, cap'en, we hadn't none too many, that's sartain; and we should
have been all the better for half a dozen more."

"That comes to the same thing, doesn't it?" said the skipper, who, vexed
and embarrassed as he was, could not help being a little diverted at the
old man's invincible reluctance to speaking out.

"Well, I suppose it does, sir," he answered, "only you see--"

"