inoculars with an angry snap,
and turned to me. His face showed of a dark purple under his white
cotton night-cap.

[Illustration]

"The silly old ship," he muttered, half to himself and half to me, "is
trying to make heavy weather of it; but I'll be even with her. I'll be
even with her."

"You'll find it a very _odd_ thing to do," I said to him, jocosely.

He sprang at me like a seahorse, and reared himself to his full height
before me.

"Come, Mr. TUGLEY," he continued, speaking in a low, meaning voice,
"can you take a star?"

"Sometimes," I answered, humouring his strange fancy; "but there's
only one about, and it seems a deuce of a long way off--however, I'll
try;" and, with that, I reached my arm up in the direction of the
solitary planet, which lay in the vast obscure like a small silver
candlestick, with a greenish tinge in its icy sparkling, mirrored far
below in the indigo flood of the abysmal sea, while a grey scud came
sweeping up, no one quite knew whence, and hung about the glossy face
of the silent luminary like the shreds of a wedding veil, scattered
by a honey-moon quarrel across the deep spaces far beyond the hairy
coamings of the booby-hatch.

"Fool!" said the Captain, softly, "I don't mean that. If you can't
take a star, can you keep a watch?"

"Well, as to that, Captain," said I, half shocked and half amused at
his strange questionings, "I never take my own out in a crowd. It's
one of DENT's best, given me by my aunt, and I've had it for nigh
upon--"

But the Captain had left me, and was at that moment engaged on his
after-supper occupation of jockeying a lee yard-arm, while the first
mate, Mr. SOWSTER, was doing his best to keep up with his rough
commanding officer by dangling to windward on the flemish horse,
which, as it was touched in the wind and gone in the forelegs,
stumbled violently over the buttery hatchway and hurled its
venturesome rider into the hold.

CHAPTER II.

On the following morning we were all sitting in the palatial saloon of
the _Marlinspike_. We were all there, all the characters, that is to
say, necessary for the completion of a first class three-volume ocean
novel. On my right sat the cayenne-peppery Indian Colonel, a small
man with a fierce face and a tight collar, who roars like a bull and
says, "Zounds, Sir," on the slightest provocation. Opposite to him
was his wife, a Roman-nosed lady, with an imperious manner, and a
Colonel-subduing way of curling he