e of excitement in
his mottled face, which generally was as expressionless as a vegetable-
marrow, "we haven't seen the last of them yet."

"Much you know of it, little un," sneered Tom Jerrold in all the pride
of his longer experience of the sea. "Why this is only the second
voyage you've ever taken out here, or indeed been in a ship at all; and
on our last trip we never tumbled across anything of this sort."

"That may be," argued Weeks; "but if I am a green hand, as you make out,
like Graham here, my father was in a China clipper for years, and he has
told me more than you'll ever learn in all your life, Mister Jerrold, I
tell you. Why, he was once chased all the way from Hainan to Swatow by
pirates."

"Was he?" I cried, excited too at this. "Do tell us, Weeks, all about
it."

"There ain't anything to tell," said he nonchalantly, but pleased, I
could see, at putting Tom Jerrold into the shade for the moment; "only,
that they beat 'em off as they were trying to board father's ship off
Swatow, when a vessel of war, that was just then coming down from
Formosa, caught the beggars in the very act of piracy, before they could
run ashore and escape up the hills--as they always do, my dad said,
whenever our blue-jackets are after them."

"And then--" I asked, on his pausing at this interesting point, after
rousing Jerrold's and my interest in that way, a thing which was quite
in keeping with Sam Weeks' character, his disposition being naturally an
exasperating one, to other people, that is,--"what happened then?"

"Oh, nothing," he replied coolly; adding after another tantalising
pause, "I recollect, though, now, dad said as how the beggars were all
taken to Canton and given over to the mandarins for trial."

"Yes," said I, "and--"

"Well, some of 'em were tortured in bamboo cages, he told me, and he
said, too, that they made awful faces in their agony," Weeks continued,
his face looking as if he enjoyed the reminiscence; "while the others,
twenty in number, were all put up in a row kneeling on the ground, with
their pigtails tied up over their heads so as to leave their necks bare,
and the executioner who had a double-bladed sword like a butcher's
cleaver, sliced off their heads as if they were so many carrots. It
must have been jolly to see 'em rolling on the ground."

"You cold-blooded brute!" exclaimed Tom Jerrold; but I only shuddered
and said nothing. "You seem to revel in it!"

"If you'd heard all my