r 'em running through the
trees, Mr Murray, sir?"

"Yes, and I should like to give them another volley."

"So should I, sir," panted the big sailor, as he drove down his ramrod
till it nearly hopped out of the musket-barrel again; "but we can't
afford it."

"Any one hurt there, May?" cried the lieutenant.

"Yes, sir; lots," replied the big sailor, with a chuckle of
satisfaction.

"What's that?" cried the lieutenant, in anxious tones.

"Beg pardon, sir," growled the sailor hastily. "I didn't mean us."

"Silence, sir!" cried the lieutenant sternly.

The next minute, in the midst of that which the officer had commanded,
they heard him giving orders to the black.

"You'll hear of this again, Mr Tom May," said Murray.

"Yes, sir, I s'pose so," said the big sailor grumpily. "That's just
like me. It's just as an old mate of mine once said. `You've got a
horkerd sort o' mouth, Tommy, you have,' he says. `You never opens it
but you puts your foot in it.'"

"Hist! What does that mean, Tom?" whispered the middy.

"Means it's so plaguey dark that you can't see what's going on."

"Yes, but you can listen, sir."

"Oh, Mr Murray, sir, don't you come down upon me too. Just then it was
Mister Tom May; and now it's _sir_. I didn't mean no harm, sir. It
cheers a man up, to try and think a bit cheery, 'specially when you're
expecting a bullet every minute to come in for'ard and pass out astarn."

"Don't talk, man," whispered Murray. "Can't you hear the enemy?"

"Yes, sir: that's them, sir, creeping up towards us through the bushes."

The man spoke with his lips close to the middy's ear.

The silence seemed to be terrible, and to Murray the feeling was that he
could not breathe.

"Won't you give us the order to let 'em have it again, sir, without
waiting till the first luff comes back?" whispered the sailor.

"Isn't he there, Tom?"

"No, sir, he's gone off with them poor shivering niggers, sir, to try a
bit o' manoeuvring o' some kind; but he won't do no good, sir. They
arn't got a bit o' fight in 'em. But what can you expect of a poor
beggar as lives on yam and a chew o' sugar-cane? It don't give a man
pluck, sir. If I had 'em fed up a bit on salt horse and weevly biscuit
I'd make 'em something like in a few weeks. There, sir; hear that?"

"Yes," whispered Murray. "Ah, they're getting ready to fire. Make
ready. Each man aim at where he thinks they're coming on. Fire!"

A capital volley was the