[vii]

[vii]

List of Illustrations

[1]

[1]

CHAPTER I PLAYING WITH POWDER

How those yards seesawed up and down with the rolling of the ship, and the mastheads, they dipped too, quite as if they might pitch down upon a body! Miles Rigdale, standing with legs[2] craftily planted and head thrown well back, stared and stared at their measured movement till, dizzy with the feeling that the great spars were tottering loose, he was glad to straighten his aching neck once more.

[2]

"Did you see a goose, all roasted, flying for your mouth?" Francis Billington called from the waist of the ship, where he perched jauntily upon the bulwark.

Sauntering from his place near the companion way, Miles halted beside the speaker; not that he had a great liking for Francis Billington, but he was a sociable lad, who must talk to some one, and, as the bleak air had driven the women and children into the great cabin, while the men were absent,—the leaders conferring in the roundhouse and the lesser men seeking firewood on shore,—he could for the moment find no comrade save young Billington.

The latter was an unprepossessing lad, stunted and small for his fourteen years, with elfish eyes which he now turned sharply on Miles. "I take it, Jack Cooke is ill, and Giles Hopkins has packed you about your business, that you've come to spend the time with me," he suggested disagreeably.

"I take it, maybe you've spoke the truth," Miles answered unruffled, as he propped his chin on his fists and braced his elbows against the bulwark.

[3]

[3]

Gazing thus northward, he could see all about him green hills, wooded to the water's edge, now higher, now lower, as the ship mounted upon the waves, and the strip of sand beach, 

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