CHAPTER I.

THE PRISON SHIP.



In the breathless stillness of a tropical afternoon, when the air
was hot and heavy, and the sky brazen and cloudless, the shadow
of the Malabar lay solitary on the surface of the glittering sea.

The sun--who rose on the left hand every morning a blazing ball,
to move slowly through the unbearable blue, until he sank fiery red
in mingling glories of sky and ocean on the right hand--had just got
low enough to peep beneath the awning that covered the poop-deck,
and awaken a young man, in an undress military uniform,
who was dozing on a coil of rope.

"Hang it!" said he, rising and stretching himself, with the weary sigh
of a man who has nothing to do, "I must have been asleep"; and then,
holding by a stay, he turned about and looked down into the waist of the ship.

Save for the man at the wheel and the guard at the quarter-railing,
he was alone on the deck. A few birds flew round about the vessel,
and seemed to pass under her stern windows only to appear again at her bows.
A lazy albatross, with the white water flashing from his wings,
rose with a dabbling sound to leeward, and in the place where
he had been glided the hideous fin of a silently-swimming shark.
The seams of the well-scrubbed deck were sticky with melted pitch,
and the brass plate of the compass-case sparkled in the sun like a jewel.
There was no breeze, and as the clumsy ship rolled and lurched