a question. The door of the state-room opened, and Mrs. Vickers appeared trembling with Sylvia by her side. Accept, Mr. Bates," she said, "since it must be so. We should gain nothing by refusing. We are at

their mercy-God help us!"

"Amen to that," says Bates under his breath, and then aloud, "We agree !"

"Put your pistols on the table, and come up, then," says Rex, covering the table with his musket as he spoke. "Nobody shall hurt you."

M

CHAPTER X.

JOHN REX'S REVENGE.

RS. VICKERS, pale and sick with terror, yet sustained by that strange courage of which we have before spoken, passed rapidly under the open skylight, and prepared to ascend. Sylvia-her romance crushed by too dreadful realityclung to her mother with one hand, and with the other pressed close to her little bosom the "English History." In her all-absorbing fear she had forgotten to lay it down.

"Get a shawl, ma'am, or something," says Bates, "and a hat for Missy."

Mrs. Vickers looked back across the space beneath the open skylight, and shuddering, shook her head. The men above impatiently

swore at the delay, and the three hastened on deck.

"Who's to command the brig now?" asked undaunted Bates, as they came up.

"I am," says John Rex; "and, with these brave fellows, I'll take her round the world.”

The touch of bombast was not out of place. It jumped so far with the humour of the convicts that they set up a feeble cheer, at which Sylvia frowned. Frightened as she was, the prison-bred child was as much astonished at hearing convicts cheer as a fashionable lady would be to hear her footman quote poetry. Bates, however-practical and calm-took quite another view of the case. The bold project, so boldly avowed, seemed to him a sheer absurdity. The "Dandy" and a crew of nine convicts navigate a brig round the world! Preposterous; why, not a man aboard could work a reckoning! His nautical fancy pictured the Osprey helplessly rolling on the swell of the Southern Ocean, or hopelessly locked in the ice of the Antarctic Seas, and he dimly guessed at the fate of the deluded ten. Even if they got safe to port, the chances of final escape were all against them, for what account could they give of themselves? Overpowered by these reflections, the honest fellow

made one last effort to charm his captors back

to their pristine bondage. "Fools!" he cried, "do you know what you are about to do? You will never escape. Give up the brig, and I will declare, before my God, upon the Bible, that I will say nothing, but give all good characters."

Lesly and another burst into a laugh at this wild proposition, but Rex, who had weighed his chances well beforehand, felt the force of the pilot's speech, and answered seriously.

"It's no use talking," he said, shaking his still handsome head. "We have got the brig, and we mean to keep her. I can navigate her, though I am no seaman, so you needn't talk further about it, Mr. Bates. liberty we require."

It's

"What are you going to do with us?"

“Yes. It don't look a picturesque spot, does it? And yet I've lived here for some years;" and he grinned.

Bates was silent. The logic of that grin was unanswerable.

"Come!" cried the Dandy, shaking off his momentary melancholy, "look alive there! Lower away the jolly-boat. Mrs. Vickers,

go down to your cabin and get anything you want. I am compelled to put you ashore, but I have no wish to leave you without clothes." Bates listened, in a sort of dismal admiration, at this courtly convict. He could not have spoken like that had life depended on it. "Now, my little lady," continued Rex, “run down with your mamma, and don't be frightened."

Sylvia flashed burning red at this indignity. "Frightened! If there had been anybody else here but women, you never would have taken the brig. Frightened! Let me pass, prisoner !"

The whole deck burst into a great laugh at this, and poor Mrs. Vickers paused, trembling for the consequences of the child's temerity. To thus taunt the desperate convict who held their lives in his hands seemed sheer madness. In the boldness of the speech, however, lay its safeguard. Rexwhose politeness was mere bravado-was stung to the quick by the reflection upon his courage, and the bitter accent with which the child had pronounced the word prisoner (the generic name of convicts) made him bite his lips with rage. Had he had his will, he

would have struck the little creature to the deck, but the hoarse laugh of his companions