of their recent sharp though short skirmish, but
none of them deemed it necessary to remove these evidences of devotion
to duty until they had refreshed themselves with a pipe.

"Were there people in the house?" inquired Frank.

"Ay, but Pickford was there with the escape, an' got 'em all out before
we came up," said one.

"Pickford said he couldn't help laughing after he got 'em out, at the
remembrance o' their faces. When he first went in they was all sound
asleep in the top floor, for the smoke was only beginnin' to show there,
an' the surprise they got when he jump in among 'em an' shouted was
wonderful to behold."

"Not so wonderful," observed Bill Moxey, "as the surprise I seed a whole
man-o'-war's crew get by consequence o' the shout o' one of her own
men."

"When was that? Let's hear about it, Bill," said Corney, stuffing down
the tobacco in his pipe, and firing a battery of cloudlets into the air.

"We was in the Red Sea at the time," said Moxey, clearing his throat,
"layin' at anchor, and a precious hot time we had of it. There was
never a cloud a'most in the sky, and the sun was nigh hot enough to fry
the decks off the ship. Cook said he'd half a mind to try to roast a
junk o' beef at it, but I never heard that he managed that. We slep' on
deck o' nights, 'cause you might as well have tried to sleep in a
baker's oven as sleep below. The thing that troubled us most at that
time was a tiger we had on board. It did kick up such a shindy
sometimes! We thought it would break its cage an make a quid o' some of
us. I forget who sent it to us--p'raps it was the Pasha of Egypt;
anyhow we weren't sorry when the order was given to put the tiger
ashore.

"Well, the same day that we got rid o' the tiger we was sent aboard a
Malay ship to flog one o' the men. He'n bin up to some mischief, an'
his comrades were afraid, I s'pose, to flog him; and as the offence he
had committed was against us somehow (I never rightly understood it
myself), some of us went aboard the Malay ship, tied him up, an' gave
him two dozen.

"That night the whole ship's company slep' on deck as usual--officers as
well--all but the cap'n, who had gone ashore. It was a _tremendous_ hot
night, an' a good deal darker than usual. There was one man in the ship
named Wilson; but we called him Bob Roarer, because of a habit he had of
speakin' an' sometimes roarin' in his sleep. Bob lay between me an' the
purser that night, an' we slep'