TER SIX.

MY FIRST HORROR.

I was in a great state of excitement, and stood watching the vessel
through my spyglass, longing for the distance to be got over and what
promised to be a mystery examined. For a wreck was possible and a fire
at sea equally so, but a ship ashore and burning seemed to be such an
anomaly that the officers all looked as if they felt that we were on the
high road to something exciting at last.

In fact, we had been so long on the station for the purpose of checking
piracy, but doing nothing save overhaul inoffensive junks, that we were
all heartily sick of our task. For it was not, as Smith said, as if we
were always in some port where we could study the manners and customs of
the Chinese, but for ever knocking about wild-goose chasing and never
getting a goose.

"Plenty on board," cried Barkins. "I say, Gnat, isn't he a humbug? Ha,
ha! Study the manners and customs! Stuffing himself with Chinese
sweets and hankering after puppy-pie, like the bargees on the Thames."

"Oh, does he?" cried Smith. "Who ate the fricassee of rats?"

"Oh, bother all that!" I said. "Here, Blacksmith, lend me your glass a
minute; it's stronger than mine."

"Ho, ho!" laughed Barkins. "His! The wapping whacker! Why, it's a
miserable slopshop second-hand thing. You should have had mine. That
was something like, before you spoiled it."

"Here you are," said Smith, lending me his glass. "It's worth a dozen
of his old blunderbuss."

I took the glass and had a good long inspection of the large barque,
which lay heeled over on the outlying reef of one of the many islands,
and could distinctly see the fine curl of smoke rising up from the deck
somewhere about the forecastle.

"Make out any one on board, Mr Herrick?" said a sharp voice behind me,
and I started round, to find that my companions had gone forward, and
the first lieutenant was behind me with his spyglass under his arm and
his face very eager and stern.

"No, sir; not a soul."

"Nor signals?"

"None."

"No more can I," my lad. "Your eyes are younger and sharper than mine.
Look again. Do the bulwarks seem shattered?"

I took a long look.

"No, sir," I said. "Everything seems quite right except the
fore-topmast, which has snapped off, and is hanging in a tangle down to
the deck."

"But the fire?"

"That only looks, sir, as if they'd got a stove in the forecastle, and
had just lit the fire with plenty of smoky coal."

"Hah! Th