ur own men.

The captain inquired whether the man we had picked up had entered.

"He has been working very steadily," answered the first mate, "but Harry
shall ask him if he intends to remain."

When the men knocked off work I went forward to speak to him.

"Well, Ned, what have you determined on?" I asked; "the captain wishes
to know whether you will enter."

"I will very gladly do so, Mr Harry," he answered. "I like you and the
first officer, and as I have no friends at home who care for me, I am in
no hurry to get back to old England."

"Why were you unwilling to enter before?" I inquired.

"Well, sir, I don't mind telling you now. It was on account of those
two fellows, Howlett and Trinder. I have served with them before, and
us I know a thing or two about them, and that they are mutinous,
ill-disposed rascals, I was afraid that they would find me out, and some
dark night heave me overboard, or knock me on the head."

"On board what ship did you serve with them?" I asked.

"On board the `Amphion,'" he answered. "They and several others of the
crew, tarred with the same brush, stole a boat and deserted from her,
leaving us so short-handed that, one of the officers and two other hands
being washed overboard, when the ship caught in a typhoon we were unable
to manage her, and she drove on a reef and was lost, we who remained
scarcely escaping with our lives."

"The `Amphion!'" I exclaimed, much astonished. "Why, that was my
father's ship! Did you say the captain escaped?"

"Yes; all of us, except one poor fellow, got safely on shore, but it was
a wild place, and we found ourselves among savages, who threatened to
take our lives, but they did not, though they ill-treated us, and made
us work for them."

"Do you think the captain is still alive? Can you pilot us to the
place?" I inquired eagerly.

"All I can say is that the captain was well in health, though sadly cast
down, when I last saw him," answered Ned. "As to finding the spot where
we were wrecked, that is what I fear I cannot do, for I don't know even
the name of the country; and as I am ignorant of navigation, and was
soon afterwards carried away by the Malay pirates, who took me about
with them from place to place, I have lost all reckoning, though I
calculate that it was somewhere away to the eastward. I think, however,
that I should know the country if I saw it again, though these islands
are so much like one another that I could