"Let me see," returned Nares, and he took the dipper and held it to his

lips. "Yes, it's all right," he said. "Must have rotted and come sweet

again. Queer, isn't it, Mr. Dodd? Though I've known the same on a Cape

Horner."

There was something in his intonation that made me look him in the face;

he stood a little on tiptoe to look right and left about the ship,

like a man filled with curiosity, and his whole expression and bearing

testified to some suppressed excitement.

"You don't believe what you're saying!" I broke out.

"O, I don't know but what I do!" he replied, laying a hand upon me

soothingly. "The thing's very possible. Only, I'm bothered about

something else."

And with that he called a hand, gave him the code flags, and stepped

himself to the main signal halliards, which vibrated under the weight of

the ensign overhead. A minute later, the American colours, which we had

brought in the boat, replaced the English red, and PQH was fluttering at

the fore.

"Now, then," said Nares, who had watched the breaking out of his signal

with the old-maidish particularity of an American sailor, "out with

those handspikes, and let's see what water there is in the lagoon."

The bars were shoved home; the barbarous cacophony of the clanking pump

rose in the waist; and streams of ill-smelling water gushed on deck and

made valleys in the slab guano. Nares leaned on the rail, watching the

steady stream of bilge as though he found some interest in it.

"What is it that bothers you?" I asked.

"Well, I'll tell you one thing shortly," he replied. "But here's

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