.

At whiles, as my fingers cramped themselves around the handle of the
pump, it seemed as though we had been fighting this fight, tholing
this misery, gripping the verge of this precipice for years upon
years, and this nightmare sat heaviest upon me when the third morning
broke and I turned in the sudden blessed sunshine--but we blessed it
not--and saw what age the struggle had written on my father's face.
I passed a hand over my eyes, and at that moment Mr. Fett, who had
been snatching an hour's sleep below--and no man better deserved it--
thrust his head up through the broken hatchway, carolling--

"To all you ladies now at land
We men at sea indite,
But first would have you understand
How hard it is to write:
Our paper, pen, and ink and we
Roll up and down our ships at sea,
With a fa-_la_-LA!"

"Catch him!" cried my father, sharply; but he meant not Mr. Fett.
His eyes were on Billy Priske, who, perched on the temporary
platform, where almost without relief he had sat and steered us,
shouting his orders without sign of fatigue, sank forward with the
rudder ropes dragging through, his hands, and dropped into the hold.

For me, I cast myself down on deck with face upturned to the sun, and
slept.

I woke to find my father seated close to me, cross-legged, examining
a sextant.

"The plague of it is," he grumbled, "that even supposing myself to
have mastered this diabolical instrument, we have ne'er a compass on
board."

Glancing aft I saw that Mike Halliday had taken Billy's place at the
helm. At my elbow lay Nat, still sleeping. Mr. Badcock had crawled
to the bulwarks, and leaned there in uncontrollable sea-sickness.
Until the gale was done I believe he had not felt a qualm. Now, on
the top of his nausea, he had to endure the raillery of Mr. Fett,
whose active fancy had already invented a grotesque and wholly
untruthful accusation against his friend--namely, that when assailed
by the Moors, and in the act of being kicked below, he had dropped on
his knees and offered to turn Mohammedan.

That evening we committed old Worthyvale's body to the sea, and my
father, having taken his first observation at noon, carefully entered
the latitude and longitude in his pocket-book. On consulting the
chart we found the alleged bearings somewhere south of Asia-Minor--to
be exact, off the coast of Pamphylia. My father therefore added the
word "approximately" to his entr