and come up, then," says Rex, covering
the table with his musket as he spoke. "And nobody shall hurt you."

CHAPTER X. JOHN REX'S REVENGE.

Mrs Vickers, pale and sick with terror, yet sustained by that strange
courage of which we have before spoken, passed rapidly under the open
skylight, and prepared to ascend. Sylvia--her romance crushed by too
dreadful reality--clung to her mother with one hand, and with the
other pressed close to her little bosom the "English History". In her
all-absorbing fear she had forgotten to lay it down.

"Get a shawl, ma'am, or something," says Bates, "and a hat for missy."

Mrs. Vickers looked back across the space beneath the open skylight,
and shuddering, shook her head. The men above swore impatiently at the
delay, and the three hastened on deck.

"Who's to command the brig now?" asked undaunted Bates, as they came up.

"I am," says John Rex, "and, with these brave fellows, I'll take her
round the world."

The touch of bombast was not out of place. It jumped so far with the
humour of the convicts that they set up a feeble cheer, at which Sylvia
frowned. Frightened as she was, the prison-bred child was as much
astonished at hearing convicts cheer as a fashionable lady would be to
hear her footman quote poetry. Bates, however--practical and calm--took
quite another view of the case. The bold project, so boldly avowed,
seemed to him a sheer absurdity. The "Dandy" and a crew of nine convicts
navigate a brig round the world! Preposterous; why, not a man aboard
could work a reckoning! His nautical fancy pictured the Osprey
helplessly rolling on the swell of the Southern Ocean, or hopelessly
locked in the ice of the Antarctic Seas, and he dimly guessed at the
fate of the deluded ten. Even if they got safe to port, the chances of
final escape were all against them, for what account could they give of
themselves? Overpowered by these reflections, the honest fellow made one
last effort to charm his captors back to their pristine bondage.

"Fools!" he cried, "do you know what you are about to do? You will never
escape. Give up the brig, and I will declare, before my God, upon the
Bible, that I will say nothing, but give all good characters."

Lesly and another burst into a laugh at this wild proposition, but
Rex, who had weighed his chances well beforehand, felt the force of the
pilot's speech, and answered seriously.

"It's no use talking," he said, shaking his still handsome h