ever, was one of the homeward-bound party. He certainly could
not be abandoned after all his faithful services, and the wonderful
instinct he had displayed, more than his master had done, in recognising
Frank, whom he had not seen since puppyhood, when Ernest Wilton's aunt,
Frank's mother, gave him to the young engineer.

As luck would have it, on the arrival of Mr Rawlings and his party at
Boston whom should they meet accidentally at the railway depot but
Captain Blowser, of the _Susan Jane_, as hearty and jolly as of yore,
and delighted to see them! His ship he "guessed" was just going to
Europe, and he would be only too glad of their taking passage in her.

Need it be mentioned that the captain's offer was accepted; and that,
long before Frank Lester--the "Sailor Bill" whom Seth loved, and the
crew of the _Susan Jane_ and the gold-miners of Minturne Creek had
regarded with such affection--had arrived in England to gladden his
mother's heart by his restoration, as if from the dead, when he had long
been given up for lost, together with his father's property which he
carried with him, he had learnt every detail, as if he had been in his
right senses at the time, of how he had been "Picked up at Sea?"

STORY TWO, CHAPTER ONE.

GREEK PIRATES AND TURKISH BRIGANDS. A TALE OF ADVENTURE BY SEA AND
LAND.

IN BEYROUT HARBOUR.

"It's a thundering shame our sticking here so long; and I'm sick of the
beastly old place," said Tom Aldridge in a grumbling tone, as he leant
over the bulwarks listlessly, crumbling bits of biscuit into the sea to
attract the fish, which would not be attracted, and gazing in an idle
way at the roof of the pacha's palace, that glittered under the rays of
the bright Syrian sun. "I'm sick of the place, Charley!" he repeated,
more venomously than before.

"So am I, Tom," said Charley Onslow, his fellow-midshipman on board the
_Muscadine_, an English barque of some seven or eight hundred tons, that
lay, along with several foreign vessels of different rig, in the bay of
Beyrout--as pretty a harbour as could be picked out in a score of
voyages, and about the busiest port in the whole of the Levant.

"So am I, Tom," said Charley with the utmost heartiness. "I am as tired
of it as I am of the eternal dates and coffee, coffee and dates, on
which these blessed Arab beggars live, and which everybody makes a point
of offering to one, if a chap goes ashore for a minute; while, on board,
we've nothin