me, shut up in a hole with a stinking lamp, for I expect it did stink,
all those months."

"It did use to smell powerful strong sometimes, lad, and many a time at
first it turned me as sick as a youngster on his first v'yage; but I got
accustomed to it after a bit. The great thing was to keep your wick
short."

"And now about your other wreck not far from here?"

"I will tell you that to-morrow evening, lads. That was a more ordinary
kind of thing. It wasn't pleasant; I don't know that wrecks ever are,
but it wasn't such an out-of-the-way thing as being chucked up on to an
iceberg."

CHAPTER XVII.

IN DANGEROUS SEAS.

THE following evening, as the twilight was falling, the lads again
gathered round the old sailor.

"Well, lads," he began, "just as this other affair I was telling you
about happened further down south, so the other was a goodish bit to the
north. We were bound for the Persian Gulf, and I fancy the captain got
wrong with his reckonings. He had had trouble before we sailed; had lost
his wife sudden, I heard, and, more's the pity, he took to drink. He was
the first and last captain as ever I sailed under as did it; for
Godstone & Son were always mighty particular with their masters, and
would not have a man, not for ever so, who was given to lifting his
elbow. Anyhow, we went wrong; and it is a baddish place to go wrong, I
can tell you, is the Mozambique Channel. There was a haze on the water
and a light breeze, and just about eight bells in the morning we went
plump ashore--though none of us thought we were within a hundred miles
of land. There was a pretty to-do, as you might fancy; but we had to
wait until morning to see where we were; then we found, when the mist
lifted a bit that we were on a low sandy coast.

"We had no doubt that we should get her off so we got the boats out and
the hatches off, and began to get up the cargo. We worked hard all day,
and thought we had got pretty well enough out of her, and were just
going to knock off work and carry out a couple of anchors and cables
astern to try and heave her off, when there was a yell, and two or three
hundred black fellows came dashing down on us with spears. They crept up
so close before they showed, that we had no time to tumble into the
boats before they were upon us. We made the best sort of fight we could,
but that wasn't much. We had brought ashore muskets and cutlasses, but
they had been left in the boats, and only a few o