130 THE BOY CAPTAIN.

Turks, who have a distrust of bells, use drums for this
purpose. The tolling for church, single strokes separated
by a short interval, cannot be mistaken for the rapid,
irregular fire-alarm, nor can either of these be confused
with the triple fog signal. The time bells are different
from any of these; they are sounded in pairs with a short
interval, and the odd number, if there is one, is sounded
last.”

At this moment Ben’s attention was attracted to some
work which one of the men was doing in a slovenly man-
ner, and, by the time he had called the first officer’s atten-
tion to the matter, he was no longer in the mood for
“lecturing.”

Miss Dunham did not remain on deck many moments
after this. When the young captain attempted to take
up the conversation again, she could see his mind was
on his vessel to the exclusion of everything else, and
thought it best to go below, leaving Ben pacing the quar-
ter-deck nervously, as if his very life depended upon
taking a certain number of steps in a given number of
minutes.

Thursday morning found the little brig becalmed.

When the captain had turned in, simply because fatigue
of body forced him against his inclination, the wind was
fined down to such an extent that he had every reason to
expect it would soon die away entirely, and when he came
on deck some of the men whose watch it was below
were amusing themselves by trying to entice a murderous
looking shark, which had been circling around the ship in