a, which had relieved the
parched sensation in his throat and lips. Then the skipper and his son
had been so kind and attentive. It was so satisfactory too about
getting that letter off, and then that evening glow rapidly changing
into a velvety gloom with great stars coming out, was so lovely that he
felt that he had never seen anything so exquisite before.

"There, I won't think and worry," he said to himself, and a minute later
he had fallen into a sleep which proved so long and restful, that the
sun had been long up before he unclosed his eyes again to find his
younger attendant once more netting.

"Morning," said the lad cheerily. "You have had a long nap, and no
mistake."

"Why, I haven't been asleep since sunset, have I?"

"You have, and it seems to have done you a lot of good. You can eat a
good breakfast now, can't you?"

"Yes, and get up first and have a good wash. I long for it."

"You can't. I shall have to do that. Here, wait a minute. I will go
and tell the cook to get your breakfast ready, and then come back and
put you all a-taunto."

The lad hurried out of the cabin, leaving Fitz wide-awake now in every
sense of the word, for that last rest had brought back the power of
coherent thought, making him look wonderingly out of the window at the
glorious sea, so different from anything he had been accustomed to for
months and months, and setting him wondering.

"Why, this can't be the Irish Channel," he thought, "and here, when was
it I was taken ill? I seem to have been fast asleep, and only just woke
up. Where was I? Was that a dream? No, I remember now; the lieutenant
and the cutter's crew. That schooner we were sent to board in the
darkness, and--"

Here his young attendant re-entered the cabin with a tin-bowl in one
hand, a bucket of freshly dipped sea-water in the other, and a towel
thrown over his shoulder.

"Here, hullo, midshipman!" he cried cheerily. "My word, you do look
wide-awake! But there's nothing wrong, is there?"

"Yes! No! I don't know," cried Fitz excitedly. "What's the name of
this schooner?"

"Oh, it's all right. It's my father's schooner."

"And you sailed from Liverpool?"

"I haven't come here to answer your questions," said the lad, almost
sulkily.

"That proves it, then. I remember it all now. We boarded you in the
dark, and--and--"

Before the speaker could continue, the cabin-door was thrust open and
the bluff-looking skipper entered.

"