ts
claws off with a hatchet to make it let go. They supped off it the game
night, and long Tom Skinclip, who owned an over strong appetite, had a
bad fit of indisgestion in consikence."

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

MORE ABOUT THE SEA.

Once more we beg our reader to accompany us to sea--out into the thick
darkness, over the wild waves, far from the abodes of man.

There, one night in December, a powerful steamer did battle with a
tempest. The wind was against her, and, as a matter of course, also the
sea. The first howled among her rigging with what might have been
styled vicious violence. The seas hit her bows with a fury that caused
her to stagger, and, bursting right over her bulwarks at times, swept
the decks from stem to stern, but nothing could altogether stop her
onward progress. The sleepless monster in the hold, with a heart of
fervent heat, and scalding breath of intense energy, and muscles of iron
mould, and an indomitable--yet to man submissive--will, wrought on night
and day unweariedly, driving the floating palace straight and steadily
on her course--homeward-bound.

Down in the cabin, in one of the side berths lay a female form.
Opposite to it, in a similar berth, lay another female form. Both forms
were very limp. The faces attached to the forms were pale yellow, edged
here and there with green.

"My dear," sighed one of the forms, "this _is_ dreadful!"

After a long silence, as though much time were required for the
inhalation of sufficient air for the purpose, the other form replied:--

"Yes, Laura, dear, it _is_ dreadful."

"'Ave a cup of tea, ladies?" said the stewardess, opening the door just
then, and appearing at an acute angle with the doorway, holding a cup in
each hand.

Miss Pritty shuddered and covered her head with the bed-clothes. Aileen
made the form of "no, thanks," with her lips, and shut her eyes.

"_Do_ 'ave a cup," said the stewardess, persuasively.

The cups appeared at that moment inclined to "'ave" a little game of
hide-and-seek, which the stewardess nimbly prevented by suddenly forming
an obtuse angle with the floor, and following that action up with a
plunge to starboard, and a heel to port, that was suggestive--at least
to a landsman--of an intention to baptise Miss Pritty with hot tea, and
thereafter take a "header" through the cabin window into the boiling
sea! She did neither, however, but, muttered something about "'ow she
do roll, to be sure," and, se