ng over the side with his dark face turned to
pale green that seemed a faint reflection of the water below, into which
he looked apparently with the deepest interest as he sacrificed his
dearly loved dinner to Neptune, paying the sea-god his dues, "Oi fale,
Tom me darlint, as if Oi'd brought up iverythink, faith, since furst Oi
jined the ship, an' me boots, begorrah, same in the back of me hid!
Wurrah, wurrah, why did Oi ivver come to say? Och, Tom mabouchal, kill
me at onst, and be done with it!"

I could not help laughing at him, he presented such a contrast to the
buoyant lad of my ordinary acquaintance; though, of course, I tried to
sympathise with my woe-begone chum.

But ere long something occurred which made him, and the others in a like
predicament, forget their seasickness in a hurry, all of us having to be
as spry as we could.

The _Martin_ took the ground!

I'll tell you how this happened.

We had run up Channel, as I have told you, with a fair wind from the
start; but, on our reaching the westernmost end of the Isle of Wight,
this turned against us, so that after passing through the Needles we had
to beat up the Solent in the teeth of a stiff sou'-easter.

This, of course, gave us plenty of exercise in tacking; and the constant
going aloft, with the brig rolling and a choppy sea under her, had
overset the equilibrium of poor Mick's stomach.

We had tacked and `reached' in this way for some time, making short
boards between the Hampshire coast and the Island opposite; when, in
going about off the Brambles, through one of the uncertain currents
which infest Southampton Water taking her on the slant as we shivered
our headsails to come up to the wind, the brig missed stays and struck
on the edge of the shoal.

CHAPTER TEN.

"UNDER FIRE!"

"Look alive, my lads!" shouted out our tall commander, as we stumbled
about the deck of the brig, the shock as her keel touched ground
knocking us off our pins and making the poor seasick chaps who were
holding their heads over the side pull them in pretty promptly. "Watch,
furl sails! 'Way aloft!"

The sheets and halliards were let go in a twinkling before we left the
deck and the topsails dropped on the caps, as well as the jib downhaul
manned and the spanker brailed up, so as to prevent our being forced
farther upon the shoal; and, while we were shinning up the rigging, the
clewlines and buntlines were hauled by the watch below, which got in all
the sl