a rueful face, displayed the empty tea-pot, and conveyed the
melancholy intelligence that "they were out of everything fit for
Christians to eat or drink."

"Can't be helped, Sam," said the Captain, shrugging his shoulders. "We
may be thankful that things arn't worse. There is still water in the
hold."

"Not much of that either, Sir. It's just the colour of tea, Sir--if it
had but the flavour."

"_If_"--ah! that terrible if. What a difference it made to all concerned
in its introduction into that sentence--"_if_ it had but the flavour!"
The smell of the water, when it entered the cabin, was bad enough to
sicken the keenest appetite; it was sufficiently disgusting to make the
strongest individual there wish that he had no nose, no taste, no
recollection of a better and purer element, while drinking it. The water
was dead, corrupt, and had been so for the last fortnight; but it was
all they had wherewith to slake their thirst.

The breakfast this morning was reduced to a small plateful each of
oatmeal porridge, made with the said _rich_ water, with porter or
Edinburgh ale for sauce.

A very little of this strong food satisfied Flora. The Captain and
Lyndsay pronounced it "not bad;" while poor James Hawke ate it, with the
tears running down his cheeks into his plate, to the great amusement of
Boreas, who told him "that he had discovered a sauce for stirabout he
never saw eaten before."

They had scarcely concluded their scanty meal, when Sam presented the
Captain with a dirty, three-cornered note, which, he said, Mr. Lootie
had ordered him to deliver _instantly_!

"What's in the wind now?" said the old sailor. "I'm not a very good
scribe, and the fellow writes such a cramped fist that I can't make it
out. Do, Mrs. Lyndsay, oblige me by reading it."

The note was very brief, very insolent, and certainly to the point. The
S, which commenced the Sir that headed the missive, had a most
forbidding appearance. The loop was formed like the lash of a horsewhip,
and reached half down the epistle; thus--

"Sir,--I demand the use of the tea-pot! as part of our
agreement. If this is longer denied, I shall look upon you as
an infernal, swindling, old scoundrel!!!
"JAMES LOOTIE.
"August 16, 1832.
Brig _Anne_.

"He may be d--d!" cried Boreas, in an ecstasy of rage. "But that's too
good for him. Many an honest fellow meets with that fate, who would