as he was entrusted, to a considerable degree, with the nautical education of the midshipmen, he had over them a certain amount of authority which he was not at all slow to exercise. This being so, the two disputants readily bottled up' their incipient quarrel; shook hands with more or less good grace; and then fell to with undisturbed appetites on the 'junk' and biscuit that a dirty cook-boy had just placed on the huge locker doing duty for a table.

"Now then, lazybones!" said Joe Selwin when he had finished his dinner; "you just stir yourself, and come along down to the rope-store for our job. My! won't it be a 'sweater' down there to-day!"

Evans gave a great grunt as he undoubled his overgrown frame from the locker on which he had been reclining.

"I never saw such a ship as this," he muttered: "she gets all the nastiest cargoes and filthiest jobs that are going begging in every port she unloads at."

"I'd recommend you to keep that opinion to yourself, my friend,” said Selwin: "If the old man heard you, he'd serve you out for growling at his luck. Besides horses for Government are always paid for well; it ain't half such a bad cargo as railway irons, or niggers to the West Indies"

"Oh, isn't it just?" interrupted Pat Madden, who

had been all over the world nearly, in every possible ship, and therefore had considerable experience: “You' wait till it comes on to blow stiff, and then see what it'll be. Why there'll be no rest day or night with the brutes. They yell and roar and kick and plunge till ye'd think Old Scratch had broken loose in the hold! I know it."

"Faugh, the beasts!" said Evans. "I'd as soon be on a timber

"What's wrong with timber for a cargo?" asked Bedwin, the youngest and least experienced of the middies.

"Why what a young muff you are, Bed! A timber ship's almost the last thing a breaking-up old barky's put to. There's only one lower stage and that's ice. If you ever take a berth in a Yankee ice-ship, just say your prayers and make your will afore you start, for the chances are, my honey, ye'll wake some fine morning and find yourself in the next world!"

"Yah, you Paddy!" sneered Evans, not at all unwilling to renew the ante-prandial quarrel: "how could he wake if he was dead?" The others laughed at the absurdity, and Pat Madden, who was fairly caught making such an outrageous bull, was glad to rush. out of the berth in reply to the call of the first mate, who was shouting down the hatchway for 'one of those

idle young scamps' to come on deck to help at trimming sail. Evans and Selwin then descended to the lower regions to measure out the cotton-rope for the headstalls of the horses, and to concoct plans for mischief—‘larks' they called them-in hopes of relieving the monotony of the dull voyage.

"I

CHAPTER II.

IN THE 'DOLDRUMS.

SAY, Sooka; whisper-Duberry says that you were so sick last night you didn't see the horses fed;" said Pat Madden, who delighted in nothing so much as setting two rivals 'by the ears,' one terribly sultry morning when the Mermaid was barely moving through the greasy calm of the ocean.

"Duberry tell one great big lie, den;" was the angry answer: I not sick, I never sick; an' if I am sick I do work all same alike."

Sure ye

"Never sick! Well that's a good 'un, too. haven't seen ever a wave at all yet, with the old barky doldering along in these calms. You just wait a bit, an' if ye don't

'Heave your sorrows in the moaning sea,'

as the poet says

"What poet, Pat?" queried Evans, who was lazily whittling the end of a cask stave.

"Byron-Lord Byron-Childe Harold," was the prompt and utterly fallacious answer of the Irish lad, who was never at a loss.

"Bosh! Don't you mind him, Sooka."

"Oh I not mind him joke; sahib must have joke. But I never sick. Madden Sahib;" this with the piercing look of intelligence a native can so readily assume when he knows he is uttering an unpleasant truth, and means it: "Madden Sahib, he sick t'oder day, when him steal de rum and drink plenty too much!"

Evans and Selwin burst out laughing at this; Madden grew scarlet with passion, and was making a blow at the man, when his arm was seized from behind, and turning round he saw Captain Blunt just behind, while the skipper was only a few yards off.

"Now then, now then, young sir," said the former, in a warning tone; "you mustn't strike my servant." "What's all this I hear?" asked Captain Dasher, coming up.

"Oh nothing, Captain," answered Blunt, who had no desire to get the boy into trouble; "only these lads of yours mustn't lark so much with the native grooms." "Certainly not; I'll soon stop that. Now you three young gentlemen will just take a slush-pot apiece and

grease down the fore, main, and mizzen-stays-there's a 'lark' for you to enjoy this fine day!"

"See if I don't serve you out for this, Mr. Sooka!" whispered Madden to the native, so that no one else could hear.

"Oh, Captain Dasher, forgive them this time," begged Blunt, who did not wish to see the boys punished so severely for what was perhaps only a joke. But the skipper, who had the strictest possible ideas on the subject of discipline, would not consent to reverse his hasty judgment and the three mids, casting glances of revenge at Sooka, went off ruefully to prepare for the filthy tasks imposed upon them.

"Here's a nice mess you've got us into with your mad nonsense," said Evans, in a tone of the greatest disgust, as the three gained their berth to put on canvas suits previous to going aloft. Pat Madden said nothing He was really sorry for his mates, who had absolutely done no wrong whatever; and he could only nurse up his feelings of wrath against Sooka, the innocent cause (after himself) of the whole affair. Master Pat was also very anxious on another point. He did not know whether or not the skipper had heard what Sooka had alleged about the rum. In the latter case, Captain Dasher was not at all likely to forget it; for unfortunately Pat's weakness for ardent spirits was only too