wonder at the skipper's conduct increased when, the
next dawn finding us still becalmed, but with the added annoyance of
a fog that almost hid the bowsprit's end, his demeanour swung back to
joviality. I taxed him with this, in my father's hearing.

"I make less account of fogs than most men," he answered. "I can
smell land; which is a gift and born with me. But this is no weather
to be caught in anywhere near the Sallee coast; and if we're to lose
the wind, let's have a good fog to hide us, I say."

He went on to assure us that the seas hereabouts were infested with
Moorish pirates, and to draw some dismal pictures of what might
happen if we fell in with a prowling Sallateen.

With all his fears he kept his reckoning admirably, and we
half-sailed, half-drifted through the Strait, and so near to the Rock
of Gibraltar that, passing within range of it at the hour of
reveilly, we heard the British bugles sounding to us like ghosts
through the fog. Captain Pomery here was in two minds about
laying-to and waiting for a breeze; but a light slant of wind
encouraged him to carry the _Gauntlet_ through. It bore us between
the invisible strait, and for a score of sea-miles beyond; then, as
casually as it had helped, it deserted us.

Day broke and discovered us with the Moorish coast low on our
starboard horizon. To Mr. Fett and Mr. Badcock this meant nothing,
and my father might have left them to their ignorance had he not in
the course of the forenoon caught them engaged upon a silly piece of
mischief, which was, to scribble on small sheets of paper various
affecting narratives--as that the _Gauntlet_ was sinking, or
desperately attacked by pirates, in such and such a latitude and
longitude--insert them in empty bottles, and commit them to the
chances of the deep. The object (as Mr. Fett explained it) being to
throw Billy Priske's sweetheart off the scent. For two days past he
had been slyly working upon Billy's fears, and was relating to him
how, with two words, a Moorish lady had followed Gilbert a Becket
from Palestine to London, and found him there--when my father,
attracted by the smell of pitch, strolled forward and caught Mr.
Badcock in the act of sealing the bottles from a ladle which stood
heating over a lamp. In the next five minutes the pair learnt that
my father could lose his temper, and the lesson visibly scared them.

"Your pardon, sir," twittered Mr. Fett. "'Twas a foolish joke, I
confess."

"I