ounter, which served the Fane family
as a sort of sitting-room or day nursery. It had two circular port-holes,
brass-rimmed, of fairly generous proportions. Under the spur of
verbal taunts from Fred, and passive challenges from Nelly's dark
eyes, I positively succeeded in wriggling my entire body out through
one of those port-holes, feet first, until I hung by my hands outside,
my feet almost touching the water-line. And then it seemed I could not
win my way back.

Nelly, moved to tears of real grief now, was for seeking the aid of
grown-ups. I wasted precious breath in adjuring her as she loved me to
keep silence. For my part death seemed imminent and certain. But I
pictured Fred's grinning commiseration should our elders rescue me,
and--I held on. By slow degrees I got one arm and shoulder back into
the cabin, pausing there to rest. From that moment I was safe; but I
was too cunning to let the fact appear. My reward began then, and most
voluptuously I savoured it. I had Mistress Nelly on her biscuit-coloured
knees to me before I finally reached the cabin floor on my
hands, my toes still clinging to the port-hole. Poor Fred could not
possibly equal this feat. His girth would not have permitted it.

Again, there was the blazing tropical afternoon, in dead calm, when I
established a new record by touching the ship's prow under water. It
was siesta time for passengers. The watch on deck was assembled right
aft, scraping bright-work. Pitch was bubbling in the deck seams, and
every one was drowsy, excepting Nelly, Marion, Tom, Fred, and myself.
We were plotting mischief in the shadow of the _Ariadne's_ anchors,
right in the eyes of the ship. I forget the immediate cause of this
piece of foolhardiness, but I remember Fred's hated fluency about
'dolphin-strikers,' 'martingales,' and what not; and, finally, my own
assertion that I would touch the ship's forefoot, where we saw it
gleaming below the glassy surface of the water, and Fred's mocking
reply that I jolly well dared do no such a thing. Nelly's provocative
eyes were in the background, of course.

Three several times I tried and failed, swinging perilously at a
rope's end below the dolphin-striker. And then the _Ariadne_, with one
of those unaccountable movements which a ship will make at times in
the flattest of calms, brought me victory, and the narrowest escape
from extinction in one and the same moment. I swung lower than before,
and the ship ducked suddenly. I no