."

"Tell yer he ain't," roared Waters fiercely; "and if any one says again
as my young orsifer's doing such a thing as to leave his men in the
lurch and go to sleep on a hot day like this, he'll get my fist in his
mouth."

"Sail ho!" cried one of the men; and looking in the indicated direction,
there was the cutter afloat once more, and sailing towards them, quite a
couple of miles away, and as they looked there was a little puff of
white smoke from her side, and a few seconds after a dull report.

"Look at that now;" cried Billy Waters, "there's the skipper got some
one meddling with my guns. That's that Jack Brown, that is; and he
knows no more about firing a gun than he do 'bout Dutch. There was a
dirty sort of a shot."

"That's a signal, that is, for us to come aboard," growled Tom Tully.

"Well, nobody said it warn't, did they?" cried Waters, who was regularly
out of temper now.

"No," growled Tom Tully, "on'y wishes I was aboard, I do."

"Then you ain't going till you've found your orsifer, my lad."

"Hah!" said Tom Tully, oracularly. "Shouldn't wonder if he ar'n't
desarted 'cause the skipper give him such a setting down this morning."

"Now just hark at this here chap," cried the gunner, appealing to the
others. "He'd just go and do such a dirty thing hisself, and so he
thinks every one else would do the same. Tom Tully, I'm 'bout ashamed
o' you. I shouldn't ha' thought as a fellow with such a pigtail as
you've got to your headpiece would say such a thing of his orsifer."

"Then what call's he got to go and desart us for like this here,
messmet?" growled Tom Tully. "I don't want to say no hard things o'
nobody, but here's the skin off one o' my heels, and my tongue's baked;
and what I says is, where is he if he ar'n't gone?"

That was a poser; and as after another short search there was a second
gun fired from the cutter, and a boat was seen to put off and come
towards them, there was nothing for them but to go down to the water and
get into the boat, after Billy Waters had taken bearings, as he called
it, of the place where the young officer had left them, setting up
stones for marks,--which, however, through the deceptive nature and
similarity of the coast in one part to another, were above half a mile
from the true spot,--and suffer themselves to be rowed aboard.

"The skipper's in a fine temper," said one of the crew. "Where's Muster
Leigh?"

"Ah! that's just what I want to know," said