or squalls!"

"Phillips, do you remember when I took you on board at Saint Helena?
You were half starved, and in rags. If I go back, we will fight it out
to the last man. All you can get is the gold, and I say ye may have
it."

"Your quarter-deck speeches won't do here, my hearty. Back to your
people, I say!" The man's eyes were blazing with drink and fury.

Captain Weber was turning away. "Phillips," he said, as he did so, "you
have a wife and children over yonder--what do you think they will say
when they hear of your being hung as a mutineer?"

The taunt was too much for him. With a howl of rage, the drunken sailor
raised his pistol, and the muzzle was within a foot of the old seaman's
head, as he pulled the trigger. Standing tall and erect, with a smile
of withering scorn on his features as the report rang out, Captain Weber
seemed for a moment unhurt; then, with a reel like that of a drunken
man, he fell, close to the spot where Hughes lay, Isabel kneeling beside
him. The ball had struck him on the temple, and he was dead before he
touched the planks, his head hanging over the side, and his long white
hair washing to and fro in the sea as the raft rose on the swell.

Uttering a wild savage shout, the drunken sailor sprang over the corpse,
followed by his comrades in crime. The rubicon of blood was indeed
past. Another instant, and the scanty band, now greatly reduced in
numbers, would be swept from the raft. The shouts and execrations of
the seamen, maddened as they were with fiery spirit, rang over the calm,
quiet sea, as, swinging his clubbed musket round his head, Mr Lowe, now
the senior officer present, met the mutineers half way. Phillips, with
a deep oath, again fired, as the mate struck the ruffian with all the
power rage could give to a muscular arm, knocking him off the raft with
the force of the blow. Once more the swish of the water was heard, as
the sea around boiled into foam. The senseless body was tossed to and
fro like a cork, half a dozen huge fins appearing above the water.
Suddenly it was drawn down, reappeared, and then the wave was red with
blood, as the sharks tore their prey piecemeal.

"Come on, ye ruffians, and meet your doom!" yelled the triumphant mate;
but hardly had the words passed his lips when a dull heavy report came
booming over the ocean.

A deep dead silence ensued, then a wild cheer burst from the mate's
breast.

"Hurrah!" he shouted. "We are saved, my la