Mr. Orlando B. Sturge.

"Oh, good Lord! Look! Is the ship full of 'em?" shouted the
Captain.

"They ain't real," murmured Mr. Wapshott soothingly. "You'll get
accustomed. They began by being frogs," he explained, with the
initiatory air of an elder brother, and waved a feeble hand. "Eggs--
if you'll 'low me, sir, to conclude--egg-sisting in the 'magination
only. Go 'way--shoo!"

But Mr. Sturge was not to be disembodied so easily. On the contrary,
as the vessel lurched, he sat down suddenly with a material thud and
clash of handcuffs upon the poultry-coop, nor was sooner haled to his
feet by the strong arm of Mr. Adams than he struck an attitude and
opened on the Captain in his finest baritone.

"'Look,' say'st thou? Ay, then, look! Nay, gloat if thou wilt,
tyrant--miscreant shall I say?--in human form! Yielding, if I may
quote my friend here"--Mr. Sturge laid both handcuffed hands on the
shoulder of Bill Adams--"yielding to none, I say, in my admiration of
Britain's Navy, I hold myself free to protest against the lawlessness
of its minions. I say deliberately, sir, its minions. My name, sir,
is Orlando B. Sturge. If that conveys aught to such an intelligence
as yours, you will at once turn this vessel round and convey us back
to Plymouth with even more expedition than you brought us hither."

Captain Crang fell back and caught at the mizzen shrouds.

"Was I so bad as all that?" he stammered, as Ben Jope, believing him
attacked by apoplexy, rushed up the poop-ladder and bent over him.

"Lor' bless you, sir," said Mr. Jope, "the best of us may be mistaken
at times. But as I've al'ays said, and will maintain, gentlemen will
be gentlemen."

But Captain Crang, letting slip his grasp of the shrouds, plumped
down on deck in a sitting posture and with a sound like the echo of
his own name.

CHAPTER XV.

UP-CHANNEL.

"A wet sheet and a flowing sea,"

(Sings Allan Cunningham),

"A wind that follows fast,
And fills the white and rustling sail
And bends the gallant mast;
And bends the gallant mast, my boys,
When, like an eagle free,
Away the good ship flies, and leaves
Old England on the lee."

I quote these famous lines for their spirit rather than their
accuracy. It is not every ship that can so defy the laws of nature
as to run off a lee shore with a shore wind; and the _Vesuvius_ bomb,
reaching up Channel with a rare nor'-nor'-west