per gave a little attention to his own comfort, and
finally went on deck once more, it being by that time too late to think
of turning in again.

By the time that George regained the deck, the _Aurora_ had crept to a
distance of about four miles from the _Princess Royal_. The unfortunate
craft was by that time blazing fiercely fore and aft, the fire having at
last reached her store-room, in which there was a considerable quantity
of highly inflammable material; and half an hour afterwards her
powder-magazine (almost every ship of any size in those days was
provided with a magazine) exploded; and the charred fragments of
half-consumed timber, which were widely scattered over the now sleepily
heaving surface of the sea, alone remained as relics of the once noble
and stately ship, the destruction of which had been the last link in a
chain of disastrous occurrences resulting primarily from the
overbearing, tyrannical, and imprudent behaviour of her officers.

With the appearance of the sun above the horizon the clouds gradually
disappeared, the wind dropped, the surface of the ocean became like
heaving oil; and the _Aurora_, losing steerage-way, rolled almost
gunwale-to, with her canvas flapping loudly and monotonously against her
masts.

About two bells (or nine o'clock) one of the hands, upon being sent
aloft to "grease down," reported a sail in the southern quarter, and on
the usual inquiry being put to him, as to what he made her out to be, he
replied that she was a small topsail-schooner.

"A small topsail-schooner!" muttered George. "I wonder what she can be;
I cannot remember having seen any such craft in the fleet. Ritson,"--to
the carpenter who had charge of the deck,--"do you remember having seen
a topsail-schooner among the fleet?"

"No, sir; can't say as I do," answered Ritson. "Don't believe there
_was_ any such craft, sir; the smallest, as I remembers was that purty
little brig painted all white down to her water-line; perhaps you
recollects her, sir?"

"Yes," said Leicester, "I recollect the craft perfectly well; and, as
far as my memory serves me, she _was_, as you say, the smallest craft in
company."

The conversation here dropped for a time, George resuming the somewhat
dejected saunter fore and aft from the main-mast to the taffrail, and
the half-unconscious whistling for a wind, in which he had before been
indulging. His pursuit of this monotonous and uninteresting occupation
was interrupte