ast began to feel that he was running
in a dangerous road, and entertained some misgivings that he was an
uncommonly wild, if not wicked, fellow. It is not to be supposed that
his perceptions on this subject were very clear, or his meditations
unusually profound, but it is certain that, during the short period of
his residence in the school of which mention has been made, his
conscience had been awakened and partially enlightened, so that his
precociously quick intelligence enabled him to arrive at a more just
apprehension of his condition than might have been expected,--
considering his years and early training.

We do not say that Billy's heart smote him. That little organ was
susceptible only of impressions of jollity and mischief. In other
respects--never having been appealed to by love--it was as hard as a
small millstone. But the poor boy's anxieties were aroused, and the new
sensation appeared to add a dozen years to his life. Up to this time he
had been accustomed to estimate his wickednesses by the number of days,
weeks, or months of incarceration that they involved--"a wipe," he would
say, "was so many weeks," a "silver sneezing-box," or a "gold ticker,"
in certain circumstances, so many more; while a "crack," i.e. a burglary
(to which, by the way, he had only aspired as yet) might cost something
like a trip over the sea at the Queen's expense; but it had never
entered into the head of the small transgressor of the law to meditate
such an awful deed as the sinking of a ship, involving as it did the
possibility of murder and suicide, or hanging if he should escape the
latter contingency.

Moreover, he now began to realise more clearly the fact that he had cast
in his lot with a desperate man, who would stick at nothing, and from
whose clutches he felt assured that it would be no easy matter to
escape. He resolved, however, to make the attempt the first favourable
opportunity that should offer; and while the resolve was forming in his
small brain his little brows frowned sternly at the foam on the Nora's
cutwater. When the resolve was fairly formed, fixed, and disposed of,
Billy's brow cleared, and his heart rose superior to its cares. He
turned gaily round. Observing that the seaman, who with himself and Jim
Welton composed the crew of the sloop, was sitting on the heel of the
bowsprit half asleep, he knocked his cap off, dived down the fore-hatch
with a merry laugh, flung himself into his berth, and