onour's
jib, sir, begging your pardon."

"Well, I'm sure I did not recognise you, or you may be sure I would have
spoken to you. Still, you need not blurt out my identity to everybody,
you know."

"Sartinly not, your honour. I'll keep mum, sir, never you fear, though
I don't forget the old--"

"Stop," said Mr Meldrum, changing the subject. "I've no doubt all
hands are pretty dry after all the heat we've been in down below, so,
with the captain's permission, I'll send something forward for them to
splice the main brace with."

"Aye, aye, your honour," replied Ben; "a nod's as good as a wink to a
blind horse."

And the two parted, the one going forward to the forecastle and the
other aft into the saloon.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

AN OCEAN WAIF.

"Wa-al, Cap," said Mr Lathrope after dinner that day, when he was
sipping his coffee on top of the skylight, which he had selected for his
favourite seat when on the poop, the "location," as he expressed it,
having the advantage of possessing plenty of "stowage room" for his long
legs--"I guess we've had a long spell o' calms, and a tarnation
slitheration of a del-uge, 'sides being now a'most chawed up by a fire;
so I kalkerlate its 'bout time we hed sunthen' of a breeze. Thunder,
mister, it's kinder gettin' played out, I reckon, knocking about in
these air latitoods, without nary going ahead even once in a blue moon!"

"Oh, the wind isn't far off now," replied Captain Dinks, "you see those
porpoises there, passing us now and playing astern? Well, they are a
certain sign of a breeze soon coming from the quarter towards which
they're swimming."

"Wa-al, I dew hope so," drawled the American, with a sigh and a yawn of
weariness, "guess I shall snooze till it comes;" and he proceeded to
carry his thought into execution.

Captain Dinks turned out a true prophet.

A little later on in the day a breeze sprang up, that subsequently
developed into the long-wished-for south-east trade-wind, thus enabling
the good ship to bid adieu to the Doldrums and cross the equator, which
feat she accomplished two days after the fire.

From the line--which Master Negus was able to see distinctly with the
aid of one of Mr McCarthy's fine red hairs neatly adjusted across the
object-glass of his telescope--the ship had a splendid run over to the
South American coast, following the usual western course adopted by
vessels going round the Cape of Good Hope, in order to have the
advantage aft