d
the young lieutenant, as they now advanced further forward to have a
nearer view of the still smoking gun, he said, "Where, Neville, did you
last see the boy?"

"There!" replied the young officer, pointing to the ledge outside the
bulkhead, just over the iron ladder-way that led down to the fo'c's'le,
the scene of the accident. "He cannot well have fallen overboard from
there!"

"No," assented the Captain, doubtfully; still at a loss to account for
Bob's mysterious disappearance. "Where can the boy be, though?"

They were just about instituting an organised search through the ship,
both in great anxiety; when, who should crawl up from below but the
missing young gentleman!

Rover's look of dejection on being left behind at home in the morning
was nothing to that of his young master now; the latter appearing, from
his blackened face and rumpled collar, not to speak of his soiled suit
of flannels, so beautifully white and clean the moment before, to have
"been in the wars" with a vengeance!

"Why, what have you been doing with yourself?" exclaimed the Captain, in
blank dismay. "Where have you been?"

Albeit dilapidated in his general exterior, Bob had not lost his voice;
his powers of speech being happily still unimpaired.

"I'm all right," he answered with an attempt at a grin. "I'm all
right!"

"But where have you been?" repeated the Captain, whom this off-hand
statement did not quite satisfy. "Where have you been?"

"Oh, I got blown up," explained Bob. "When the gun fired I felt an
awful pain in my ears, as if somebody was running a red-hot needle
through them going right down to my boots!"

"You must have long ears, youngster," remarked the young lieutenant
slily here. "Very long to reach so far!"

"I didn't mean that my ears went down to my boots," replied Bob, rather
nettled at the insinuation; and he then continued the account of his
experiences of the explosion. "But, as I was saying, I first felt this
pain; and then I seemed to be lifted off my feet, tumbling down this
ladder here, and after that through a hole in the deck, amongst a lot of
coal-dust and oil-cans, that messed my clothes a bit."

"A bit?" queried the Captain, chuckling now with much satisfaction at
seeing him unhurt--"I should say a good deal, judging by appearances,
Master Bob!"

"Really?" said he surveying himself ruefully, turning and twisting so as
to get a view of his back. "Well, I certainly am dirty, but I didn't