welled surface twinkle
and move as if some creature were swimming across; but soon that was all
calm again, and the booming, buzzing noise of some great beetle sweeping
by on reckless wing sounded quite loud.

"It's as lively as keeping the middle watch," said Hilary impatiently.
"The best thing I can do is to go to sleep."

Hilary Leigh was one not slow to act upon his convictions, and getting
down he proceeded to make himself as snug a nest as he could in the
straw, lay down, pulled some of it over him, to the great bedusting of
his uniform, and in five minutes he was fast asleep.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

BILLY WATERS FINDS IT OUT.

"Well," said Billy Waters, "of all the cowardly, sneaking tricks anybody
could do, I don't know a worse one than staving in a man's boat. Yah! a
fellow who would do such a thing ought to be strung up at the yardarm,
that he ought!"

"Every day," growled Tom Tully. "Well, matey, how is we to get aboard?"

"What's the good of asking me?" cried Billy Waters, who was regularly
out of temper. "Leave that gun alone, will yer?" he roared as there was
another flash and a report from the cutter. "It's enough to aggravate a
hangel, that it is," he continued. "No sooner have I left the cutter,
and my guns that clean you might drink grog out of 'em, than the skipper
and that Jack Brown gets fooling of 'em about and making 'em foul. They
neither of 'em know no more about loading a gun than they do about being
archbishops; but they will do it, and they'll be a-busting of 'em some
day. Firing again, just as if we don't know the first was a recall!
Here, who's got a loaded pistol?"

"Here you are, matey," said Tom Tully.

"Fire away, then, uppards," said the gunner; "and let 'em know that we
want help."

The flash from the pistol cut the darkness; there was a sharp report,
and the gunner fired his own pistols to make three shots.

"There," he said, replacing them in his belt. "That'll make him send
another boat, and if that there Jacky Brown's in it I shall give him a
bit of my mind."

There was a long pause now, during which the weary men sat apart upon
the sands, or with their backs propped against the sides of the damaged
boat, but at last there came a hail out of the darkness, to which Tom
Tully answered with a stentorian "Boat a-hoy-oy!"

"Who told you to hail, Tom Tully?" cried the gunner. "I'm chief orsifer
here, so just you wait until you are told."

Tom Tully growled, an