_ lay at Hong Kong, Captain Hemming was
asked to take a poor young gentleman on board, who had suffered from the
climate, and was very ill. A trip to sea might give him some chance of
recovery. Hemming, in the kindness of his heart, at once consented,
without asking who he was, and promised him a berth in his cabin.
Scarcely had the stranger been lifted up on deck, than Jack recognised
in his features, though pale and sunken, those of his old schoolfellow,
Bully Pigeon. He was placed in the shade under an awning on deck. He
had not been there long before he sent a boy to call Jack.

"Ah! Rogers," he said, in a faint voice, "I dare say you scarcely like
to speak to me; but I am not as bad as I was. I have been thinking a
good deal lately, and a friend has talked to me and read to me, and I
have seen my folly. I believe in the religion I once laughed at, and I
see that, had I before believed in it, I should have been a thousandfold
more happy than I was. I have thrown life away, for I shall soon die;
but I am not miserable as I was lately, for I know that I shall be
forgiven."

The next day the frigate and brig sailed for the north. They had
cruised for about a fortnight, when a steamer overtook them, and gave
them notice that war had broken out once more between England and China,
and that there would be plenty of work cut out for them before long.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

PROMOTED.

The frigate and the brig which had the honour of conveying the three
midshipmen between them, with the south-west monsoon blowing gently aft,
proceeded northward among the numberless islands which stud the China
seas, looking for the admiral and the rest of the fleet. They were
surprised, as they sailed along the mainland, to observe the great
number of towns and villages on the shores and vast tracts of country
under cultivation. Several times they fell in with small squadrons of
large government war-junks, with heavy guns, gaudy flags, flaunting
vainly like peacocks' tails, and stout mandarins sitting on their decks.
Some tried to escape, and succeeded, but others were caught, and the
stout mandarins either were or pretended to be very much astonished that
their vessels were lawful prizes to the squadron of Her Britannic
Majesty. They received very little commiseration, for it was well-known
that they were in league with the pirates who infested those seas, and
that when any grand piratical expedition was about to take p