ks do rise, and, led by our two fellows, attack us. We
should be taken by surprise, and it would be all over in a minute. I
can't go to sleep. I'll lie still a bit, and then go on deck."

Mark lay still a bit, but did not go on deck, for he dropped off into a
deep sleep, which seemed only to have lasted five minutes when Mr
Russell came and roughly told him to turn out, flashing the lanthorn in
his eyes as he awoke, puzzled and confused at the rough way in which his
fellow-officer spoke. Then with a start he grasped the reality.

It was not the lieutenant holding the light, but someone else, who
growled,--"Make so much as a sound and it will be your last--all but the
splash going overboard. D'yer see this? Guess you do. Mind it don't
go off."

There was no need for guessing; the object named was plain enough in the
light of the lanthorn, being a pistol barrel, whose muzzle was about two
feet from the lad's head.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

A CONFUSED AWAKENING.

"Now then, out you come."

Mark Vandean did come out of the bunk in remarkably quick time, but he
was still confused, and his brain refused to solve the puzzle before
him, so he, to use a familiar expression, pulled himself together. The
young officer resented being spoken to in this rough manner and
threatened by a stranger with an American accent, and in as haughty a
tone as he could assume he cried,--

"Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"Come, I like that. Hear him. Oh, all right," cried the man, as there
was a hoarse chorus of laughter. "Who'm I, eh, my bantam cock? Waal,
I'm Cap'n Ephrum Bynes, o' Charleston, South Car'lina. That's who I am.
And what am I doing here? I'm kicking a set o' sarcy Britishers out o'
my ship. Now you know that."

"Where's Lieutenant Russell?"

"Down in the boat, my sarcy Tom chicken; and that's all you've got to
know. Say another word, and I'll have you pitched into the sea among
the sharks instead of into the boat. So mind that. Bring him on deck."

Rough hands seized Mark on the instant, and as a man carrying the
lanthorn stepped back, Mark saw the legs of the Yankee skipper ascending
the companion ladder, and a minute later he was rudely dragged on deck,
his heart beating wildly as he tried to pierce the darkness around in
search of his companions. But all was pitchy black, and though his eyes
wandered in search of the bright star-like lamp of the _Nautilus_, it
was not to be seen. The nex