h the helm! heave-to!" shouted some of the men.

"No, no, let the whelp go," cried others; "besides, he'd be able to
peach on us."

This last argument was all-powerful. The ship held on her course, and
Billy was left to his fate.

The moment that Gaff saw him take the leap he seized the oars, and
applying all his strength to them, succeeded in catching hold of his son
before his struggles had ceased.

Billy was none the worse for his adventure beyond the ducking. Gaff
soon wrung the water out of his garments, and then placing him on his
knee, sat down to watch the ship as it sailed slowly away.

The captain, who sat in the stern with his chin resting in his hand, and
a dark scowl on his face, also watched the retreating vessel.

Soon it glimmered like the wing of a sea-mew on the horizon, and then,
just as night began to set in, it disappeared, leaving the boat a
solitary speck in the midst of the great wide sea.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

THE DINNER PARTY--A SUDDEN PIECE OF QUESTIONABLE GOOD FORTUNE BEFALLS
MRS. GAFF.

"It is a most unfortunate piece of good fortune this that has befallen
Mrs Gaff," said Mr George Stuart, "a very unfortunate thing indeed."

"Dear me, do you think so? Now I don't agree with you at all, brother,"
observed Miss Peppy. "I think that good fortune is always good fortune,
and never can be bad fortune. I wish it would only come to me
sometimes, but it never does, and when it does it never remains long.
Only think how she'll flaunt about now, with a coach-and-four perhaps,
and such like. I really think that fortune made a mistake in this case,
for she has been used to such mean ways, not that I mean anything bad by
mean, you know, but only low and common, including food and domestic
habits, as well as society, that--that--dear me, I don't exactly know
how to express myself, but it's a puzzle to me to know how she'll ever
come to be able to spend it all, indeed it is. I wonder why we are
subjected to such surprises so constantly, and then it's _so_ perplexing
too, because one will never be able to remember that she's not a
fisherwoman as she used to be, and will call her Jessie in spite of
one's-self; and how it ever came about, that's another puzzle. But
after all there is no accounting for the surprising way in which things
_do_ come about, dear me, in this altogether unaccountable world. Take
a little more soup, Captain Bingley?"

The above observations were made by Miss Pep