lty in the narrow streets--and drove down to the
wharf, where they hired a shore boat to take them off to the yacht,
which was lying moored to a pair of the trunk buoys in the harbour.

The ships' bells were chiming "five", that is to say, half-past ten, as
the boat, after having been challenged by the anchor watch, swept
alongside the _Thetis's_ gangway ladder, and the two young men ascended
to the deck. Somewhat to their surprise, they found Milsom on board;
for, as they were not expected until the following day, they would not
have been at all astonished to learn that the skipper was ashore,
amusing himself at the theatre, or elsewhere. But Milsom explained that
he had had enough of Havana: he had been to the theatre twice, and
considered that it was not a patch upon the Alhambra in Leicester Square
at home; he had been to the Cathedral, and had been shown the tomb of
Christopher Columbus--the genuineness of which he greatly doubted; he
had sauntered in the Alameda in the evenings, listening to the military
bands, of which he thought nothing, and trying to discover a Spanish
girl that could hold a candle to one of our own wholesome, handsome
English lasses, and had failed; and he had also tried, and had failed,
to determine the precise number of separate and distinct
odours--"stinks", he called them--which go to make up the characteristic
smell of Havana. From all of which it will be gathered that the worthy
man, with the restlessness characteristic of the sailor, was beginning
to weary of his inactivity--although during the past week he had been
anything but inactive, it may be mentioned--and was pining for something
fresh in the way of excitement. It appeared that, finding himself with
spare time on his hands notwithstanding his preparation of the yacht for
the projected trip, he had amused himself by designing an elaborate
disguise for the craft, under the impression that a time might very
possibly arrive when such a disguise would be found exceedingly useful;
and he proudly produced a sketch of the said disguise which, when
unfolded before the astonished gaze of the two young men, showed the
_Thetis_ transmogrified into something resembling a two-funnelled
torpedo gunboat, with ram stem and round, spoon-shaped stern all
complete. It was a contraption most ingeniously built up of wood and
canvas by the joint efforts and skill of Milsom, Macintyre, and the
carpenter; and was so handily contrived that, according