sack
over his arm and felt his way in the darkness to the skipper's bunk. The
sound of deep and regular breathing reassured him, and without undue
haste he opened the mouth of the sack and gently raised the sleeper's
head.

"Eh? Wha----" began a sleepy voice.

The next moment the cook had bagged him, and gripping him tightly round
the middle, turned a deaf ear to the smothered cries of his victim as he
strove to lift him out of the bunk. In the exciting time which followed,
he had more than one reason for thinking that he had caught a centipede.

"Now, you keep still," he cried, breathlessly. "I'm not going to hurt
you."

He got his burden out of bed at last, and staggered to the foot of the
companion-ladder with it. Then there was a halt, two legs sticking
obstinately across the narrow way and refusing to be moved, while a
furious humming proceeded from the other end of the sack.

Four times did the exhausted cook get his shoulder under his burden and
try and push it up the ladder, and four times did it wriggle and fight
its way down again. Half crazy with fear and rage, he essayed it for the
fifth time, and had got it half-way up when there was a sudden
exclamation of surprise from above, and the voice of the mate sharply
demanding an explanation.

"What the blazes are you up to?" he cried.

"It's all right, sir," said the panting cook; "old Jem's had a drop too
much and got down aft, and I'm getting 'im for'ard again."

"Jem?" said the astonished mate. "Why, he's sitting up here on the
fore-hatch. He came aboard with me."

"Sitting," began the horrified cook; "sit--oh, lor!"

He stood with his writhing burden wedged between his body and the ladder,
and looked up despairingly at the mate.

"I'm afraid I've made a mistake," he said in a trembling voice.

The mate struck a match and looked down.

"Take that sack off," he demanded, sternly.

The cook placed his burden upon its feet, and running up the ladder stood
by the mate shivering. The latter struck another match, and the twain
watched in breathless silence the writhings of the strange creature below
as the covering worked slowly upwards. In the fourth match it got free,
and revealed the empurpled visage of the master of the _Susannah_. For
the fraction of a second the cook gazed at him in speechless horror, and
then, with a hopeless cry, sprang ashore and ran for it, hotly pursued by
his enraged victim. At the time of sailing he was sti