er, all their
mischances were speedily rectified. In a heavy sea, all their unstable
cargo surged about as though it had been liquid, but it always shifted
back again before she quite capsized. The mizzen-mast went bodily
overboard in one black rain-squall because they were too short-handed to
get sail off it in time, but they found that the vessel sailed almost as
well as a brig, and was much easier for a weak crew to manage.

All hands got covered with salt-water boils. All hands, with the
exception of Kettle--who remained, as usual, neat--grew gaunt, bearded,
dirty, and unkempt. They were grimed with sea-salt, they were flayed
with violent suns; but by dint of hard schooling they were becoming
handy sailormen, all of them, and even the negro stonemason learned to
obey an order without first thinking over its justice till he earned a
premonitory hiding.

In the throat of the English Channel a blundering steamship did her best
to run them down, and actually rasped sides with the sailing-vessel as
she tore past into the night; but nobody made an attempt to jump for
safety on to her decks, nobody even took the trouble to swear at her
with any thing like heartfelt profanity.

"It's a blooming Flying Dutchman we're on," said the coal-trimmer who
acted as mate. "There's no killing the old beast. Only hope she gets us
ashore somehow, and doesn't stay fooling about at sea forever just to
get into risks. I want to get off her. She's too blooming lucky to be
quite wholesome somehow."

Kettle had intended to make a Channel port, but a gale hustled him north
round Land's End, "and you see," he said to Dayton-Philipps, "what I get
for not being sufficiently trustful. The old girl's papers are made out
to Cardiff, and here we are pushed round into the Bristol Channel. By
James! look, there's a tug making up to us. Thing like that makes you
feel homey, doesn't it, sir?"

The little spattering tug wheeled up within hail, tossing like a cork on
the brown waves of the estuary, and the skipper in the green pulpit
between the paddle-boxes waved a hand cheerily.

"Seem to have found some dirty weather, Captain," he bawled. "Want a
pull into Cardiff or Newport?"

"Cardiff. What price?"

"Say L100."

"I wasn't asking to buy the tug. You're putting a pretty fancy figure on
her for that new lick of paint you've got on your rails."

"I'll take L80."

"Oh, I can sail her in myself if you're going to be funny. She's as
handy as a