e men; and as the fellow uttered the
words the captain rose to his feet in the stern-sheets and doffed his
hat, as though he had been standing beside the grave of a dear friend,
watching the dear old barkie as, with her stern gradually rising high,
she slid slowly and solemnly out of sight, the occupants of the boats
giving her a parting cheer as she vanished. The captain stood
motionless until the swirl that marked her grave had disappeared, then
he replaced his hat, resumed his seat, and remarked--

"Give way, men! Mr Courtenay, be good enough to put me aboard the
launch, if you please."

CHAPTER THREE.

THE GIG IS CAUGHT IN A HURRICANE.

Upon reaching the launch, the captain's first care was to satisfy
himself as to the well-being and comfort of the poor wounded fellows
aboard her; but the doctor had already attended to this matter, with the
result that they were as comfortable as the utmost care and forethought
could render them. The master, meanwhile, had been ascertaining the
exact latitude and longitude of the spot where the frigate had gone
down, and he now communicated the result of his calculations to the
captain, who thereupon gave orders for the boats to steer southwest on a
speed trial for the day, the leading boat to heave-to at sunset and wait
for the rest to close. I had not the remotest notion as to the meaning
of this somewhat singular order, but my obvious duty was to execute it;
so I forthwith made sail upon the gig, and a very few minutes sufficed
to demonstrate that we were the fastest boat of the whole squadron. Nor
was this at all surprising, for the gig was not an ordinary service
boat; she was the captain's own private property, having been built to
order from his own design, with a special view to the development of
exceptional sailing powers, boat-sailing being quite a hobby with him.
She was a splendid craft of her kind, measuring thirty feet in length,
with a beam of six feet, and she pulled six oars. She was a most
beautiful model of the whale-boat type, double-ended, with quite an
unusual amount of sheer fore and aft, which gave her a fine, bold,
buoyant bow and stern; moreover, these were covered in with light
turtle-back decks, that forward measuring six feet in length, while the
after turtle-back measured five feet from the stern-post. She was
fitted with a keel nine inches deep amidships, tapering off to four
inches deep at each end; was rigged as a schooner, with stand