nk's throat was sore
for a whole day after his patriotic efforts to "give full mouth" to one
of these, which began thus:

"May our good ship _Arizona_ have fair winds to fill her sails!
She can race the King of Sharks, not to say the Prince of Whales;
And she'll laugh at Arab roaches and at crawling British snails,
As she goes sailing on."

The guns were got ready as they ran through the pirate-haunted Straits
of Malacca; and though no pirate ventured to attack them, they had to
face an enemy quite as dangerous that very afternoon. Frank, who had
been looking at the blue Sumatra hills, with here and there a curl of
smoke above the trees to show where the sandalwood gatherers were at
work, was suddenly startled by the cry of, "A water-spout!"

There it was, sure enough, the long dark pillar, topped by a mass of
black cloud, moving swiftly over the sea. Two native fishing-boats were
flying before it, one of which was speedily drawn into the swirling foam
at the base of the column. The other, more fortunate, got under the lee
of the steamer.

"Give him a shot, Herrick," shouted the Captain, and the old
quartermaster obeyed. The first shell missed, though so narrowly that
the spout was seen to quiver; but the second burst right upon the
thinnest part of the column, which broke and fell, with a noise that
might have been heard for miles. For a moment the whole air was dark as
night with spray and smoke; then a torrent of rain burst upon them, and
when it cleared away, not a trace of their terrible enemy was to be
seen.

[Illustration: SINGAPORE PILOT-BOAT.]

The morning after her water-spout adventure the _Arizona_ sighted the
light-ship marking the approach to Singapore; and after an exciting race
with an English screw-steamer, ran safely over the bar into the harbor.
This was certainly rather hard upon the native pilot-boat, which had put
out to her in the hope of a job; and the six black, half-clothed
scarecrows who pulled it vented their feelings in a prolonged howl and a
clatter of their diamond-shaped oar blades, to which Jack Dewey replied
by asking, with an air of deep interest, how much they would take to
"come on board and new pitch the boats with the tar off their elegant
black hides."

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Of the eighty-six miles of the canal, nearly thirty lie through the
shallow lakes of Menzaleh, Timsah, and "Bitter Water," the channel being
marked