ing the surface, then
vanishing again, once more to appear in a different direction as the
light currents of air, precursors of the main body of the wind, touched
the surface. The effect on our fainting party was magical; even the
poor boys tried to lift up their languid eyes to look around. Another
shout from Kelson a few minutes afterwards roused us all still more. "A
sail! a sail! She's standing this way too!"

Even Jacotot, who had completely given way to despair, started to his
feet at the sound, and, weak though he was, performed such strange
antics expressive of his joy on the little deck that I thought he would
have gone overboard.

"If you've got all that life in you, Mounseer, just turn to at the pump
again and make some use of it, instead of jigging away like an overgrown
jackanapes!" growled out Kelson, who held the poor Frenchman in great
contempt for having knocked under, as he called it, so soon.

Jacotot gave another skip or two, and then, seizing the pump-handle, or
break, as it is called, burst into tears. The two midshipmen and boys
soon relapsed into their former state, while O'Carroll seemed to forget
that relief was approaching, till on a sudden the idea seized him that
the stranger which was now rapidly nearing us was no other than the
_Mignonne_, though she had been last seen in an opposite direction, and
there had been a dead calm ever since. "Arrah! we'll all be murdered
entirely by that thief of the world, La Roche, bad luck to him!" he
cried out, wringing his hands. "It was an unlucky day that I ever cast
eyes on his ugly face for the first time, and now he's after coming back
again to pick me up in the middle of the Indian Ocean, just as a big
black crow does a worm out of a turnip-field!"

In vain I tried to argue him out of the absurdity of his notion. He
turned sharply round on me.

"It's desaving me now ye are, and that isn't the part of a true friend,
Mr James Braithwaite!" he exclaimed. "Just try how he'll treat you,
and then tell me how you like his company."

I saw that there was not the slightest use reasoning with him, but that
it would be necessary to watch him, lest in his frenzy he should jump
overboard. As the dreadful idea came on me that he might do so, I saw
the black fin of the seaman's sworn foe, a shark, gliding toward us, and
a pair of sharp eyes looking wistfully up towards me, so I fancied, as
if the creature considered the leaky boat and its contents a