with terror.
I had my first bathe from a Pacific beach that morning; and, given
just a shade more of venturesomeness in the outsetting, it had been
like to be my last. In Livorno Bay the breakers were big, and the
back-wash of their surf very insistent.

The fire of his enthusiasm was once more alight in my father when I
got back to our camp that morning; and one might have supposed it
nourished him, if one had judged from the cursory manner in which his
share of our simple breakfast was dispatched. Then, carrying with him
a tomahawk, I remember, he led us down across the sand to where the
ship lay, so deeply bedded that one stepped over her rail as it might
have been the coaming of a hatch. Her deck, and indeed every uncovered
part of the _Livorno_, was encrusted in the droppings of multitudinous
sea-fowl. For almost as many years as I had lived, probably, these
creatures had made a home of the derelict. To be sure, they had as
good a right to it as we had; yet I remember how keenly we resented
their claims, in the broad light of day; even as they, on the previous
evening, had resented us. Ted promised them a warm time of it, and
congratulated himself on having brought his old gun.

'I'll show 'em whose ship it is,' he said, 'to-night.' And the boy in
me rose in sympathetic response. I suppose I looked forward to the
prospect of those birds being given a taste of the fear they had
helped to inspire in me.

The _Livorno_ had a long, low poop, no more than three feet high, and
extending forward to the mainmast. She had none of the _Ariadne's_
bright-work, as the polished teak was always called on that ship. Her
rails and deck-houses had been painted in green and white, and I made
out the remains of stencilled ornamentation in the corners of panels.
No doubt my father had his preconceptions regarding the derelict of
which he had thought so much in the past week. In any case he did not
linger by the way, but walked direct to the cuddy or saloon, which we
entered by a deeply encrusted, sun-cracked scuttle, just forward of
the mizzen-mast. So here we were, at length, at the heart of our
quest.

Personally, I was for the moment disappointed. My father, being wiser
and knowing better what to expect, was pleased, I think. My
anticipations had doubtless taken their colour from recent experience
of the trim, well-ordered smartness of the _Ariadne's_ saloon. Here,
on board the derelict, nothing was left standing which could e