ds,--saved at last!" as he
drew back from his exposed situation, and joined the rest.

A distant flash was now seen, and then once more the boom of the gun
came over the ocean, this time replied to by the successive reports of
the guns and pistols of the mate's little party, fired one after another
into the air, sending each a spirt of flame into the darkness of the
night, while far away a small fiery star rose and fell to the motion of
the waves, the same which had so engaged Hughes's attention at the
moment he received the treacherous blow from the mutineer Gough. It was
a whaler's light.

The men, now frightened and partially sobered, attempted no further
violence. They seemed thoroughly cowed, saying not a word, even when
the mate walked unarmed among them, and commenced throwing overboard
deliberately, one after another, bottle after bottle of the fiery spirit
they had stolen, and which had caused all the mischief. Without it, the
pernicious counsels of the man Gough, and his almost as black hearted
ally, Phillips, had never been listened to.

"I say, Mr Lowe, you'll let us poor beggars down mild, won't you? It
was that damned rum did it all," said one of the now humbled seamen.

The mate spoke never a word, but pointed silently to the body of the
captain, as it lay on the planking, the long white hair moving in the
wash of the sea, and the blood slowly welling from the shattered
forehead. It was a ghastly sight, as the faint starlight revealed it to
the sobered crew.

"It was that lubber Gough," muttered the man; "Phillips and he have gone
to Davy Jones. I say, Mr Lowe, you'll log it down to them, not to us;
we were all three sheets in the wind."

"It's not for me to decide," replied the mate; "you'll all have justice,
and that looks to me like a rope rove through a block at the fore-yard
arm. What had he done to you that he should lie there, you damned
mutinous scoundrels?"

"I say, my lads," replied the still half-drunken man, "what's the use of
this kind of thing? If as how we are to blame for the skipper's death,
when we was as drunk as lords--if so be as we are to be yard-armed for
what Gough and Phillips did, why let's go overboard, says I."

"I say, Mr Lowe," humbly interposed another and more sober man, "we had
nothing to do with this here matter. Them two bloody-minded villains
promised us rum and gold. We deserve all we'll get, but you'll not be
down on us too hard, will ye?"

"No, I