and, by Neptune, the public shall have them, with all kinds
of hairy villains and tempest-tossed wrecks and human interest
and no end of humour, likewise word-pictures of ships and
storms. That's me. So clear the decks, and here goes."]


CHAPTER I.

We were in mid-ocean. Over the vast expanses of the oily sea no ripple
was to be seen although Captain BABBIJAM kept his binoculars levelled
at the silent horizon for three-quarters of an hour by the saloon
clock. Far away in the murky distance of the mysterious empyrean, a
single star flashed with a weird brilliance down upon the death-like
stillness of the immemorial ocean. Yet the good old _Marlinspike_
was rolling from side to side and rising and falling as if the liquid
expanse were stirred by the rush of a tempest instead of lying as
motionless as a country congregation during the rector's sermon.
Suddenly Captain BABBIJAM closed his binoculars with an angry snap,
and turned to me. His face showed of a dark purple under his white
cotton night-cap.

[Illustration]

"The silly old ship," he muttered, half to himself and half to me, "is
trying to make heavy weather of it; but I'll be even with her. I'll be
even with her."

"You'll find it a very _odd_ thing to do," I said to him, jocosely.

He sprang at me like a seahorse, and reared himself to his full height