at
he was at home with his wife and family to-night, instead of where he
is, while the skipper, too, looks anything but cheerful. They have both
gone into the cabin, and Trimble has taken his chart with him."

"Well, there is no particular reason why he should not do that, is
there?" demanded Maxwell. "And why should he be especially anxious now,
more than at any other time? Things are all right on deck, aren't
they?"

"Ay," answered I, "up to a certain point they are. But reach down your
chart, and produce your parallel ruler and dividers, my hearty; I want
to get some sort of notion of what is ahead of us."

"What, are you frightened too, then?" demanded Maxwell, as he pushed
away his books and reached up for the chart.

"No, certainly not," answered I. "But it is indisputable that the ship
is embayed on a lee-shore, and that it is blowing a whole gale of wind.
If, therefore, there is a prospect of our being obliged to swim for our
lives presently, I should like to know it."

"Oh, hang it all, man, it surely is not nearly so bad as that, is it?"
demanded the mate, as he spread the chart out on the table.

"Oh, isn't it?" retorted Gascoigne, another midshipman, who had just
come below in time to hear the tail-end of my remark and Maxwell's reply
to it. "It is evident that you have not been on deck within the last
hour, or you wouldn't say that. Why, man alive, if you would just pull
yourself together enough to become conscious of the antics of the hooker
you would understand that she is being driven as no ship ought to be
driven without good and sufficient cause. There,"--as the frigate
plunged dizzily, rolling at the same moment almost over on her beam-ends
and quivering violently throughout her whole fabric at the shock of the
sea that had struck her, while plates, pannikins, cups and saucers,
knives and forks, books, candles, and a heterogeneous assortment of
sundries flew from the racks and shelves with a clattering crash, and
constituted a very pretty "general average" on the deck--"what d'ye
think of that, my noble knight of the sextant?"

"You just gather up that wreckage, my son, and put the unbroken things
back into their places," exclaimed Maxwell. "Also, clap a stopper upon
your jawing tackle, younker; you have altogether too much too say, for a
little 'un. Here, you Fleming--" to another mid, who was lying upon a
locker with his hands clasped under his head by way of a pillow--"rouse
and b