ions a look
full of triumph as I dashed aft.

"Oh, there you are, sir. Now look here, I'm going to mast-head you.
Got your glass?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then up with you, right to the main-topgallant cross-trees. Notice
everything you can."

My heart began to beat before I reached the main shrouds, and it beat
more heavily as I toiled up the rattlins, reached the top, and then went
on again, too much excited to think of there being any danger of
falling, my mind being partly occupied with thoughts of what Barkins and
Smith were saying about my being favoured in this way.

"Just as if they could have come up," I said half-laughing; "one with a
game leg, the other with a game arm."

My thoughts ran, too, as much upon what I was about to see, so that
beyond taking a tight hold, and keeping my spyglass buttoned up in my
jacket, I paid little heed to the height I was getting, I reached the
head of the topmast, and then began to mount the rattlins of the
main-topgallant mast, whose cross-trees seemed to be a tremendous height
above my head.

But I was soon there, and settled myself as comfortably as I could,
sitting with an arm well round a stay, and one leg twisted in another
for safety; but the wood did not feel at all soft, and there was a
peculiar rap, rap, rap against the tapering spar which ran up above my
head to the round big wooden bun on the top of all, which we knew as the
truck.

For a moment or two I couldn't make out what the sound was. Then I saw
it was caused by the halyards, the thin line which ran up through the
truck and down again to the deck, for hoisting our colours. This
doubled line, swayed by the breeze, was beating against the tall pole,
but I checked the noise by putting my arm round it and holding the thin
halyard tight.

I looked down for a moment or two at the deck which lay beneath, giving
me a bird's-eye view through the rigging of the white decks dotted with
officers and men, and the guns glistening in the sunshine. There were
several faces staring up at me, and I made out Barkins and Smith, and
waved my hand. But these were only momentary glances; I had too much to
see of far more importance. For there, spread out round me, was a grand
view of the low, flat, marshy country, through which the river wound
like a silver snake. Far away in the distance I could see villages, and
what seemed to be a tower of some size. Beyond it, cultivated land and
patches of forest; behind me, and