the chart-house and above the shelter deck.)

They heard the Captain's voice calling "Come in"; and the Navigator, seizing his glasses, and singing out that "the Captain would be up on the bridge in a jiffy—he always does if anyone wakes him," went out, followed by the others.

In a minute the Captain came up, shouting for him.

"Here I am, sir."

He seized the Navigator by the arm excitedly—the Captain was seldom anything but calm—and drew him into the chart-house. "Read this," he said, snapping his jaws together and sticking out his little pointed beard, as the door was closed and the light glared out.

The Navigator read: "Achates is to proceed with dispatch to Malta, calling at Gibraltar for coal if necessary."

"That means the Dardanelles, sir! Finish North Sea, sir?"

Captain Macfarlane looked down at him with twinkling eyes and smiled happily.

In five minutes' time the Achates had ported her helm and was on her new course; the news had flown round the bridge, been bellowed down below to the guns' crews, and shouted down the voice-pipes to the engine-room.

"We're off to Malta!—the Dardanelles!" and everyone who passed the good news added, "Finish North Sea. Thank God!"

The sober, obsolete old Achates seemed to know where she was bound. On her new course she once more faced the gale and the seas, diving and pitching, shaking and trembling, throwing the wild spray crashing against the weather screens, flying over the bridge and pattering against the funnels.

What cared she, or anyone aboard her, however wildly the gale blew!