compared with their late
fare; and the poor famished creatures devoured it ravenously, feeling,
when it was finished, that they could have disposed of thrice as much.
Perhaps it was just as well that there was no more; in their condition a
moderately full meal even would have proved injurious to them if
administered without great caution; but while there was not sufficient
to provoke hurtful results there was just enough to put new life into
them, and to temporarily endow them with vigour and strength enough for
an hour or two's toil at the oars.

The meal over, the oars were eagerly manned; and the men dividing
themselves into two gangs, and working in short spells of a quarter of
an hour each, the launch was headed straight for the stranger, which
having now lost steerage-way had swung broadside-on, and showed herself
to be a small brig.

"I tell you what it is, Bowles," said the captain as he sat at the
tiller steering during one of his spells of rest from the oars, "we are
a great deal further to the westward than I imagined we were. We must
be not very far from the outlying islands of that vast archipelago which
spreads itself over so many hundreds of leagues of the South Pacific.
That fellow is no whaler; look at his canvas, no smoke stains from the
try-works there: he is a sandal-wood trader, or is after _beche-de-mer_.
I am very glad it is so; it will be much more pleasant for the ladies;
and if she is a Yankee, as a good many of these little traders are, the
skipper will probably be glad enough to earn a few dollars by running us
all across to the mainland."

"To my mind," remarked Bowles, "the craft looks rather too trim and neat
aloft for a trader. And look at the hoist of her topsails; don't you
think there is a man-o'-war-ish appearance about the cut and set of them
sails, sir?"

"She certainly _does_ look rather taunt in her spars for a merchantman,"
returned Captain Staunton. "We shall soon see what she really is,
however; for she will be hull-up in another five minutes; and in another
half-hour we shall be on board her. Ah! they have made us out; there go
her colours. Take the glass, and see what you can make of them,
Bowles."

The chief mate took the telescope and levelled it at the brig, taking a
long and steady look at her.

"A ten-gun brig, by the look of her," he presently remarked, with the
telescope still at his eye. "Anyhow, her bulwarks are pierced; and I
can see the muzzles of fiv