came dashing over the seas urged
by four stout hands towards them. Jack Rogers sat in the stern-sheets.
He sprang on board and grasped Alick's and Terence's hands. For nearly
a minute he could not speak. He looked at one and then at the other.

"My dear fellows, you do look terribly pulled down," he exclaimed at
length. "Still I am glad to see you even as you are. The truth is that
it has been thought you were lost, when week after week passed and you
did not appear. Many of them gave you up altogether, and thought that
you and the schooner had gone to the bottom, but I never entirely lost
heart. I couldn't have borne it if I had, and I was certain that you
would turn up somewhere or other. What have you been about?" Their
story was soon told. "That's just like you," cried Jack, again,
wringing Murray's and then Paddy's hand. "You are right. A fellow
should do anything rather than desert his colours. I am glad, indeed,
that you've got safe through it. But, I say, the craft seems to be
moving in a very uneasy way. What is the matter?"

"If we don't keep the pumps going, she'll be going down in a few
minutes," put in Needham, touching his hat.

Jack called his crew out of the boat, and all hands set to work at the
pumps. It was high time, for the crazy little craft was settling fast
down in the water. Four fresh hands pumping away while the rest baled
once more got the leaks under, and in a couple of hours, Jack returning
on board his schooner, sail was made for Sierra Leone. The schooner was
a prize lately captured by the _Ranger_, and Captain Lascelles had put
Jack in charge of her to carry her up to Sierra Leone, while the frigate
continued her cruise to the southward. He was to find his way back to
his ship by the first man-of-war calling at the port. Jack wished very
much that he could remain on board the _Venus_, to keep up, as he said,
his friends' spirits, but as he had two or three hundred slaves on board
his prize, he had to return to her to preserve order.

He promised, however, to stay by the _Venus_, come what might, and Alick
and Paddy had no fear that he would desert them. He lent them a couple
of hands to work at the pumps, but even with this assistance they had
the greatest difficulty in keeping the schooner afloat.

"If another gale should spring up, I really do not think the craft would
keep afloat an hour," exclaimed Adair, with a ruthful countenance, after
he had been pumping