ing whispers as opportunity offered.

At breakfast, by which time they were in a dirty tumbling sea, with the
_Nore_ lightship, a brown, forlorn-looking object on their beam, the
soldier, who had been breathing stertorously, raised his heavy head
from the boot, and with glassy eyes and tightly compressed lips gazed
wonderingly about him.

"Wot cheer, mate?" said the delighted Bill. "'Ow goes it?"

"Where am I?" inquired Private Harry Bliss, in a weak voice.

"Brig _Merman_," said Bill; "bound for Byster-mouth."

"Well, I'm damned," said Private Bliss; "it's a blooming miracle. Open
the winder, it's a bit stuffy down here. Who--who brought me here?"

"You come to see me last night," said Bob, "an' fell down, I s'pose;
then you punched Bill 'ere in the eye and me in the jor."

Mr. Bliss, still feeling very sick and faint, turned to Bill, and after
critically glancing at the eye turned on him for inspection, transferred
his regards to the other man's jaw.

"I'm a devil when I'm boozed," he said, in a satisfied voice. "Well, I
must get ashore; I shall get cells for this, I expect."

He staggered to the ladder, and with unsteady haste gained the deck and
made for the side. The heaving waters made him giddy to look at, and
he gazed for preference at a thin line of coast stretching away in the
distance.

The startled mate, who was steering, gave him a hail, but he made
no reply. A little fishing-boat was jumping about in a way to make a
sea-sick man crazy, and he closed his eyes with a groan.

Then the skipper, aroused by the mate's hail, came up from below, and
walking up to him put a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"What are you doing aboard this ship?" he demanded, austerely.

"Go away," said Private Bliss, faintly; "take your paw off my tunic;
you'll spoil it."

He clung miserably to the side, leaving the incensed skipper to demand
explanations from the crew. The crew knew nothing about him, and said
that he must have stowed himself away in an empty bunk; the skipper
pointed out coarsely that there were no empty bunks, whereupon Bill said
that he had not occupied his the previous evening, but had fallen asleep
sitting on the locker, and had injured his eye against the corner of a
bunk in consequence. In proof whereof he produced the eye.

"Look here, old man," said Private Bliss, who suddenly felt better. He
turned and patted the skipper on the back. "You just turn to the left a
bit and put me ashore, will yo