few have blubbered before.

"You will, will you, you young scamp?" exclaimed the carpenter, seizing
a rope's-end. "Take that, then, and remember, when you come back from
the drowning of yourself, I'll give you six times as much." And poor
Bobby got it worse than ever.

I think Chissel was very wrong in the way he treated the poor wretch.
Had he been tolerably kind and considerate, he might, I am certain, have
worked on his good feelings, and certainly have improved him; but the
unhappy lad had from his earliest days been so constantly knocked about,
and so accustomed to receive more kicks than halfpence, that all his
better feelings had been pretty well beaten out of him.

It so happened that one evening, as the ship was running pretty fast
through the water, and as darkness was coming rapidly on, a loud splash
was heard alongside, and that cry, so startling to a seaman's heart, was
raised--"A man overboard!"

"Silence, fore and aft," sang out Captain Poynder, who at the same
moment appeared on deck. "Does anybody see him?"

There was no answer.

"Does anybody hear him?"

There was an ominous silence. A pin might have been heard to drop on
deck. The life-buoy had been let go at the first by the officer of the
watch. Its signal fire now burned bright astern, but no one was seen
clinging to it. There could be little doubt that the poor fellow,
whoever he was, had sunk at once. The ship had been running at the time
a few points off the wind. She was now brought close on a wind, and
then the helm was put down, and she was hove about with her head towards
the life-buoy. While she was in stays, the two quarter-boats were
manned and lowered. Mr Vernon jumped into one of them, and the master
into another; and as the frigate lost her way, they shoved off and
pulled in the direction of the spot where the man was supposed to have
fallen.

"Who can it be? Who is missing?" was asked by all hands, while we were
anxiously looking out towards the boats, to see if they were picking up
anybody.

When the ship reached the same locality, she was hove-to, and there we
remained till the boats, having picked up the life-buoy, returned on
board. They brought, however, too probable a sign of some one having
been lost--a boy's hat. It had been picked up exactly at the spot where
the ship was supposed to have been when the alarm was first given. The
ship's muster-roll was now called over, to ascertain who of the ship's