ral figure. Captain
Reay had been sent by the senior officer of the squadron to demand
the surrender of a fort on the Island of Martinique, when by an act of
treachery he and his boat's crew were made prisoners and confined in
the fortress, where he was treated with almost savage brutality by
the commandant. The frigate at once opened fire, but after four hours'
bombardment had failed to silence a single gun in the fort. At midnight
it was carried in an attack led by young Channing, then a mere lad,
and who, although two-thirds of his small force fell ere the walls were
reached, refused to draw back and abandon Reay and his men. From that
day Reay became his warm and sincere friend.

*****

The best part of a year had passed since the _Triton_ had sailed from
Portsmouth, and now, with only the faintest air filling her canvas,
she was sailing slowly along the shores of a cluster of islands, high,
densely wooded, and picturesque. They formed one of the many minor
groups of the beautiful and fertile Moluccas. Ten days before, the
frigate had left Banda, and, impelled upon her course by but the
gentlest breezes, had crept slowly northward towards Ternate, where
Captain Reay was touching for letters before reporting himself to the
Admiral at Singapore. On the quarter-deck a party of officers were
standing together looking over the side at the wonders of the coral
world, over which the ship was passing. For many hours the _Triton_ had
sailed thus, through water as clear as crystal, revealing full sixty
feet below the dazzling lights and ever-changing shadows of the uneven
bottom. Now and again she would pass over a broad arena of sand,
gleaming white amid encircling walls of living coral many-hued, and
gently swaying weed and sponge of red and yellow, which, though so
far below, seemed to rise and touch the frigate's keel and then with
quivering motion sink again astern. And as the ship's great hull cast
her darkening shadow deep down through the transparency, swarms of
brightly coloured fishes, red and blue and purple and shining gold, and
banded and striped in every conceivable manner, darted away on either
side to hide awhile in the moving caverns of weed that formed their
refuge from predatory enemies. So slowly was the frigate moving, and
so clear was the water, that sometimes as she sailed over a valley of
glistening sand the smallest coloured pebble or fragment of broken coral
could be as clearly discerned upon the s