hich was interspersed with a lot of `ahem'-ing and `haw'-ing, `old
Hankey Pankey' not being much of a speaker--"three cheers for the old
flag that has never been licked yet in the long-run!"

If you could have only heard the shout that went up from the lusty
throats of the chaps standing round me and Larrikins, you would not have
thought we had just been beaten off by those black devils nor had to
mourn so many jolly shipmates whom we would never see again in this
life!

But, sailors can't afford to waste any time in `crying over spilt milk';
it would be a poor lookout for them, aye, and for our country too, if
they did!

`Old Hankey Pankey' was of a like opinion.

So no sooner had the echo of our ringing cheer died away amidst the
hills beyond Malindi, now purpling with the shades of evening, ere,
turning round as well as he could with his bandaged limbs, still sitting
in the easy-chair in which he had been brought up from below, he hailed
the signalman and told him to make the _Merlin's_ number, calling Mr
Gresham at the same time to his side, the two of them confabulating
together.

Presently, in response to another signal from us, Captain Oliver came on
board, when he joined in the talk going on between `old Hankey Pankey'
and Mr Gresham for a bit and then returned to his own ship; the
_Merlin_ shortly afterwards slipping her moorings and making off at full
speed to the southwards.

"I tell 'ee wot, Tom," said Larrikins to me on our going down to the
lower deck just then, the `disperse' having sounded, and it being our
watch below, "she's gone h'off fur to tell the h'admiral o' the bloomin'
mess we've made on it!"

This we found was the case next morning when the captain's steward came
forwards as usual; this worthy being better than a newspaper to all of
us, for he used to tell us of things before they occurred, and truly
enough too, instead of waiting for events to happen and then garbling
them, as some prints I have seen do!

Two or three days later the _Merlin_, which reported having had a long
chase after the senior officer, going almost as far as Zanzibar and back
to Mombassa before she picked him up, returned to Malindi, in company
with the _Bullfinch_, another small cruiser attached to the East African
squadron.

Captain Oliver also brought orders from our chief, that parties of
bluejackets were to be landed to protect Malindi from any hostile attack
of the Arabs, while he with the admiral and al