Drake,' I give you my word I've been that dry in the tropics (what with the salt food, that was like munching solid brine, and the sun right overhead like a red-hot warming-pan) that I've drunk the sea-water itself to moisten my mouth, till I've been driven nearly mad with the burning fury of the thirst that was on me. Ah! you youngsters, Ben, little know what we sailors have to put up with; for, mind you, lad, I'm not pitching you any stiff yarn here about wrecks, and being cast away on rafts, and drawing lots as to who's to be devoured by the others, but what I'm telling you is the simple every-day life of the seaman, ay! and of half the reefers,' too."

Here the captain paused to indulge in his habitual chuckle (for it was all the same to him whether the subject in hand was serious or comic), while Mistress Franklin looked perfectly horror-stricken at the account of the water her boy had been, as it were, just on the point of drinking.

Little Ben himself, however, was not yet" at home" enough to make any remark, but sat on the stool at his mother's feet, with his eyes counting the grains of sand on the floor, for he was still ashamed to meet his father's gaze.

As for Josiah, he was but little moved by the captain's picture of the miseries of seafaring, and merely observed that, as he had taught his children to abstain from hankering after the "fleshpots," Ben could bear the absence of creature comforts better than most boys-a remark that set the captain chuckling again in good earnest.

6

"What you say, father, about hankering after the flesh-pots' is all very well," continued the good-humored sailor, as he tittered, while he tapped the ashes from the bowl of his pipe; "but if you'd had a twelvemonth on mahogany and seabiscuits as hard and dry as tiles, you yourself E

would get hankering after a bit of 'soft tommy' (that's our name for new bread, Ben), and a cut of roast beef, I'll be bound; ay! ay! and think the fat old bum-boat woman, that comes off to the ship with a cargo of fresh quartern loaves directly you make the land, the loveliest female in all creation. But," added Captain Holmes, after a long pull at a fresh mug of the delicious "lambs'wool," ""there are worse things aboard a ship, let me tell you, Ben, than even the rations. Youngsters think seafaring a fine life because it's full of danger, and looks pretty enough from the shore; but only let them come to have six months of it 'tween decks, cooped up in a berth little bigger than a hutch, and as dark and close as a prison cell, directly the wind gets a little bit fresh and the scuttles and port-holes have to be closed; and to be kept out of their hammocks half the night, with the watches that must be kept on deck wet or dry, fair or foul-ay! and to be roused out, too, as soon as they get off to sleep-after the middle watch, maybe-to reef topsa'ls, or take in to'-gallan'-sa'ls, or what not, whenever a squall springs up-only let them have a taste of this, I say, and they soon begin to sing another song, I can tell you. Why, when I was 'prentice on board the 'Francis Drake,' I've often been put to walk the deck with a capsta'n-bar over my shoulder, and a bucket of water at the end of it, to keep me awake, and even then I've been that drowsy that I've paraded up and down by the gangway as fast asleep as if I'd been a som-som-what do you call it ?"

"-nambulist," suggested Uncle Benjamin.

"Ay, ay, that's it, mate," nodded the captain, with another laugh. "And over and over again, when I've sneaked away to pick out a soft plank between the hen-coops, and have just dropped off

the second mate has found me out, and come and emptied two or three buckets of salt water over me, and set me off striking out as if I was swimming, for I'd be fancying in my sleep, you see, that the vessel had got on a reef, and was filling and going fast to the bottom.

"But the worst of all, lad," the sailor went on, when he had done puffing away at his pipe, so as to rekindle its half-extinguished fire, "is to be roused out of your sleep with the bo's'ain's whistle ringing in your ears, and the cry of 'A man overboard! a man overboard!' shouted on every side."

"Ah! that must be terrible indeed," shuddered Mrs. Franklin, as she covered her face with her palms in horror at the thought.

Little Ben, however, sat with his mouth open, staring up in the captain's face, and mute with eagerness to hear the story he had to tell. The father and uncle, too, said not a word, for they were loth to weaken the impression that the captain's simple narrative was evidently making on the sea-crazed boy.

"Ay, ay, mother," Captain Holmes proceeded, "it is terrible, I can assure you, to rush on deck in the darkness of night, when even your halfwakened senses tell you that there is nothing but a boundless watery desert round about the ship, and to find the canvas beating furiously against the masts, as the sails are put suddenly aback to check the way upon the vessel. Then, as you fly instinctively to the ship's side, you see, perhaps, some poor fellow struggling with the black waves, and, strange to say, apparently swimming as hard as he can away from the vessel itself before it is well brought to, for one forgets, at the moment, you see, the motion of the ship; and so, as it dashes past the wretched man in the water, it seems as if he, in the madness of his fright, was

is touched with a pity that makes the eyes smart again with something like a tear. You may fancy, then, how the seamen watch the white boat, as it keeps searching about in the pale light of the distant buoy, and how the crowd at the ship's side cry first, Now they see him yonder;' and next, as the cutter glides away in another direction, 'No, they're on the wrong track yet, lads;' and then how the men on board discuss whether the poor fellow could swim or not, and how long he could keep up in the water; until at length the buoy-light fades, and even the figure of the cutter itself suddenly vanishes from the view. Nothing then remains but to listen in terrible suspense for the pulse of the returning oars; and as the throbbing of the strokes is heard along the water, every heart beats with eagerness to learn the result. What cheer, boys, what cheer?' cries the officer, as the boat's crew draw up alongside the vessel once more, and every neck is craned over the side to see whether the poor fellow lies stretched at the bottom of the cutter. And when the ugly news is told that the body even has not been found (for that is the usual fate in the dark), you can form, perhaps, some faint idea, Ben, of the gloom that comes over the whole crew. 'Whose turn is it to be next-who is to be left like that poor fellow fighting with the ocean in the dark? What became of him? is he still clinging to the spar that was thrown to him, struggling and shrieking to the ship as he sees the cabin lights sailing from his sight? or was he seized by some shark lurking in the ship's wake, and dragged under as soon as he struck the waves? Who can say? And the very mystery gives a greater terror to such an end."

"The Lord have mercy on the lost one's soul," sighed Benjamin's mother, as she hugged her boy