igging as would not imperil the safety of the masts.

"He must have sold those," said the skipper. "The other things are in
his house, I suppose."

Every fitting that could be pried or screwed out was gone. Port,
starboard, and masthead lights; teak gratings; sliding sashes of the
deckhouse; the captain's chest of drawers, with charts and chart-table;
photographs, brackets, and looking-glasses; cabin doors; rubber cuddy
mats; hatch-irons; half the funnel-stays; cork fenders; carpenter's
grindstone and tool-chest; holystones, swabs, squeegees; all cabin and
pantry lamps; galley-fittings en bloc; flags and flag-locker; clocks,
chronometers; the forward compass and the ship's bell and belfry, were
among the missing.

There were great scarred marks on the deck-planking over which the
cargo-derricks had been hauled. One must have fallen by the way, for the
bulwark-rails were smashed and bent and the side-plates bruised.

"It's the Governor," said the skipper "He's been selling her on the
instalment plan."

"Let's go up with spanners and shovels, and kill 'em all," shouted the
crew. "Let's drown him, and keep the woman!"

"Then we'll be shot by that black-and-tan regiment--our regiment. What's
the trouble ashore? They've camped our regiment on the beach."

"We're cut off; that's all. Go and see what they want," said Mr.
Wardrop. "You've the trousers."

In his simple way the Governor was a strategist. He did not desire that
the crew of the Haliotis should come ashore again, either singly or in
detachments, and he proposed to turn their steamer into a convict-hulk.
They would wait--he explained this from the quay to the skipper in the
barge--and they would continue to wait till the man-of-war came along,
exactly where they were. If one of them set foot ashore, the entire
regiment would open fire, and he would not scruple to use the two cannon
of the town. Meantime food would be sent daily in a boat under an armed
escort. The skipper, bare to the waist, and rowing, could only grind his
teeth; and the Governor improved the occasion, and revenged himself for
the bitter words in the cables, by saying what he thought of the morals
and manners of the crew. The barge returned to the Haliotis in silence,
and the skipper climbed aboard, white on the cheek-bones and blue about
the nostrils.

"I knew it," said Mr. Wardrop; "and they won't give us good food,
either. We shall have bananas morning, noon, and night, an' a man can't