get rid of the dark
red hue which stained them; but buckets of water failed to do that.

The lieutenant and his men having assisted us in knotting and splicing
the rigging, and in bracing the yards the proper way, returned on board
the frigate, which directly made sail, we following in her wake. The
_Daisy_ was not a fast craft, and though we made all sail we could
carry, we found she was dropping astern of the frigate.

"It matters very little," said Nettleship, who had brought his quadrant
and Nautical Almanac; "we can find our way by ourselves."

We saw the frigate's lights during the early part of the night, but
before morning they had disappeared. This being no fault of ours, we
did not trouble ourselves about the matter. As daylight approached the
breeze fell, and became so light that we scarcely made more than a knot
an hour. As soon as it was daylight, we turned to with the holy-stones
to try and get the blood-stains out of the deck before they had sunk
deeply in. We were thus employed till breakfast. By this time the wind
had completely dropped, and it became a stark calm, such as so often
occurs in the Mediterranean. The brig's head went boxing round the
compass, and chips of wood thrown overboard lay floating alongside,
unwilling to part company. The heat, too, was almost as great as I ever
felt it in the West Indies. Still we tried to make ourselves as happy
as we could. We were out of sight of the African coast, and were not
likely to be attacked by Salee, Riff, or Algerine corsairs; and Tom
observed that if we were, it would be a pleasing variety to our day's
work, as we should to a certainty beat them off.

"We must not trust too much to that," observed Nettleship. "We have
only six small pop-guns, and as we muster only eleven hands, all told,
we might find it a hard job to keep a crew of one hundred ruffians or
more at bay."

We kept the men employed in putting the brig to rights, and setting up
the rigging, which had become slack from the hot weather. As the vessel
was well provisioned, and one of the men sent with us was a tolerable
cook, we had a good dinner placed on the table. Nettleship and I were
below discussing it, while Tom Pim had charge of the deck. I hurried
over mine, that I might call him down, and was just about to do so,
having a glass of wine to my lips, when there came a roar like thunder,
and over heeled the brig, capsizing everything on the table, and sending
Nettl