ing Owen steadily in the face.

"Ah, captain, I've got a word from my mates to say to you," he said,
with all the effrontery imaginable.

"Say on, then," said the captain coolly.

"We should like to know about that little keg of brandy. Is it being
kept for the porpoises or the officers?"

Finding that he obtained no reply, he went on,--

"Look here, captain, what we want is to have our grog served out every
morning as usual."

"Then you certainly will not," said the captain.

"What! what!" exclaimed Owen, "don't you mean to let us have our grog?"

"Once and for all, no."

For a moment, with a malicious grin upon his lips, Owen stood
confronting the captain; then, as though thinking better of himself,
he turned round and rejoined his companions, who were still talking
together in an undertone.

When I was afterwards discussing the matter with Curtis I asked him
whether he was sure he had done right in refusing the brandy.

"Right!" he cried, "to be sure I have. Allow those men to have brandy! I
would throw it all overboard first."

CHAPTER XXXIV.

DECEMBER 21st.--No further disturbance has taken place amongst the men.
For a few hours the fish appeared again, and we caught a great many
of them, and stored them away in an empty barrel. This addition to our
stock of provisions makes us hope that food, at least, will not fail us.

Usually the nights in the tropics are cool, but to-day, as evening drew
on, the wonted freshness did not return, but the air remained stifling
and oppressive, whilst heavy masses of vapour hung over the water.

There was no moonlight; there would be a new moon at half-past one in
the morning, but the night was singularly dark, except for dazzling
flashes of summer lightning that from time to time illumined the horizon
far and wide. There was, however, no answering roll of thunder, and the
silence of the atmosphere seemed almost awful, For a couple of hours,
in the vain hope of catching a breath of air, Miss Herbey, Andre
Letourneur, and I, sat watching the imposing struggle of the electric
vapours. The clouds appeared like embattled turrets crested with flame,
and the very sailors, coarse-minded men as they were, seemed struck with
the grandeur of the spectacle, and regarded attentively, though with an
anxious eye, the preliminary tokens of a coming storm. Until midnight we
kept our seats upon the stern of the raft, whilst the lightning ever and
again shed around us a livid g