n doing my dooty like to let you get away from me
as I did."

"Nonsense, Tom! Who could help it? But it was awkward to be separated
like that. I began to be afraid that we should never get together
again."

"Well, sir, that's just what I got a touch of, sir, but I pulled myself
up short, sir, and I says to myself, `Mr Murray's too good an orficer,'
I says, `not to find his way out of any hole as these slave-hunting
varmint would dig for him.'"

"There you go again, Tom," cried Murray angrily. "You know how I hate
flam."

"I'm blest, sir!" cried the man, in an ill-used tone. "Oh, you are hard
upon me, sir."

"Then you shouldn't stoop to flattery."

"Flattery, sir? Well, if that warn't honest I'm a Dutchman. I only
wish I'd got a witness, sir, as heared me say it, sir; but I only says
it to myself, and you don't believe him."

"Yes, I do, Tom," cried Murray.

"Hullo, sir! They're at it again somewhere else."

"Pst!" whispered Murray, holding up his hand and stepping on tiptoe
towards a door at one end of the room, partly hidden by a thick curtain.

The next moment he was signing to the men to follow him.

They were just in time, for a ladder had been raised against a narrow
slit of a window of what was fitted up as a bathroom, and as the lad
dashed in, it was to find that one of the slaver's men was in the act of
leaping down into the room, striking at the middy in his bound, and with
such force that he drove the lad headlong backwards, half stunning him
in his fall.

"Here, what is it?" cried Murray, after a few minutes, in a confused
manner. "Who did that?"

"Why, it was this here chap, sir," said Tom May. "Here, ketch hold of
his heels, man, and let's send him back to his mates; we don't want him
here."

"Who wounded him--who cut him?" cried Murray excitedly.

"I'm not quite sure, sir," said Tom May drily, "but I think as it was
me, sir. You see, he let himself go at you, sir, and I just give him a
tap."

"You've killed him, Tom," said the lad, in rather an awe-stricken tone.

"Nay, sir. Tap like that wouldn't take it out of him. I might ha' hit
a bit softer, but I was 'bliged to be sharp, or he'd ha' finished you
off, sir, and of course we didn't want that. There, let go your end,
messmate," continued the man, and still half dazed, Murray stood staring
as he saw one of their fierce-looking, half European, half Lascar-like
enemies passed out of the narrow window, bleeding profusely,