s satirically. "You are a
cautious one, _you_ are; don't want to run your neck into a noose, eh?
Well, you are quite right, shipmate, quite right. But you need not
trouble yourselves, any of you, there will be no murder. I have a plan
whereby we can avoid all unpleasantness of that kind, and still make
ourselves perfectly secure, and I will explain that plan to you in due
time, but not now; there are more important matters claiming my
attention at this moment. Where is Ned? Here, Ned, bring out the chart
and spread it upon the capstan-head, and you, lads, go to your
stations."

Upon which the men retired, their torpid consciences silenced, and
themselves more than half convinced of the righteousness of their
actions. As for Ned, he muttered to himself as he went off to get the
chart:

"Clever fellow--very; a regular sea-lawyer! Wonder who he is, and what
he was before he took to the sea? Shall have all my work cut out to get
to windward of _him_."

Ned soon returned with the chart, which he spread open upon the capstan-
head as desired, when Williams and Rogers approached and regarded the
document with looks of the profoundest wisdom.

"A queer-looking spot, isn't it?" remarked Williams to his companion,
indicating with a rapid motion of his finger the entire area of ocean
lying between Celebes, New Guinea, and the northern coast of Australia.

"Very queer!" assented Rogers, with a solemnity in keeping with the
subject.

Whereupon the pair once more inspected the chart for several minutes
with the same look of preternatural wisdom as before, to Ned's intense
but covert amusement.

"Very well," said Williams at length, as though he had finally settled
some knotty point to his complete satisfaction. "Now then, Ned, where
are we?"

Ned placed his finger on a blank part of the chart and answered, "Just
there."

"Yes," agreed Rogers, profoundly, "that's the very identical spot."

Williams glanced at Rogers with a broad smile of amusement, fully aware
that the latter understood a chart about as well as he understood
Sanscrit, and then turned to Ned with the remark:

"Now the next place we want, Ned, is a good harbour where the ship can
ride it out safely in all weathers, where we can heave her down, if need
be, to clear the weeds and barnacles off her bottom, and where we can
build stores and what not."

"Ah!" remarked Ned. "That is a place which has yet to be found."

"Yes, of course, we know that