?"

"No, never."

"Well, you won't want to see another," replied the mariner, shading his
eyes and fixing them upon the sea-line. The sea-line away to starboard
had lost somewhat its distinctness, and over the day an almost
imperceptible shade had crept.

The captain suddenly turned from his contemplation of the sea and sky,
raised his head and sniffed.

"Something is burning somewhere--smell it? Seems to me like an old mat
or summat. It's that swab of a steward, maybe; if he isn't breaking
glass, he's upsetting lamps and burning holes in the carpet. Bless MY
soul, I'd sooner have a dozen Mary Anns an' their dustpans round the
place than one tomfool steward like Jenkins." He went to the saloon
hatch. "Below there!"

"Ay, ay, sir."

"What are you burning?"

"I an't burnin' northen, sir."

"Tell you, I smell it!"

"There's northen burnin' here, sir."

"Neither is there; it's all on deck. Something in the galley,
maybe--rags, most likely, they've thrown on the fire."

"Captain!" said Lestrange.

"Ay, ay."

"Come here, please."

Le Farge climbed on to the poop.

"I don't know whether it's my weakness that's affecting my eyes, but
there seems to me something strange about the main-mast."

The main-mast near where it entered the deck, and for some distance up,
seemed in motion--a corkscrew movement most strange to watch from the
shelter of the awning.

This apparent movement was caused by a spiral haze of smoke so vague
that one could only tell of its existence from the mirage-like tremor
of the mast round which it curled.

"My God!" cried Le Farge, as he sprang from the poop and rushed forward.

Lestrange followed him slowly, stopping every moment to clutch the
bulwark rail and pant for breath. He heard the shrill bird-like notes
of the bosun's pipe. He saw the hands emerging from the forecastle,
like bees out of a hive; he watched them surrounding the main-hatch. He
watched the tarpaulin and locking-bars removed. He saw the hatch
opened, and a burst of smoke--black, villainous smoke--ascend to the
sky, solid as a plume in the windless air.

Lestrange was a man of a highly nervous temperament, and it is just
this sort of man who keeps his head in an emergency, whilst your
level-headed, phlegmatic individual loses his balance. His first
thought was of the children, his second of the boats.

In the battering off Cape Horn the Northumberland lost several of her
boats. There were left the long-boat,