"Me and Bob Condy could 'ave got Gribbs and Tidewell out of the Battle-Axe easy as easy," said Silas, regretfully. "'Twas a lost hopportunity, and there you are."

The honourable conduct of his skipper in vetoing this little game seemed no more than foolishness to Bagge.

"When we comes to the Hequator and it's 'square away' and 'brace up' every five minutes till one's 'ands are raw, 'twill be a grief to every mother's son aboard," said Bagge, as he touched his cap and went for'ard.

But now the Star of the South went booming on the outside of the Falklands with a gale that drew into the sou'-sou'-west and howled after her. She scooped up the seas at times and dipped her nose into them, and threw them apart and wallowed. The men were happy, for the fo'c's'le didn't leak, and the galley-fire was kept going every night to dry their clothes. At midnight every man got a mug of cocoa, and those that rose up called Mrs. Ryder blessed, and those that lay down agreed with them. The Star was a happy ship. There was no rule against playing the concertina on a Sunday in her fo'c's'le, and the men were not reduced to playing "blind swaps" with their oldest rags for amusement, as they were in the Battle-Axe. And yet every man in the Star knew his time for growling was coming on, with every pitch and send of the sea.

They picked up the trades in nearly 30deg. south, with only a few days of a light and variable breeze, and the trades were good.

"But where's the Battle-Axe?" asked Mrs. Ryder.

She kept a bright look-out for her, and deeply regretted that her petticoats prevented her going aloft to search the horizon for John Watchett. She rubbed her hands in hope.

"I do believe, Will, that we must be ahead of him," she declared, after the south-east trade had been steady on the Star's starboard beam for a week.

"Not much ahead," replied Will.

And just then Bob Condy, who was aloft on the foreto'gallant yard cutting off old seizings and putting on new ones, hailed the deck.

"There's a sail on the port beam, sir."

"Take a glass aloft and have a look at her, Mr. McGill," said the skipper. "No, never mind, I'll go myself, as you've never seen the Battle-Axe at sea. I know the cut of her jib, and no mistake."

So Will Ryder went up to the maintop-gallant-yard, and with his leg astride of the yard took a squint to loo'ard. He shut up the glass so quick that his wife knew at once that the distant sail was the Battle-Axe. As he came down slowly he nodded to her.

"It is?"

"Rather," said Ryder. "I'm sorry we've no stun-sails. We're carrying all we've got and all we can."

"And to think he's as good as we were on our own point of sailing!" said his wife, with the most visible vexation. "Can't you do anything to make her go faster, Will?"

And when Will said he couldn't unless he got out and pushed, Mrs. Ryder sat on a hen-coop and very nearly cried. For if the Battle-Axe had done so well up to this she would do better in the dead regions of the line, and the Star would do much worse. There the want of a few more hands would tell. The Star was no good at catching cat's-paws, and short-handed she worked like an unoiled gate.

"If I'd only done what Silas Bagge wanted," she said, "we'd have been all right. To think that the want of a couple of hands should make all the difference."

It was cruelly hard, but when vessels are undermanned at any time, less than their complement means "pull devil, pull baker," with the former best at the tug of war.

For days there was nothing to choose between the vessels, save that the unusual strength of the trades gave the Star a trifling advantage. Every night Watchett took in his royals. This Ryder declined to do, though he often expected them to take themselves in.

"What did I say, ma'am?" said old Bagge. "I told you it could blow quite 'eavy in its way in the south-east trades."

And thus it happened that what the Star lost by day she pulled up by night. And presently the Battle-Axe edged up closer and at last was within hailing distance. Watchett stood on his poop with a speaking-trumpet, and roared in sombre triumph:—

"I'm as good as you this trip on your best p'int, Ryder!"

"Tell him to go to—to thunder," said Mrs. Ryder, angrily. Nevertheless, she waved her handkerchief to her enemy's wife, who was standing by "plain Jack Watchett."

"You've done mighty well," said Ryder, in his turn, "but it isn't over yet."

Jack Watchett intimated that he thought it was. He offered to double the bet. He also undertook to sail round the Star of the South in a light wind. He offered to tow her, and made himself so disagreeable that Mrs. Ryder, who knew what became a lady, went below to prevent her snatching the speaking-trumpet from her husband and saying things for which she would be sorry afterwards. But Ryder, though he was by no means a saint, kept his temper and only replied with chaff, which was much more offensive to Watchett than bad language.

"And don't be too sure," he added. "I may do you yet."

"Not you," said Watchett. "I'm cocksure."

They sailed in company for a week, and gradually, as the trade lessened in driving power, the Battle-Axe drew ahead inch by inch. And as she did Mrs. Ryder's appetite failed—she looked thin and ill.

"Don't feel it so much, chickabiddy," said her husband.

"I can't help it," sobbed Connie. "I hate your cousin. Oh, Will, if you'd only let me entice those two men from him. Bagge was sure that Gribbs and Tidewell would have come."

"It wouldn't have been fair," said Ryder.

"I—I—wanted to win," replied Connie; "and it'll be calm directly, and you know what that means."

It was calm directly, and very soon everyone knew what it meant. For it was a real fat streak of a calm that both vessels ran into. And as luck would have it the Battle-Axe, which was by now almost hull down to the nor'ard, got into it first. The Star of the South carried the wind with her till she was within a mile of her rival. For a whole day they pointed their jibbooms alternately at Africa and South America, to the North Pole and the South. What little breeze there was after that day took them farther still into an absolute area of no wind at all.

"This is the flattest calm I ever saw," said Ryder. "In such a calm as this he has no advantage."

They boxed the compass for the best part of a week and lay and cooked in a sun that made the deck-seams bubble. At night the air was as hot as it had been by day. The men lay on deck, on the deck-house, on the fo'c's'le head.

"This is a bally scorcher," said the crews of both ships. "Let's whistle."

They whistled feebly, but the god of the winds had gone a journey, or was as fast asleep as Baal. And day by day the two vessels drifted together. At last they had to lower the boats and tow them apart. Watchett was very sick with the whole meteorology of the universe, and being a whole-souled man, incapable of more than one animosity at a time, he found no leisure to spare from reviling a heaven of brass to taunt Ryder. At the end of the week he even hailed the Star and offered to come on board and bring his wife.

"I don't want him," said Connie Ryder: "I won't have him."

And as she said so she jumped as if a pin had been stuck into her.

"What's the matter?" asked her husband.

"Nothing," said Connie. "But let him come!"

She went for'ard to interview the cook, so she said. But she really went to interview Silas Bagge. When she came back she found Watchett and his wife on board. If she was a little stiff with Watchett he never noticed it. As a matter of fact, the whims and fads and tempers of a woman were of no more account than the growling of the men for'ard. He was too much engaged in cursing the weather to pay her any attention.

"This licks me," he said; "in a week we ain't moved—we're stuck. 'Ow long will it last, Bill?"

"It looks as if it might last for ever," replied Ryder. "We've struck a bad streak."

The women had tea and the men drank whisky and water. Although Watchett didn't know it, two of his hands left the boat and were given something to eat in the galley by Mrs. Ryder's orders. It was Bagge who conveyed the invitation, with the connivance of the mate, for whom the word of the captain's wife was law.

"'Ave some marmalade and butter?" said Bagge. "Does they feed you good in the Battle-Axe, Gribbs?"

"Hogwash," said Gribbs, with his mouth full. "Ain't it, Tidewell?"

Tidewell, who was a youngster of a good middle-class family, who had gone to sea as an apprentice and run from his ship, agreed with many bitter words.

"As I told you, we lives like fightin'-cocks 'ere," said Bagge. "When you're full in the back teeth, we'll 'ave your mates up. We likes to feed the pore and 'ungry, don't we, doctor?"

The cook, to whom Bagge had confided something, said he did his best, his humble best.

"The Star's an 'appy ship," he added. "We know what your ship is."

The other two men came up in their turn and were filled with tea and biscuit and butter and marmalade till they smiled.

"This is like home," said Wat Crampe, who was from Newcastle.

"It wass petter—much petter," said Evan Evans, "and ass for the captain's wife, she iss a lady, whatefer."

That evening Ryder and his wife returned the call and were rowed to the Battle-Axe by Bagge, Bob Condy, and two more of the men. Bagge and Condy went into the fo'c's'le. They lost no time in condemning the Battle-Axe and in lauding their own ship.

"This 'ere's a stinkin' 'ooker, mates," said Silas Bagge; "why, our fo'c's'le is a lady's droring-room compared with it. And as for the grub, ask them as come on board us this afternoon. What d'ye say, Gribbs?"

"Toppin'," said Gribbs. "It's spiled my happetite 'ere."

"It wass good," said the Welshman; "it wass good, whatefer."

Bagge took Billy Gribbs aside on the deck and had a talk with him.

"Oh, Lord!" said Gribbs. "Oh, what?"

"Straight talk," replied Silas; "she said so."

"Do you mean it? "

"Do I mean it?" replied Silas, with unutterable scorn. "In course I mean it. It will sarve them right as it sarves right."

Gribbs held on to the rail and laughed till he ached. "It's the rummiest notion I ever 'eard tell on."

"Not so rummy!"

"Wot!" cried Gribbs, "not so rummy? Well, if it ain't so rummy, I'm jiggered. I'll think of it."

"Do, and tell your mate Tidewell."

"If I tell Ned, 'e'll do it for sure. 'E's the biggest joker 'ere!"

"Then tell him," said Silas.

That evening Ned Tidewell and Billy Gribbs acted in a very strange way on board the Battle-Axe. Without any obvious reason they kept on bursting into violent fits of laughter.

"The pore blokes is gone dotty from the 'eat," said the pitying crowd. "We've 'eard of such before."

"Why shouldn't I laugh?" asked Gribbs. "I'm laughin' because I'm a pore silly sailor-man and my life ain't worth livin'. If I'd died early I'd ha' been saved a pile o' trouble. I was thinkin' of my father's green fields as I looked over the side this afternoon."

"Was you really?" asked the oldest man on board. "Then you take my advice quick and go and ask the skipper for a real good workin' pill of the largest size."

"Wot for?" asked Gribbs.

"Because you've hobvious got a calentoor," said the old fo'c's'le man. "And chaps as gets a calentoor jumps overboard. Oh, but that's well known at sea by those as knows anythin'."

But Gribbs laughed.

"The worst is as it's catchin'," said his adviser, anxiously; "it's fatally catchin'. I've 'eard of crews doin' it one hafter the hother, till there wasn't no one left. In 'eat it was and in calm."

"Gammon," said Gribbs. But he was observed to sigh.

"Are you 'ot in your 'ead?" asked the anxious and ancient one.

"I feels a little 'ot and rummy," said Gribbs; "but what I chiefly feels is a desire to eat grass."

The old man groaned.

"Then it's got you. Mates, we ought to tie Gribbs up, or lock 'im in the sail-locker, or 'is clothes will be auctioned off before long."

But Gribbs kicked at that, and just then eight bells struck.

"I'm turnin' in," said Gribbs, "and I'm all right."

But at six bells in the first watch he was missing, as was discovered by old Brooks, the authority on calentures. He waked up Ned Tidewell, who was extraordinarily fast asleep.

"Where's Gribbs?"

"Not in my bunk," returned Ned, who with Gribbs was one of the few who still dossed in the fo'c's'le.

"Then 'e's gone overboard for sartain," said Brooks, in great alarm; "there was the look of it in his eye, and in yours too, youngster. These long calms is fataller than scurvy. I shall go aft and report it."

He reported it to Mr. Seleucus Thoms, the second mate, who came for'ard, and roused the watch below from the deck-house and t'gallant fo'c's'le. When all hands were mustered it was certain that Gribbs was missing.

"This is a terrible catastrophe," said Seleucus Thoms, who had a weakness for fine language, derived from his rare Christian name, of which he was extremely proud. "My name is not Seleucus Thoms if he hasn't gone overboard."

"'E was rampagious with laughter in the second dog-watch, sir," put in old Brooks. "And 'e talked of green fields, the which I've 'eard is a werry fatal symptom of calentoor."

"Humph!" said Mr. Thoms, "there's something in that."

And when he went for'ard old Brooks was as proud as a dog with two tails! Though he usually spent the second dog-watch daily in proving that Thoms was no sailor, this endorsement of his theory flattered him greatly.

"I've been mistook in the second," he said, as Thoms went aft. "He's got 'orse sense, after all. I shouldn't be surprised if he'd make a sailor some day."

And Thoms reported the catastrophe to Watchett.

"Drowned himself?" roared the captain; "drowned himself? And who's responsible if you ain't?"

He came on deck in a great rage and scanty pyjamas and mustered the crew aft, and roared at them for full ten minutes as if it was their fault. When he had relieved his mind he asked if there was anyone who could throw light on the matter, and old Brooks was shoved to the front. He explained his views on calentures.

"Never 'eard of 'em," said Watchett.

"And I think, sir, as Tidewell 'ere 'as the symptoms."

"I haven't," said Tidewell, indignantly.

"Wild laughin' is a known symptom, sir, and Tidewell was laughin' 'orrid in the second dog-watch," insisted Brooks; "I'd put him in irons, sir."

But Watchett was not prepared to go so far in prophylaxis.

"If any of you 'as any more symptoms I'll flog 'im and take the consequences," he declared. He went below again unhappily, for he wasn't quite a brute after all.

"This is a mighty unpleasant thing," he said to poor Mrs. Watchett, who cried when she heard the news. "It's a mighty unfortunate affair. Gribbs was the smartest man in the whole crowd and worth two of the others."

But still the great and terrible calm lasted, and the morning was as hot as yesterday and the sea shone like polished brass and lapped faintly like heavy oil against the glowing iron of the sister barques. At dawn, which came up like a swiftly opening flower out of the fertile east, the vessels were just too far apart for hailing, and Watchett signalled the news to the Star of the South.

"Lost a man overboard!" said Ryder. "That's strange; I wish to Heaven we'd found him!"

When he told his wife she seemed extraordinarily callous.

"Serves him right," she said.

And it was wonderful how the crew of the Star took the news. They had never seemed so cheerful. They grinned when Watchett came aboard.

"This is an 'orrid circumstance," said Watchett. "I never lost a man before, not even when I was wrecked in the Violet. And this a dead calm!"

"Your men aren't happy," said Mrs. Ryder, "and you don't try to make 'em. If I give you three seven-pound tins of marmalade and some butter, will you serve it out to them?"

But Watchett shook his head angrily.

"I'll not cocker no men up," he declared; "not if they all goes overboard and leaves me and the missis to take 'er 'ome. And what's marmalade against 'eat like this?"

He mopped a melancholy brow and sighed.

"It will help them to keep from gloomy thoughts," said Mrs. Ryder. "The Star of the South is a home for our men."

"And two run in Valparaiso," retorted Watchett. "And I on'y lost one."

He took a drink with his cousin and went back on board the Battle-Axe, and spent the torrid day in getting a deal of unnecessary work done. And still no flaw of lightest air marred the awful mirror of the quiet seas. Early in the first watch the boats were lowered again to tow the vessels apart. At midnight, when the watch below came aft and answered to their names in the deep shadow of the moonless tropic night, Ned Tidewell did not answer to his name.

"Tidewell!" cried Thoms, angrily and anxiously.

And still there was no answer, but a groan from old Brooks.

"Wot did I tell you?" he demanded. "I seed it in 'is eye."

They searched the Battle-Axe from stem to stern; they overhauled the sails in the sail-lockers; they hunted with a lantern in the forepeak; they even went aloft to the fore and main tops, where once or twice someone who sought for coolness where no coolness could be found went up into what they jocosely called the "attic." But Ned had lost the number of his mess.

"More clothes for sale," said the melancholy crew, as they looked at each other suspiciously. "'Oo'll be the next?"

Brooks declared to the other fo'c's'le men that the next would be Wat Crampe, or Taffy, as they called the Welshman.

"There's an awful 'orrid look o' the deep, dark knowledge of death in their faces," declared old Brooks. "They thinks of the peace of it and the quiet, and smiles secret!"

Next morning Watchett hailed the Star and told the latest dreadful news. And at the end he added, in a truly pathetic roar, "Send me them tins o' marmalade aboard, and the butter."

And when Mrs. Ryder superintended the steward's work getting these stores out of the lazaret, she smiled very strangely. She said to her husband: "If he loses another hand or two the Battle-Axe will be no easy ship to work, Will."

"I wouldn't have believed the matter of a hundred pounds would have made you so hard," said Ryder. And Connie Ryder pouted mutinously, and her pout ran off into a wicked and most charming smile.

"I'm not thinking so much of the money as of our ship being beaten," she said.

And poor Watchett was now beginning to think the same of his ship. Like most vessels, the Battle-Axe required a certain number of men to work her easily, and her luck lay in the number allowed being the number necessary. With two hands gone a-missing she would not be much superior to the Star in easiness of handling, and if more went a week of baffling winds now or later, when the north-east trade died out, might give the Star a pull which nothing but an easterly wind from the chops of the Channel to Dover could hope to make up. He began to dance attendance on his crew as if they were patients and he their doctor. And the curious thing was that they all began to feel ill at once, so ill that they could not work in the sun. A certain uneasy terror got hold of them; they dreaded to look over the side, lest in place of an oily sea they should look down on grass and daisies.

"Daisies draws a man, and buttercups draws a man," said old Brooks.

"Don't," said Crampe, with a snigger. "You make me feel that I must pick buttercups or die."

"Do you now?" asked Brooks. "Do you now?"

And he sneaked aft to the skipper, who was turning all ways, as if wondering where windward was.

"I'm very uneasy about Crampe, sir," he said, with a scrape, as he crawled up the port poop ladder. "'Is mind is set on buttercups."

"The deuce it is!" cried Watchett, and going down to the main deck he called Crampe out.

"What's this I 'ears about your 'ankering after buttercups?" he demanded, very anxiously.

"I did feel as if I'd like to see one, sir," said Crampe.

"Don't let me 'ear of it again," began Watchett, angrily, but he pulled himself up with an ill grace. "But there, go in and lie down, and you needn't come on deck in your watch. I can't afford to lose no more mad fools. And you shall have butter instead of buttercups."

"And marmalade, sir?" suggested Crampe. "Marmalade's yellow too, as yellow as buttercups."

"Say the word agin and I'll knock you flat," said the skipper. But, nevertheless, he sent the whole crowd marmalade and butter at four bells in the first dog-watch.

"Hoo, but it iss fine," said "Efan Efans." "Thiss iss goot grup whatefer and moreover, yess!"

"They scoffs the like in the Star day in and day out," said Crampe; "if I can't roll on grass I'd like to be in her."

And that night both Crampe and Evans disappeared.

"I believe I 'eard a splash soon after six bells," said old Brooks. "Mates, this is most 'orrid. I feels as if I should be drawed overboard by a mermaid in spite of myself."

And Watchett went raving crazy.

Ryder came on board the Battle-Axe as soon as the latest news was signalled to him. Mrs. Ryder declined to go, but she gave him a timely piece of advice.

"Don't let him off the bet, Will, or I'll never forgive you."

"I won't do that," said her husband, hastily, as if he hadn't been thinking of doing it.

"And if he asks for a man or two, you know we're short-handed already."

"Tell me something I don't know," said Ryder, a trifle crossly. Even his sweet temper suffered in 115deg. in the shade.

"I dare say I could," said his wife, when he was in the boat; "I dare say I could."

Watchett received his cousin with an air of gloom that would have struck a damp on anything anywhere but the Equator.

"This is a terrible business," he said. "I never 'eard of anything like it. Every night a man, and last night two!"

Ryder was naturally very much cut up about it, and said so.

"Will you have some more marmalade?" he asked, anxiously.

"Marmalade don't work," said Watchett, sadly; "it don't work worth a cent. Nor does butter. I'd give five pounds for some green cabbage."

A brilliant idea struck Ryder.

"Why don't you paint her green, all the inside of the rail and the boats?"

"She'd be a beauty show, like a blessed timber-droghing Swede," said Watchett, with great distaste. "But d'ye think it'd work?"

"You might try," replied Ryder.

"And now you've got the bulge on me," sighed Watchett; "with two 'ands missing from both watches, she'll be as 'ard in the mouth as your Star. You might let me off that bet, Bill."

"No," said Ryder, "a bet's a bet."

"But fairness is fairness," urged Watchett; "there should be a clause in a bet renderin' it void by the act of God or the Queen's enemies."

"There isn't," said his cousin, "and you forget you wouldn't help me about those two hands I wanted."

"Oh, if you talk like that——"

"That's the way I talk," said Ryder, remembering the wife he had left behind him. "I'm sorry."

"Hang your sorrow," said Watchett. "But I'll lose no more, and 'tain't your money yet."

"Will you and Mary come on board to tea?" asked Ryder.

"I won't tea with no unfair person with no sympathy," returned Watchett, savagely.

And when Ryder had gone he set the crowd painting his beautiful white paint a ripe grass-green.

"Watch if it soothes 'em any," he said to Seleucus Thoms. "If it seems to work I'll paint 'er as green as a child's Noah's Ark."

And that night there was no decrease of the Battle-Axe's sad crowd, in spite of the fact that he did not act on his impulse to lock them up in the stuffy fo'c's'le. For soon after midnight Mr. Double felt one side of his face cooler than the other as he stood staring at the motionless lights of the Star of the South, then lying stern on to the Battle-Axe's starboard beam.

"Eh? What? Jerusalem!" said Double. Then he let a joyous bellow out of him. "Square the yards!"

For there was a breath of wind out of the south. Both vessels were alive in a moment, and while the Battle-Axe was squaring away the Star's foreyard was braced sharp up on the starboard tack till she fell off before the little breeze. Then she squared her yards too, and both vessels moved at least a mile towards home before they began fooling all round the compass again.

"Them hands missin' makes a difference," said Watchett, gloomily. "Less than enough is starvation."

As they fought through the night for the flaws of wind which came out of all quarters, the short watches of the Battle-Axe found that out and grumbled accordingly. But it was a very curious thing that the Star of the South was never so easy to handle.

"That foreyard goes round now," said old Semple, "as if it was hung like a balance. This is very surprisin'. So it is."

He mentioned the remarkable fact to McGill when he came on deck at four in the morning, and so long as it was dark, as it was till nearly six, McGill found it so too. And both watches were in a surprisingly good temper. For nothing tries men so much as "brace up" and "square away" every five minutes as they work their ship through a belt of calm. But as soon as the sun was up the Star worked just as badly as she did before.

"It's maist amazin'," said McGill.

During the day the calm renewed itself and gave everyone a rest. But once more the breeze came at night, and the amazing easiness of the Star showed itself when the darkness fell across the sea. Ryder and Semple and McGill were full of wonder and delight.

"The character of a ship will change sometimes," said Semple. "It's just like a collision that will alter her deviation. This calm has worked a revolution."

Because of this revolution the Star got ahead of the Battle-Axe every change and chance of the wind. She got ahead with such effect that on the third day the Battle-Axe was hull down to the south'ard, and when the fourth dawn broke she was out of sight. This meant much more than may appear, for the Star picked up the north-east trade nearly four days earlier than her rival, and a better trade at that. When the Battle-Axe crawled into its area it was half-sister to a calm, while the Star was doing eight knots an hour. And as there was now no need to touch tack or sheet, there was no solution of the mysterious ease with which she worked in the dark. How long the mystery might have remained such no one can say, but it was owing to Mrs. Ryder's curious behaviour that it came out. She laughed in the strangest manner till Ryder got quite nervous.

"These chaps that jumped over from the Battle-Axe laughed like that," he told her, in great anxiety.

And she giggled more and more.

"Shall I try marmalade?" she asked. Then she sat down by him and went off into something so like hysterics that a mere man might be excused for thinking she was crazy.

"They're not dead!" she cried; "they're not dead!"

"Who aren't dead?" asked her husband, desperately.

And, remembering something which had been told him years before, he took her hands and slapped with such severity that she screamed and then cried, and finally put her head upon his shoulder and confessed.

"Was it mutiny of me to do it?" she asked, penitently.

Will Ryder tried to look severe, and then laughed until he cried. "What ever made you think of it?"

"It wasn't a what; it was a who," said his wife; "it was Silas Bagge."

"The dickens it was," said Will, and with that he left her.

"Call all hands and let them muster aft," he said to McGill, who, much wondering, did what he was told. The watch on deck dropped their jobs and the watch below turned out.

"Call the names over," said Ryder, sternly.

"They're all here, sir," said McGill.

The skipper looked down at the upturned faces of the men and singled out Silas Bagge as if he meant to speak to him. But he checked himself, and, going down to the main deck, walked for'ard to the fo'c's'le. The men turned to look after him, and there was a grin on every face which would have been ample for two. Ryder walked quietly, and pushing aside the canvas door he came on a party playing poker. He heard strange voices.

"I go one petter, moreover," said one of them.

"I see you and go two better," said a man with a Newcastle burr in his speech.

Then Ryder took a hand.

"And I see you," he remarked. They dropped their cards and jumped to their feet.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded. And there wasn't a word from one of them; they looked as sheepish as four stowaways interviewing the skipper before a crowd of passengers.

"Get on deck," said Ryder. And much to McGill's astonishment the addition to the crew appeared with the captain behind them.

"Divide this lot among the watches," said Ryder.

Leaving McGill to "tumble to the racket," he walked to the mate's berth and explained to him that henceforth the Star of the South would go about as easy by day as by night.

"Then they're not dead!" cried Semple.

"Not by a jugful," said Ryder, nodding.

"This is very lucky, sir," said the mate, smiling.

"It's confoundedly irregular, too," replied the skipper, as he rubbed his chin. "Are you sure you knew nothing of it, Mr. Semple?"

"Me, sir! Why, I'd look on it as mutiny," said Semple; "rank mutiny!"

"It was Mrs. Ryder's notion, Semple."

"You don't say so, sir! She's a woman to be proud of!"

"So she is," replied Ryder. "So she is."

He went back to his wife.

"You'll win the hundred pounds now, Will?"

"I believe I shall," said Ryder.

"And I'll spend it," cried his wife, running to him and kissing him.

"I believe you will," said Ryder.

It was a happy ship.

The Size of the World's Great Cities.

By Arthur T. Dolling.

HOSE imposing agglomerations of houses and dwellers we call cities (in most cases political or commercial capitals) have shown a notable rate of progress during the last two or three decades. More and more do the centripetal forces at work in almost every nation make for the growth of the capital at the expense of the rural community. A century ago a million human beings dwelling side by side under a single municipal government was almost of itself one of the great wonders of the world. Men spoke of London with bated breath and wondered where it would all end. Reports of monster cities in China with a population double that of London were dismissed as travellers' tales. Travellers' tales, verily, they have proved to be, seeing that Peking even to-day has fewer than a million souls. But what would our forefathers have said of these twentieth-century "wens," these "gloomy or glowing, febrile and throbbing concentrations" of human life, numbering not merely two, but three, four, and even five millions of souls?

Let us take London as the basis of our diagrams. London is an indeterminate quantity. It may mean the City of London, which comprises only 673 acres, or it may mean the Administrative County of London, which boasts nearly 117 square miles, or 74,839 acres, or Greater London, which embraces the Metropolitan Police district, and has an area of no less than 692 square miles, or 443,420 acres. If we take the second of these Londons we shall find it to consist of twenty-nine large and small cities, ranging in population from 334,991 to 51,247 inhabitants. These are called the Metropolitan boroughs; but as it is rather geographical size than population which here concerns us, we may state that the largest of these boroughs is Wandsworth, with an area of 9,130 acres, and the smallest is Holborn, with 409 acres. The average area of these boroughs, if we exclude the City, is about four square miles. Within these borders of London—which must not be confounded with Greater London—there were in 1901 4,536,541 souls, living in 616,461 houses. Within this area, besides buildings, must be counted 12,054 acres of grass, including the public parks and gardens.

If we take Greater London we embrace a far wider and yet still a homogeneous community, for it cannot be denied that the adjoining boroughs just outside the pale of the administrative county are policed from the same centre, are London to the Post Office, and commonly regard themselves, what they must soon be officially, as an integral part of the Great Wen. Greater London—within the fifteen-mile radius—is far more homogeneous and compact than Greater Chicago, for example, or even than Greater New York or Greater Boston. We have here an aggregation of 6,580,000 inhabitants and, as we have already seen, 443,420 acres. But perhaps the fairest estimate of London is the natural one of a single mass of buildings, without any unoccupied or unimproved areas. This gives us a solid, compact city of 85,000 acres and 6,000,000 inhabitants; extending from Edmonton on the north to Croydon on the south, and east and west from Woolwich to Ealing. Nor can one doubt, at the present rate of expansion, that even more distant areas than Croydon will eventually be included, although the Scotsman may have been a little "previous" who addressed a letter to a friend at "Bournemouth, S.W."

In the following article we propose to compare with London the sizes of the chief cities of the world and, by printing a black map of each city upon a map of London, to display their relative magnitude at a glance. Let us see, to begin with, how Paris compares with London as represented in the above diagram.

At a coup d'œil we perceive that the French capital is for its population remarkably small in area, a fact clearly owing to its fixed military barriers, which make growth upward rather than outward. Consequently, dwellers in Paris often have six or eight pairs of stairs to climb where the dweller in London has but two. There have been repeated agitations for municipal expansion, but so far nothing has been done to annex the surrounding communes. Paris has a population of 2,700,000, living in 75,000 houses, and an area of over thirty-one square miles. If, however, the agglomeration of houses be taken—including the suburbs—the area is forty-five square miles and the population 3,600,000, although, as yet, this is not actually and geographically Paris.

Berlin, a mere village a century ago, is the third city of Europe in point of population, and its growth since 1870 has been phenomenal, as we shall see. Yet the technical barriers which enclose the city remain precisely what they were more than forty years ago, and Berlin is still as it was in 1861, compressed within twenty-eight square miles, six miles long and five and a half wide. At the close of the Franco-Prussian War Berlin, now the capital of a new empire, became a paradise for builders. Streets of houses appeared almost as if by magic, and the whole aspect of the city became changed. From being the worst lighted, the worst drained, and ugliest capital in Europe it has become one of the finest, cleanest, and handsomest of cities, and its population has more than doubled. Berlin now boasts within its boundaries 1,857,000 inhabitants. But without there is, in Ibsen's phrase, "the younger generation knocking at the door," and Greater Berlin might have a population of 2,430,000, with an area at least treble, extending, indeed, as far as Potsdam. Berlin's actual increase from 1800 to 1900 was 818 per cent., multiplying its population by nine.