dle a ship,"
shouted one of the English.

"Better have none at all than one made out o' cracked tea-kettles,"
retorted Herrick, who never lost a chance of having a fling against
steam.

The pilot, who had been shaking in his shoes at the mishap, now began to
hope that it would all end in a laugh; but he was not to escape
scot-free, after all. As the _Arizona_ forged ahead, a rotten egg, flung
through one of the iron-clad's open ports, hit him full on the forehead,
and exploded over his whole face, like a bombshell, making such an
object of him as his own father would scarcely have recognized.

* * * * *

An American steamer does not touch at Valetta every day, and the
_Arizona_ soon had plenty of visitors. Most of the crew being busy,
Frank was "told off" to act as showman, and for the first two days he
had more than enough to do. From sunrise to sunset the decks were
crowded with sight-seers of all ages and conditions--stiff, wooden-faced
soldiers from the garrison; languid ladies, who looked much more at each
other's bonnets than at the ship, and seemed to be always sitting down
and never getting up; jaunty military officers, with uniforms as trim as
their mustaches; huge red-whiskered sailors from the English men-of-war,
who kept patting Frank on the head like a child, to his great
indignation; and native Maltese, who seemed immensely astonished at all
they saw, and chattered over everything like so many parrots. Some of
these last mistook the white-painted iron of the engine for wood, and
were seen trying to chip off pieces of it with their knives as mementos
of the visit.

But when once he was off duty, Austin began to enjoy himself in earnest.
There really seemed to be no end to the curious sights of the place--the
steep, break-neck streets, almost like paved precipices; the tall,
thick-walled, narrow-windowed houses, small fortresses in themselves;
the shaven monks, who looked terribly hot in their heavy black robes;
the slim, dark-eyed Greeks, with their jaunty red caps, and the gaunt,
swarthy Moors scowling from under their huge white turbans; the queer
little Maltese boats, with high prows and sterns, quaintly carved and
painted; the files of donkeys plodding past under big baskets of fruit,
with their bare-footed drivers yelling behind them; the huge forts built
by the Knights of St. John (the former owners of Malta), nine thousand
of whom had held them for eight months ag