he bluejackets who were below came tumbling up on deck; and the
gunner, seeing Lieutenant-Commander Muddle rush up from his cabin in his
shirt-sleeves with a razor in his hand, thought that he had gone queer
again in his head, and had tried to blow up the ship, and was going to
out his throat, and so he rushed at him, and knocked him down and took
his razor away, and begged him to be quiet; and Muddle, thinking it was
a mutiny, nearly went into a fit, and straggled so desperately, and
made such awful choking noises that two more men sat on him; and the
navigating midshipman, thinking it was fire, told the bugler to sound
to quarters, and then, seeing the captain being held down by three men,
rushed to his assistance, but tripped over something or somebody and
fell down and nearly broke his nose; and all the time Saunderson who
was clinging to one of the jetty piles, was yelling pitifully for help,
being horribly afraid of sharks.

At last he was fished out by Bigby and some natives and carried up to
the mission-house and then, when he was able to talk coherently, he
sent for Denison, who told him that Commander Muddle was coming for him
presently with a lot of armed men and a boatswain with a green bag in
which was a "cat," and that he (Saunderson) would first be flogged and
then hanged at the _Badger's_ yard-arm, and otherwise treated severely,
for an attempt to blow up one of Her Majesty's ships; and then
Saunderson shivered all over, and staggered out of the mission-house
in a suit of Mr. O------'s pyjamas, much too large for him, and met
Commander Muddle on the jetty and tried to explain how it occurred, and
Muddle called him an infernal, drivelling idiot, and knocked him clean
off the jetty into the water again, and used awful language, and told
Denison that his chronometers were ruined, and the ship's timbers
started, and that he had had a narrow escape from cutting his own throat
when the dynamite went off, as he had just begun to shave.

Saunderson was very ill after that, and was in such mortal terror that
Muddle and every one else on board the gunboat meant to kill, wound, or
seriously damage him, that he kept inside the mission-house, and said he
felt he was dying, and that Mr. O------ would prepare him for the end.
So Denison and Paekenham, who were now quite cheerful again, sent his
traps and his harmonium ashore, and sailed without him, a great peace in
their bosoms.

THE STEALING OF SA LUIA

One