r, and they made their way towards the
saloon, but only to stop short and listen to the sounds which came
softly through the cabin bulkheads--sounds which made the old sailor
drop into the attitude of one with folded arms about to perform a
hornpipe, and executing three or four steps, to end suddenly with a slap
on the leg.

"Hear that, sir?" he whispered, softly. "That's what I call real pluck
in a lad with his upper works broke clean in half. Just think o' that!"

CHAPTER EIGHT.

It was a pleasant sound: sometimes a mere humming, sometimes the melody
sung to a few of the words.

For Carey was lying in his berth with his head turned so that he could
gaze through the open port-hole at the glorious, glistening sea, and as
the doctor very softly pushed the door a little open there came clearly
to the listeners' ears a scrap of the old sea song, "The Mermaid":--

"And we jolly sailor boys were sitting up aloft,
And the land-lubbers lying down below, below, below,
And the land-lubbers lying down below.

"Hullo! Who's that? Oh, you, doctor! I say, what a time you've been!
I'm so hungry. Mayn't I get up?"

"Good signs those, my lad," said the doctor, cheerily; "but not yet,"
and he sat down, after easing the poor boy's bandages, to chat to him
about the state of affairs, every word of which was eagerly drunk in,
while Bostock played the part of cook and warmed up some gravy soup.

It soon became evident that Carey was going to develop no bad symptoms
from the injury to his head, and that his sufferings were to be confined
to the broken collar-bone, which, under Doctor Kingsmead's care, gave
promise of a rapid knitting together. There was pain enough to bear,
but the boy's bright elastic temperament was in his favour. He was what
the doctor called a good patient, and health and youth joined to help
him on.

As soon as possible he was allowed on deck to watch the making of a raft
and use his uninjured glass in studying the shore of the island, with
its constant change of hue. Then, too, there was the reef with the
clouds of spray, and the beautiful lagoon, alive at times with the fish
which came in with the tide through an opening in the reef, beyond which
there was the heaving, open sea.

"It doesn't seem a bit like being shipwrecked," said Carey one day, as
he lay back in a cane chair. "One has so many things about one.
Shipwrecked folk don't generally have plenty of tools and things. I
say,