sloop to which she belonged, and might fail
to reach the shore after all!"

"Her owner is rather fond of ships and boats that have got the rot,"
said Mr Welton, senior, looking with a somewhat stern expression at
Morley Jones, who was in the act of stooping to wring the water out of
the legs of his trousers.

"If he is," said Jones, with an equally stern glance at the mate, "he is
the only loser--at all events the chief one--by his fondness."

"You're right," retorted Mr Welton sharply; "the loss of a kit may be
replaced, but there are _some things_ which cannot be replaced when
lost. However, you know your own affairs best. Come below, friends,
and have something to eat and drink."

After the wrecked party had been hospitably entertained in the cabin
with biscuit and tea, they returned to the deck, and, breaking up into
small parties, walked about or leaned over the bulwarks in earnest
conversation. Jack Shales and Jerry MacGowl took possession of Jim
Welton, and, hurrying him forward to the windlass, made him there
undergo a severe examination and cross-questioning as to how the sloop
Nora had met with her disaster. These were soon joined by Billy Towler,
to whom the gay manner of Shales and the rich brogue of MacGowl were
irresistibly attractive.

Jim, however, proved to be much more reticent than his friends deemed
either necessary or agreeable. After a prolonged process of pumping, to
which he submitted with much good humour and an apparent readiness to be
pumped quite dry, Jerry MacGowl exclaimed--

"Och, it ain't of no use trying to git no daiper. Sure we've sounded
'im to the bottom, an' found nothin' at all but mud."

"Ay, he's about as incomprehensible as that famous poet you're for ever
givin' us screeds of. What's 'is name--somebody's _son_?"

"Tenny's son, av coorse," replied Jerry; "but he ain't incomprehensible,
Jack; he's only too daip for a man of or'nary intellick. His thoughts
is so awful profound sometimes that the longest deep-sea lead line as
ever was spun can't reach the bottom of 'em. It's only such oncommon
philosophers as Dick Moy there, or a boardin'-school miss (for extremes
meet, you know, Jack), that can rightly make him out."

"Wot's that you're sayin' about Dick Moy?" inquired that worthy, who had
just joined the group at the windlass.

"He said you was a philosopher," answered Shales. "You're another,"
growled Dick, bluntly, to MacGowl.

"Faix, that's true," repli