A most enjoyable book.

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OLD GOLD; OR, THE CRUISE OF THE BRIG JASON, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN.

CHAPTER ONE.

OVER YONDER.

It was very, very hot. That is to say, it was as hot as it knows how to
be in Johnstown, Guiana, which means a damp, sticky, stifling kind of
heat. The sun made the muddy river look oily, and the party of three
seated under the great fig-tree which shaded the boarding-house by the
wharf seemed as if they were slowly melting away like so much of the
sugar of which the wharves and warehouses and the vessels moored in the
river smelt.

Let us be quite correct: it was more the smell of treacle, and the casks
and sugar bags piled up under an open-sided shed all looked gummy and
sticky; while the flies--there, it was just as if all the flies in the
world, little and big, had been attracted to hum, buzz, and in some
cases utter useless cries for help when they had managed to get their
wings daubed with the sweet juice and strove vainly to rise in the air.

Captain David Banes, a weather-beaten sailor of about forty, took off
his Panama hat, drew a yellow silk handkerchief out of the crown, and
dabbed the drops off his face, brow, and the top of his head, which
looked as if it had been rubbed and polished till all the hair for a
broad space had been cleared away.

Then he said: "_Phe-ew_!" put the handkerchief back, and nursed his hat
upon his knees, as he stared across the rough table, upon which coffee
and breakfast-cups were standing, at the sun-burned gentleman who looked
something like a modern yachtsman, though it was a good seventy years
ago.

The latter looked back at him half-smilingly, took out a handkerchief
and wiped his face, and glanced across at another sun-burned individual,
to wit, a young man something like him in face, who was driving away
flies from the sugar-basin, at which interference with their sweet
pleasure they buzzed angrily, and the moment a spoonful of sugar had
been taken out settled back.

"It's hot, Brace," said the second personage.

"Yes, I know," said the young fellow, smiling. "I found that out
myself."

"Ay, youngster," said the captain, "and it don't want a man o' genous to
find that out. I always say this is the hottest place there is, for I
never found a hotter. I dessay it is worse in our cook's oven, but I
never tried that."

He looked first at one and then at the