ow gone to the bottom of the sea) he carried
a distinctive appellation, no doubt earned by his greater age. Aboard
the frigate he had been known as "Old Bill"; and the soubriquet still
attached to him upon the spar.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE SERPENT'S TONGUE.

The presence of a ship's topsail-yard thus bestridden plainly proclaimed
that a ship had been wrecked--although no other evidence of the wreck
was within sight. Not a speck was visible upon the sea to the utmost
verge of the horizon; and if a ship had foundered within that field of
view, her boats and every vestige of the wreck must either have gone to
the bottom, or in some other direction than that taken by the
topsail-yard, which supported the three midshipmen and the sailor Bill.

A ship had gone to the bottom--a British man-of-war,--a corvette on her
way to her cruising ground, on the Guinea coast. Beguiled by the
dangerous current that sets towards the seaboard of the Saara, in a dark
stormy night she had struck upon a sand-bank; got bilged; and sank
almost instantly among the breakers. Boats had been got out, and men
had been seen crowding hurriedly into them; others had taken to such
rafts, or spars, as could be detached from the sinking vessel; but
whether any of these, or the overladen boats, had succeeded in reaching
the shore, was a question which none of the four astride the
topsail-yard were able to answer.

They only knew that the corvette had gone to the bottom--they saw her go
down, shortly after drifting away from her side; but saw nothing more
until morning, when they perceived themselves alone upon the ocean.
They had been drifting throughout the remainder of that long, dark
night, often entirely under water, when the sea swelled over them--and
one and all of them many times on the point of being washed from their
frail embarkation.

By daybreak the storm had ceased, and was succeeded by a clear, calm
day; but it was not until a late hour that the swell had subsided
sufficiently to enable them to take any measures for propelling the
strange craft that carried them. Then, using their hands as oars, or
paddles, they commenced making some way through the water.

There was nothing in sight, neither land nor any other object, save the
sea, the sky, and the sun. It was the east which guided them as to
direction. But for it there could have been no object in making way
through the water; but, with the sun now sinking in the west, they co