e great London fire. Soon he
saw the Spanish Armada and the Crusades, and, later, the burning of
Rome, Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, the siege of Carthage, the
building of the Parthenon, the destruction of Troy, the fall of Babylon,
and afterwards many other things that he could not recognize. They all
seemed to whiz past him in a sort of confused blur. He screwed up
courage enough finally to call out to the ex-Pirate:

"Wh-wh-wh-at is th-this pl-pla-ce, and how l-long are we g-going to go
l-like th-this?"

"Th-th-these are the halls of Time," the ex-Pirate shouted in reply. "We
are going back through them as far as the Deluge."

This explanation was not very satisfactory to Tommy, and although up to
the present moment he had not had a chance to think of getting scared,
he now began to feel slightly alarmed at what had happened. He was about
to question the ex-Pirate again, when suddenly there was a great burst
of light, and they seemed to shoot out of the tunnel they had been
travelling through. Tommy felt the grasp of Father Time's hand loosen,
and the next thing he knew he was rolling head over heels on top of a
big hay-stack in the middle of a broad sunny field. He pulled himself
together as soon as he could, and found the ex-Pirate sitting in the hay
beside him with a somewhat bewildered expression on his face.

"I don't think I like that sort of thing very much," remarked Tommy.

"I can't quite say that I do either," said the ex-Pirate, feeling to see
if his pistols were still in his sash.

"Where is Father Time?" continued the little boy.

"I don't know. Perhaps he is going ahead now at his regular rate of
sixty seconds to the minute."

Tommy scratched his head meditatively and looked about him. The field in
which the hay-stack stood was surrounded by hills and forests, and here
and there could be seen various kinds of animals travelling in pairs.
Over the crests of the trees, directly in front of them, the little boy
espied something that looked like the roof of an immense barn. He called
the ex-Pirate's attention to it.

"That must be the Ark," said the latter, rising. "Let's go and find
out."

They clambered down the hay-stack into the field, and started off in the
direction of the woods. There was not any path for them to follow, and
occasionally they had to wade through tall grass that reached almost up
to their waists. In one of these clumps of herbage they heard voices.

"Oh dear! oh dea