before, came finally to grief in a very sad
way.

We were chasing a suspicious looking blockade-runner, a short time after
he had his remarkable invitation to dine with the admiral; our engines
were moving a little more rapidly than usual; and, Jocko, who was
perched on the skylight above, was looking at them with the most intense
interest.

All at once, the platform on which he was resting slipped, and the
talented monkey fell into the engine-room, in the midst of the
machinery--there was one sharp agonised squeak, and the last page of
poor Jocko's history was marked with the word _Finis_.

CHAPTER TWO.

ESCAPE OF THE "CRANKY JANE."

A STORY ABOUT AN ICEBERG.

One day, some three years ago or so, I chanced to be down at Sheerness
dockyard, and, while there, utilised my time by inspecting the various
vessels scattered about this naval repository. Some of the specimens
exhibited all the latest "improvements" in marine architecture, being
built to develop every destructive property--huge floating citadels and
infernal machines; while others were old, and now useless, types of the
past "wooden walls of old England," ships that once had braved the
perils of the main in all the panoply of their spreading canvas, and
whose broadsides had thundered at Trafalgar, making music in the ears of
the immortal Nelson and his compeers.

Amongst the different craft that caught my eye--old hulks, placidly
resting their weary timbers on the muddy bosom of the Medway,
dismantled, dismasted, and having pent-houses like the roofs of barns
over their upper decks in lieu of awnings; armour-plated cruisers, in
the First Class Steam Reserve, ready to be commissioned at a moment's
notice; and ships in various degrees of construction, on the building
slips and in dry dock--was a vessel which seemed to be undergoing the
operation of "padding her hull," if the phrase be admissible as
explaining what I noticed about her, the planking, from which the copper
sheathing had been previously stripped, being doubled, apparently, and
protected in weak places by additional beams and braces being fixed to
the sides. Of course, I may be all wrong in this, but it was what
seemed to me to be the case.

On inquiry I learnt that the vessel was the _Alert_, which it may be
recollected was one of the two ships in the Arctic expedition commanded
by Sir George Nares. I wondered why so many workmen were busy about
her, hammering, sawing, planing, rivet