ak every rib in your body," replied Bill.

The boy, who was terribly frightened, got up at this threat, and began
to ascend the ladder; he was about three steps up, when we heard from
the deck a horrible _miaw_! The boy gave a scream of terror, and fell
down on his back among us all, smashing the glass and flattening the tin
cans against the men's legs, who halloed with pain. At last there was a
dead silence again, and I could plainly hear the loud throbbing of more
than one heart.

"Come," said Dick again, "what was the fool frightened about? Look for
the candle, some of you."

At last Bill found it in his breast, broke in two and half melted away,
and was proceeding for a light when the carpenter stepped to the hatch
with his lantern, and said, "Why, you're all in the dark there,
shipmates! Here, take my lantern."

I may as well here observe that the carpenter had been listening to the
story as he sat by the hatchway on deck, and it was he who had favoured
us with the _miaw_ which had so frightened the boy. As soon as the
lantern had been received and the candle relighted, Dick re-commenced.

"Well, my lads, I said that the captain went down below, brought up his
gun, and let fly at the cat, and then--well, and then--the cat gave
aloud shriek, and falls down upon the deck. The captain walks forward
to it, takes it up by the tail, brings it aft, and shies it among the
men.

"`There, you fools,' said he, `it is the cat himself; will you believe
your own eyes?'

"And sure enough, so it was; for, you see, when Jim tumbled overboard,
it being then dark, and we so busy with Jim, we did not look after the
cat, and so it must have crawled up the cable and run down into the hold
while the hatches were off; and all that noise heard aft must have been
the brute chasing the rats, I suppose.--Jim may have heard, but he could
not have seen, the cat; that was all fancy and fright. You know how
long a cat will live without much food, and so the animal was' pretty
quiet after it had killed all the rats. Then when the gale came on, and
the upper part of the cargo fetched way a little, for it was loosely
stowed, we suppose that it got jammed now and then with the rolling, and
that made it miaw; and then, when we took off the hatches to look at the
cargo, after we had sprung the leak, the cat, o' course, came out, and a
pretty skeleton it was, as you may suppose. Now do you understand the
whole of it?"

"Yes, that's al