ays all went well. I was as unsuspicious as a child of foul
play. We lived together and worked our daily navigation together, played
at cards together, in fact were quite chums. The three men who were
supposed to be prisoners were allowed considerable liberty, and as they
had, as I found out afterwards, a private stock of grog stowed away
somewhere, which they occasionally produced and gave to my men, they
managed to be pretty free to do as they wished. For all that, I ordered
that the three prisoners should be confined below during the night.

As the weather was very hot I always slept in a little place on deck
called a bunk, a thing more like a dog-kennel than aught else I can
compare it to, excepting that the hole for entrance and exit was
somewhat larger than that generally used for the canine species.

I always slept with a pistol (revolvers were unknown in those days)
under my pillow. Luckily for me that I did so, as the result will show.

I had remarked (this I thought of afterwards) that the prisoner captain
and some of his men had been whispering together a good deal lately; but
not being in the slightest degree suspicious I thought nothing of it.

One evening I retired to my sleeping place as usual, after having passed
a pleasant chatty evening with my prisoner. I was settling myself to
sleep, in fact I think I was asleep as far as it would be called so, for
I had from habit the custom of sleeping with one eye open, when I saw or
_felt_ the flash of a knife over my head. The entrance to my couch was
very limited, so that my would-be murderer had some difficulty in
striking the fatal blow. Instinct at once showed me my danger.

To draw my pistol from under my pillow was the work of a second; to fire
it into the body of the man who was trying to stab me, that of another.
A groan and a heavy fall on the deck told me what had happened, and
springing out of my sleeping berth I found my ci-devant friend the
captain lying on his face, dead as a door nail. In the meantime I heard
a row in the fore-part of the ship. On going forward I saw one of the
prisoners in the act of falling overboard, and another extended full
length on the deck, while my stalwart quarter-master was flourishing a
handspike with which he had knocked one of his assailants overboard and
floored the other. Now it will be asked what was the man at the wheel
doing? Hereby hangs a tale. He swore that he heard or saw nothing.
Considering this suffici