stowed away in them since,"
answered Gerald, who with Tom was eyeing lovingly a huge suet dumpling
just placed smoking hot on the table.

"Any duff, Rogers?" asked Higson; "I doubt if you've room for much."

"I think I could just manage a slice to begin with, and then I'll try
what more I can do," answered Tom.

A huge slice was handed to him, and another to Gerald. "You shall have
your next helping from the left side, youngsters," said the caterer,
with a wink at the rest, who all thereon begged for plenty. Tom and
Gerald applied themselves to the duff, which they found rather
appetising than otherwise; but when they looked up expecting to get
their second slices, an empty dish with Higson's face grinning beyond
it, alone met their view. However, they agreed that they had dined very
well considering, and from that moment, though others occasionally
knocked up, they were never off duty from sea-sickness.

CHAPTER THREE.

MADEIRA SIGHTED--MISFORTUNES OF COMMANDER BABBICOME--A RIDE ON SHORE--
NAVAL CAVALRY CHARGE DOWN A HILL AND OVERTURN SOME DIGNITARIES OF CHURCH
AND STATE--A PLEASANT VISIT OF APOLOGY--SUDDENLY ORDERED TO SEA--AN
EXPEDITION TO BRING OFF "WASH CLOTHES."

A few days after the storm was over Madeira was made; to the eastward of
it, as the frigate sailed on, there came in sight a small island called
the Desertas. Tom, wishing to show that he was wide awake, reported a
large ship coming round the Desertas. He was, however, only laughed at,
for his supposed ship turned out to be a rock of a needle form, rising
several hundred feet out of the sea, and would have been as Higson told
him, if it had been a ship, bigger than the famed _Mary Dunn_, of Diver,
whose flying jibboom swept the weathercock off Calais church steeple,
while her spanker-boom end only just shaved clear of the white cliffs of
old England. The scenery of Madeira, as they sailed along its shore,
was pronounced very grand and beautiful; its lofty cliffs rising
perpendicularly out of the blue ocean with a fringe of surf at their
base, and vine-clad mountains towering up into the clear sky beyond
them; here and there a small bay appearing, forming the mouth of a
ravine, its sides covered with orange groves and dotted with whitewashed
cottages, and a little church in their midst. Rounding the southern end
of the island, the frigate came to an anchor in the bay of Funchal, the
town in a thin line of houses stretching along the shore