ime to look after the boy. So as the admiral ordered, I seized
up the young gentleman, and was going to carry him off below, when he
began to kick up such a hubbub, and to kick, and scratch, and bite, it
was as hard work to hold him as it would have been to gripe a
rattlesnake. `Put me down, I say--put me down,' he sung out. `I'll not
go below. I want to stay on deck and fight the enemy.' Well, I saw
that there was no use in taking him below, because, as no one could be
spared to look after him, he would have been soon up again; besides, to
my mind, a shot finds its way into one part of a ship as well as
another. So I put him down again, and there was his little lordship as
busy as any powder-monkey, handing up the powder to the gunners. Well,
as I was saying, the shot was falling pretty thick about our ears, when
a round shot takes off the head of a marine standing close to the small
boy, scattering the brains and blood of the poor fellow right over the
small chap, almost blinding him. The admiral was looking that way. His
tall figure bent forwards. I thought he would have fallen from the
agony of his mind. He believed his child was killed. In an instant,
however, the little hero recovered himself, and dashing the blood from
his face, ran up to his lordship. `Don't be afraid, papa,' says he;
`I'm not hurt--the shot did not strike me. Tom says the ball isn't cast
that can kill mamma's boy.' That was true enough, for he'd heard some
of us say, what we believed, that he couldn't come to harm any more than
his father could. The admiral's face brightened again, when he saw that
no harm had happened to the boy. I suppose after this he thought as we
did, for he let him stay on deck during the whole action; and a pretty
sharp one it was, when I tell you we had two hundred guns firing away at
us for a couple of hours. If it hadn't been for the fog, we shouldn't
have had a stick standing at the end of it. After this we had several
brushes with the enemy.

"At last the admiral considered that it would be a great thing to take
Valdivia, a strongly-fortified place on the south of Chili, still held
by the Spaniards. We had some Chilian troops on board, and very brave
fellows they were, under a French officer. Our own officers were worth
very little, and the admiral had to look after everything himself. One
night we were off the island of Quiriquina, and he had turned in to take
a little rest, leaving the deck in