key shall I play it in, sir?" said Billy.

"Any key you like," cried Bob, excitedly. "Play it in a whole bunch of
keys, my lad, only go ahead, or we shall forget all the words."

Off went the fiddle with a flourish over the first strain of the
well-known song, and then, after a couple of efforts to sing, Tom Long
broke down, and Bob Roberts took up the strain, singing it in a cheery
rollicking boyish way, growing more confident every moment, and proving
that he had a musical tenor voice. Then as he reached the end of the
first verse, he waved his puggaree on high, jumped upon the table to the
upsetting of a couple of glasses, and led the chorus, which was lustily
trolled out by all present.

On went Bob Roberts, declaring how the flag waved on every sea, and
should never float over a slave, throwing so much enthusiasm into the
song that to a man all rose, and literally roared the chorus, ending
with three cheers, and one cheer more for the poor girls; and as Bob
Roberts stood upon the table flushed and hot, he felt quite a hero, and
ready to go on that very night and rescue half-a-dozen more poor slave
girls from tyranny, if they would only appeal to him for help.

"Three cheers for Mr Roberts," shouted Dick, the sailor, as Billy
Mustard was confiding to a friend that "a fiddle soon got outer toon in
that climate."

"Yes, and three cheers for Mr Long," shouted Bob. "Come up here, Tom,
old man; you did more than I did."

Tom Long was prevailed upon to mount the table, where he bowed again and
again as the men cheered; when, as a lull came in the cheering, Billy
Mustard, whose fiddle had been musically whispering to itself in answer
to the well-drawn bow, suddenly made himself heard in the strain of
"Rule Britannia," which was sung in chorus with vigour, especially when
the singers declared that Britons never, _never_, NEVER should be
slaves; which rang out far over the attap roofs of the drowsy campong.

So satisfied were the singers that they followed up with the National
Anthem, which was just concluded when the resident sent one of his
servants to express a hope that the noise was nearly at an end.

"Well, I think we have been going it," said Bob Roberts, jumping down.
"Come along, Tom. I've got two splendid cigars--real Manillas."

Tom Long, to whom this public recognition had been extremely painful,
was only too glad to join his companion on a form beneath a tree, where
the two genuine Manillas were li