to appear
quite real, and for this reason he is a good author to
follow.

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THE WRECK OF THE NANCY BELL;
OR, CAST AWAY ON KERGUELEN LAND

by JOHN CONROY HUTCHESON

CHAPTER ONE.

OUTWARDS BOUND.

"How's her head?" exclaimed Captain Dinks, the moment his genial, rosy,
weather-beaten face appeared looming above the top-rail of the companion
way that led up to the poop from the saloon below, the bright mellow
light of the morning sun reflecting from his deep-tanned visage as if
from a mirror, and making it as radiant almost as the orb of day.

"West-sou'-west, sorr," came the answer, ere the questioner could set
foot on the deck, in accents short, sharp, prompt, and decisive, albeit
with a strong Milesian flavour, from the chief mate. He was the officer
of the watch, and was standing alongside the man at the wheel on the
weather-side of the ship, with a telescope under his arm and a keen look
of attention in his merry, twinkling grey eyes.

"Ha-hum!" muttered the captain to himself reflectively. "I wish the
wind would shift over more to the nor'ard, and we'd then be able to
shape a better course; we're going far too much to the west to please
me! I suppose," he added in a louder tone, addressing the mate again,
"she isn't making any great way yet since daylight, McCarthy, eh?"

"No, sorr, leastways, Captain Dinks," replied that worthy, a genuine
thorough-going Irishman, "from the crown of his head to the sole of his
fut," as he would have said himself, and with a shaggy head of hair and
beard as red as that of the wildest Celt in Connemara, besides being
blessed with a "brogue" as pronounced as his turned-up nose--on which
one might have hung a tea-kettle on an emergency, in the hope that its
surroundings would supply the requisite fire and fuel for boiling
purposes. "No, sorr, no way at all at all, sure! Not more'n five
knots, cap'en honey, by the same token, the last time we hove the log at
six bells, bad cess to it!"

"Everything drawing, too, slow and aloft!" said the captain, with just a
shade of discontent in his cheery voice, as he took in with a quick,
sailor-like glance the position of the ship and every detail of the
swelling pyramids of canvas that towered up on each mast from deck to
sky--the yards braced round sharp, almost fore and aft, the huge square
sails flattened like boards, the tremulous fluttering of the flying jib,
and