your head about the ladies, my lad, but do as I tell
'ee. Miss Ruth has got hold of two pair of ears and two hearts that
won't be satisfied in five minutes. Besides, my will won't be a long
one. Are you ready?"

"Yes," said Dalton, spreading his note-book on his knee.

"Well," resumed the captain, "after makin' all the usual arrangements
for all expenses--funeral, etcetera, (of which there'll be none if I go
to the bottom), an' some legacies of which I'll tell the lawyer when I
see him, I leave all that remains to Miss Jessie and Miss Kate Seaward,
share an' share alike, to do with it as they please, an' to leave it
after them to whomsoever they like. There!"

"Is that all?"

"Yes, that's all," returned the captain, sadly. "I once had a dear
sister, but every effort I have made to find her out has failed. Of
course if I do come across her before it pleases the Lord to take me
home, I'll alter the will. In the meantime let it be drawn out so."

Soon after this important transaction was finished the ladies returned,
much flushed and excited, and full of apologies for their rude behaviour
to their male friends.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

OUT WITH THE SHORT BLUE AGAIN.

Pleasant and heart-stirring is the sensation of returning health to one
who has sailed for many weeks in the "Doldrums" of Disease, weathered
Point Danger, crossed the Line of Weakness, and begun to steer with
favouring gales over the smooth sea of Convalescence.

So thought Captain Bream one lovely summer day, some time after the
events just narrated, as he sat on the bridge of a swift steamer which
cut like a fish through the glassy waves of the North Sea.

It was one of Hewett and Company's carriers, bound for the Short Blue
fleet. Over three hundred miles was the total run; she had already made
the greater part of it. The exact position of the ever-moving fleet was
uncertain. Nevertheless, her experienced captain was almost certain--as
if by a sort of instinct--to hit the spot where the smacks lay ready
with their trunks of fish to feed the insatiable maw of Billingsgate.

Captain Bream's cheeks were not so hollow as they had been when we last
saw him. Neither were they so pale. His eyes, too, had come a
considerable way out of the caves into which they had retreated, and the
wolfish glare in the presence of food was exchanged for a look of calm
serenity. His coat, instead of hanging on him like a shirt on a
handspike, had begu