his night-shirt streaming out in the wind, which
must have made his legs feel rather chilly, I thought, "who in thunder's
thaar?"

"Me," replied a husky voice, the owner whereof coughed, as if he were
pretty well suffocated with the smoke and water. "It's all right; it's
only me."

"Jee-rusalem!" ejaculated Captain Snaggs, rather puzzled. "Who's `me'
I'd like ter know, I guess?"

"Tom Bullover," answered my friend the carpenter, now lifting himself
out of the forepeak, when shaking himself like a big Newfoundland dog,
he scattered a regular shower bath around. "It's all right below, and
there's no fire there no longer."

"An' what in the name of thunder wer ye a-doin' on down thaar, hey?"
asked the skipper, quite flabbergasted at his unexpected appearance, Tom
looking like a veritable imp from the lower regions, all blackened and
begrimed, for the moon escaping from the veil of vapour that now nearly
concealed the entire vault of the heavens just then shone down on us
again, throwing a sickly light on the scene. "How kern ye to be down in
the forepeak at all, my joker?"

"I went down just afore my watch was up to look up a spare old tops'l we
stowed away there, me and Hiram, the week afore last, to see whether it
wouldn't do in place o' that main to'gallant we carried away yesterday,"
replied Tom, rather sheepishly; "an' I s'pose I fell asleep, for it was
only the water you kept a-pouring down as woke me up, an' I was most
drownded afore I could reach the ladder an' catch hold of the coamin' of
the hatch to climb up."

"An' sarve ye right, too, if we hed drownded ye, by thunder!" roared
Captain Snaggs, thoroughly incensed, "ye durned addle-headed lubber! I
guess ye hed a lantern with ye, hey?"

"Yes," confessed the delinquent; "in course I took a light down to see
what I was a-doin' of."

"`In course'!" repeated the captain, in savage mimicry of Tom's way of
speaking; "an' yer durned lantern got upsot, or kicked over, or
sunthin', an' so, I guess ye sot fire to the sails, hey?"

"No, sir, there's nothing hurt to mention," replied Tom, more coolly;
"it was only some old rags and greasy waste that the cook shoved down
there that caught, which were the reason it made such a big smoke."

The skipper snorted indignantly at this explanation; and then, craning
his long neck over the hatchway, he sniffed about, as if trying to
detect some special smell.

"`Big smoke,' hey!" he cried, as he stood upright agai