ity of a sucking sailor over a
raw landsman, in his voice. "Why, you'll be seeing the sea serpent soon
if you look smart. Where is this wonderful thing you've discovered,
Jonathan, my son? I'm blest if I can see it."

It need hardly be mentioned that, close friends as they had become in a
short time, Johnny Liston rather resented David's patronage and implied
superiority, and he hated his calling him "Jonathan," or addressing him
as "my son," just as if he were as old as his father, instead of being
just of an age, as he would indignantly remonstrate, which knowing,
David mischievously made a point of so speaking to him on purpose to
tease him, although in good part all the same.

"And you call yourself a sailor!" said Johnny Liston mockingly. "Why,
there it is, as plain as a pikestaff, on the lift of that wave to the
right there! Where are your eyes, stupid?"

"Why don't you say on the port quarter, you lubber?" answered David
good-humouredly; "then a fellow would know what you meant! Oh, I see.
I think it's a ship's boat floating bottom upwards; but I'll call the
skipper's attention to it, and he'll soon tell us what it is. Johnny,
my boy, you've got good eyesight, and deserve a leather medal for seeing
that before I did, so I'll let you have the credit of it."

"Thanks, Dave," said the other ironically. "I'm glad you can allow for
once in a way that you are not infallible, and that somebody else can
see as well as yourself."

David meanwhile had crossed over the deck, to where the captain was
conversing with a group of passengers, and having pointed out the object
which his friend had discovered, a telescope being brought to bear soon
proved it to be what his quick eye had already assured him it was, a
boat pitching about bottom upwards, probably washed away from some
Australian liner like themselves. There was no trace, however, to be
seen of any one clinging to the keel, and time was too valuable and the
wind too fair for the vessel to be put off her course merely to pick up
an empty boat, which would most likely not be worth the trouble of
hoisting on board; so they passed on, and it was soon hull-down in the
distance.

The _Sea Rover_ had made all her southern latitude, descending to the
thirty-sixth parallel. She had passed the Island of Tristan d'Acunha,
although at some distance off, a few days before; and now as she was
well below the region sacred to the stormy Cape, and had run down the
tra