Here, during the pause, Bill put out his finger and thumb to snuff the candle, but his hand shook—­he snuffed it out, and we were all left in darkness.  I can hardly describe the feeling which appeared to pervade the whole of our party.  Every one was shuffling and crowding with their shoulders, but still no one moved from his place.

“Well,” said Dick, the narrator, in a quiet subdued voice, “why don’t one of you go and fetch a light?  Come, jump up, Bill, you topped it out.”

“Ay, ay,” replied Bill, evidently shaking; “where’s the candle?”

“Here,” said one of the boys, handing it to him.

“Well, then, jump up yourself, you young whelp, you’re younger than me.”

“I didn’t put it out,” replied the boy, whining.

“Up immediately, or I’ll break every rib in your body,” replied Bill.

The boy, who was terribly frightened, got up at this threat, and began to ascend the ladder; he was about three steps up, when we heard from the deck a horrible miaw! The boy gave a scream of terror, and fell down on his back among us all, smashing the glass and flattening the tin cans against the men’s legs, who halloed with pain.  At last there was a dead silence again, and I could plainly hear the loud throbbing of more than one heart.

“Come,” said Dick again, “what was the fool frightened about?  Look for the candle, some of you.”

At last Bill found it in his breast, broke in two and half melted away, and was proceeding for a light when the carpenter stepped to the hatch with his lantern, and said, “Why, you’re all in the dark there, shipmates!  Here, take my lantern.”

I may as well here observe that the carpenter had been listening to the story as he sat by the hatchway on deck, and it was he who had favored us with the miaw which had so frightened the boy.  As soon as the lantern had been received and the candle relighted, Dick recommenced.

“Well, my lads, I said that the captain went down below, brought up his gun, and let fly at the cat, and then—­well, and then—­the cat gave a loud shriek, and falls down upon the deck.  The captain walks forward to it, takes it up by the tail, brings it aft, and shies it among the men.

“‘There, you fools,’ said he, ’it is the cat himself; will you believe your own eyes?’

“And sure enough, so it was; for, you see, when Jim tumbled overboard, it being then dark, and we so busy with Jim, we did not look after the cat, and so it must have crawled up the cable and run down into the hold while the hatches were off; and all that noise heard aft must have been the brute chasing the rats, I suppose.  Jim may have heard, but he could not have seen, the cat; that was all fancy and fright.  You know how long a cat will live without much food, and so the animal was pretty quiet after it had killed all the rats.  Then when the gale came on, and the upper part of the cargo fetched way a little, for it was loosely stowed, we suppose that it got jammed now and then with the rolling, and that made it miaw; and then, when we took off the hatches to look at the cargo, after we had sprung the leak, the cat, o’ course, came out, and a pretty skeleton it was, as you may suppose.  Now do you understand the whole of it?”