ound himself in an ordinary-looking cabin, quite well
furnished, and supplied with a couple of hammocks.

A small stove was burning, and the temperature was exceedingly pleasant
after the bleak air outside, where the raw wind blew strongly up the bay.

"I wouldn't want a better place than this to stay," said the delighted
lad, taking a seat on a camp-stool.

"Then I'll let you stay a while."

These strange words were uttered by the man who stood outside the door,
looking in at the lad with an odd smile on his countenance.

"What do you mean?" asked Jim, filled with a terrible fear.

"I mean just this: I want you to stay on the boat for the present. If you
keep quiet and do what is told you, you won't be hurt; but if you go to
howling and kicking up a rumpus, you'll be knocked in the head and pitched
overboard."

"But tell me why you have brought me here?" asked Jim, swallowing the
lump in his throat, and looking pleadingly up to the cruel stranger. "What
do you want of me?"

"We want a big thing of you, as you'll learn before long; but you mustn't
ask too many questions, nor try to get away, nor refuse to do what is told
you. If you do, your clock will be wound up in short order; but remember
what I've told you, and you'll be released after a while, without any harm
to you. I will now bid you good-night."

With this the man shut and fastened the door of the cabin, using a padlock
to do so.

The lad heard his footsteps as he walked rapidly over the deck, leaping
upon those adjoining, and quickly passing up the wharf.

"Well, this beats everything," remarked Jim with a great sigh, sitting
down again on the camp-stool.

As he sat thus in deep thought, it seemed to him, more than once, as if it
was all a hideous dream, and he pinched himself to make sure it was not.

What it all meant was more than he could figure out, or even guess. The
only possible solution he could hit upon was that this Hornblower, as he
called himself, was in need of a cabin-boy, or perhaps a sailor, and he
took this rather summary way of securing one, without the preliminary of
obtaining the consent of the party most concerned.

Whoever Mr. Hornblower might be, it looked as if he had made elaborate
preparations for the game played with such success.

"Poor Tom will be worried to death when he finds nothing of me," was the
natural fear of Jim, while turning over in his mind the extraordinary
situation in which he was placed. Despite t