he nature of the discipline on board, and giving her an account
of the voyage across the Atlantic. A group of the officers had
collected on the quarter-deck, and, much amused at the scene, were
observing the conduct of Clyde. As he became more violent, his sister
tried to quiet him, and induce him to behave like a gentleman; but he
replied to her in a tone and with words which made the captain's
cheeks tinge with indignation.

Finally, when he found that abuse had no effect upon the stout
boatswain, he drew back, and made a desperate plunge at his heavy
opponent. Peaks caught him by the shoulders, and lifted him off his
feet like a baby. Taking him in his arms, with one hand over his
mouth, to smother his cries, he bore him to the waist, where his yells
could not be heard by his mother.

"Be quiet, little one," said Peaks, as he seated himself on the
main-hatch, and twined his long legs around those of the prisoner, so
that he was held as fast as though he had been in the folds of an
anaconda. "Hold still, now, and I'll spin you a sea-yarn. Once on a
time there was a little boy that wanted to go to sea--"

"Let me go, or I'll kill you!" sputtered Clyde; but the boatswain
covered his mouth again, and silenced him.

"Kill me! That would be wicked. But I'm not a mosquito, to be cracked
in the fingers of such a dear little boy as you are. But you snapped
off my yarn; and if you don't hold still, I can't spin it ship-shape."

Clyde had well nigh exhausted his breath in his fruitless struggle,
and before his sister went far enough forward to see him, he was
tolerably calm, because he had no more strength to resist. Then the
boatswain told his story of a boy that wanted to go to sea, but found
that he could not have his own way on board the ship.

In the cabin, Mrs. Blacklock told a pitiful story of the wilfulness of
her son; that she was obliged to do just as he said, and if he wanted
anything, however absurd it might be, she was obliged to give it to
him, or he made the house too "hot" for her. Her husband had died when
the children were small, and the whole care of them had devolved on
her. Clyde had made her miserable for several years. She had sent
him to several celebrated schools; but he had got into trouble
immediately, and she had been compelled to take him away, to prevent
him from killing himself and her, as she expressed it. Her husband had
left her a handsome property, but she was afraid her son would spend