join me at
Smyrna, as I'm bound to start at once now that I have filled-up the
vacancies amongst my crew. Charley Onslow, remain aft with me. All
hands up anchor, and make sail!"

In a short time the men working together with a will, and the new hands
specially distinguishing themselves for their activity in so marked a
manner as to call forth the approval of the generally grumbling Mr
Tompkins--although, perhaps, he praised them because Tom and Charley had
suspected them--the _Muscadine_ had her anchor at the catheads; and, her
topsails having been dropped long before, was sailing gaily out of
Beyrout harbour, under the influence of the land-breeze that sprang up
towards the afternoon, blowing briskly off shore.

When she had got a good offing, and the mountains of Lebanon began to
sink below the horizon in the distance as she bowled along merrily on
her north-western course, a long way to the southward of Cyprus, bearing
up direct for the Archipelago, a keen observer on board might have
noticed something that looked strange, at all events on the face of it.

No sooner had the shades of evening begun to fall than a long low
suspicious-looking vessel crept out from the lee of the land, and
followed right in the track of the _Muscadine_, as if in chase of the
English ship.

It was a swift-sailing lateen-rigged felucca, one of those crafts that
are common enough in Eastern waters, especially in the Levant.

She spread a tremendous amount of canvas; and leaping through the sea
with the pace of a dolphin, came up with the doomed merchantman hand
over hand.

STORY TWO, CHAPTER THREE.

FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.

The _Muscadine_ when she left England had a crew of some twenty hands,
or with the captain, and first and second mates, and our friends Tom and
Charley, twenty-five men altogether--a very fair average, as the
proportion of the seamen usually borne in merchant ships is at the rate
of about three to every hundred tons of the vessel's burthen.

Through the illness, however, of the fust officer, Mr Wilson, an
amiable man and a thorough sailor, whom everybody liked--quite the
reverse of the odious Tompkins, Tom's and Charley's special bete-noir--
and a large number of the seamen, whom they were forced to leave behind
in hospital at Beyrout, the complement of the ship was much reduced, and
her crew now mustered, officers and men, but twenty in number, of which
total twelve were Englishmen who had originally belo