ee dlinkee, but wantee velly much see ship."

He was taken round, the whole following keeping at his heels, and his
officers and soldiers scowling fiercely, or looking about with supreme
contempt, as they made a great display of their weapons, and acted
generally as if they were condescending to look round, so as to be civil
to the Western barbarians.

At last they went over the side, and the gorgeous barge was rowed away.

"Thank goodness, Reardon," I heard the captain say; and directly after,
as I was passing, Tom Jecks' voice was heard in the midst of a group of
the Jacks.

"Say, messmate," he said, "fancy, stripped and fists only, how many
Chinese could you polish off?"

"Dunno," said a voice, which I knew to be that of Billy Wakes, a big
manly-looking young Plymouth fellow. "'Course I could do one, and I
think I could doctor two on 'em; I'd have a try at three; and I'm blest
if I'd run away from four. That is about as fair as I can put it,
messmate."

I was helping Barkins to the companion-way, and Smith was walking very
slowly by us. But as we heard this we stopped to laugh, just as Mr
Brooke came up and asked what amused us. We told him, and he laughed
too.

"That means one of our fellows would try at four Chinamen. He's too
modest. Four to one, lads! why, if it came to real righting, ten of
them would follow me against a hundred of the enemy. Ten to one.--News
for you."

"News, sir; what?" I said.

"We sail again directly. There is another gang at work south, and we
have a hint of the whereabouts of their nest."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

IN A TRAP.

"Ever feel at all uncomfortable about--that--Chinaman, Morris?" I said
one day, after we had been coasting along the shore southward for about
a week. I had not encountered that marine sentry alone since the
terrible scene in the place where the prisoners were confined; and now,
as soon as I saw him, the whole affair came back with all its shuddering
horrors, and I felt quite a morbid desire to talk to him about it.

"What, bayoneting him, sir?" said the man quietly. "Well, no, sir, it's
very odd, but I never have much. I was so excited when I see him with
his knife ashining by the light o' the corporal's lantern, that all the
bayonet practice come to me quite natural like, and, as you know, I give
point from the guard, and he jumped right on it, and I held him down
after as you would a savage kind of tiger thing, and felt quite pleased
l