they certainly would do so when the sun rose and
shone on our canvas.

I at once came down and told the first mate, who took a hurried glance
round the horizon in the hopes of discovering the signs of a coming
breeze.

"I must get the captain to let me take a boat to warn the crew of the
ship of their danger, and to assist them if they are attacked," he
exclaimed. "We may get there before the prahus, which do not pull as
fast as they can sail, and a few well-armed men may turn the scale
against them; but I'll have a look at them first."

Taking the glass he sprang aloft. Directly afterwards the captain
appeared and asked him what he was looking at. I told him.

"I hope we shall get a breeze, for if the pirates, as I suppose they
are, see us boldly standing towards them, they will hesitate before they
meddle with the wreck," he remarked, now apparently as anxious about the
vessel on shore as we had been. "It may have a good effect if we hoist
a pendant and the Dutch flag and fire a gun. They will take us for a
man-of-war, and probably be off again as fast as they can pull; but it
is the breeze we want, the breeze! Without that we are helpless."

The first mate soon came down from aloft and again proffered his
request.

"I dare not give you leave," answered the captain. "What could one or
even two boats do against those prahus, with twenty or thirty well-armed
men in each? You might be cut off, even before you could reach the
wreck; and if you were on board, you would be able to do but little to
defend her, as in the position she lies she could not work her guns if
she had any."

I was almost surprised at the way Uncle Jack pleaded to be allowed to
go.

"It is impossible," replied the captain, "I could not reconcile it to my
conscience. We might lose half the ship's company, and be unable to
defend the brig ourselves."

I never saw the first mate so put out as he was at this answer. He
turned away and continued walking the deck with uneasy strides until he
seemed almost beside himself. He again went aloft and stood watching
the prahus through his glass, occasionally turning his eye round the
horizon, and then he shouted, "A breeze! A breeze coming up from the
south-west!" The next instant down he slid on deck.

The vessel's head, which had been turning now to one point of the
compass now to another, was fortunately just then turned in the right
way.

The captain kept a sharp look-out in the di