While we have been digressing, the turtles have been dumped into the great moat that surrounds the fort, and, stretched upon the deck, the sable crew are fast asleep.  The writer has been watching a large three-master moving along two or three miles beyond Loggerhead Key.  Our attention is distracted for some time, and, upon looking again, we find that she has not moved, and impart the fact to Sandy, who looks steadily through his long spy-glass, evidently made up of several others; then, gazing intently over the top, he brings all hands to their feet by the cry of “Wrack!” For Sandy is a licensed “wracker.”

The man-of-war orders now uttered find no place in any known code, and in a moment the Bull Pup becomes a scene of unwonted excitement.  The jib, mainsail, and gaff topsail are hauled up to their very tautest; finally, the cable is slipped, and then old Sandy for the first time looks around.  The boys fail to suppress a loud guffaw, and forthwith dodge the flying tiller.  The old man in the excitement had forgotten an important factor in the navigation of sailing-craft,—­namely, wind.  It was a dead calm, and had been all day, and there, almost within reach, was a fortune,—­hard and fast on the outer reef.

C.F.  HOLDER.

* * * * *

ROUGHING IT IN PALESTINE.

Mohammed can do less than Mammon to-day for the infidel’s ease and comfort in Palestine.  The unholy little yellow god works his modern miracles even in the Holy Land.  You have but to speak the word, and show your purse or letter of credit, in Beirut or Jaffa, and, as suddenly as if you had rubbed Aladdin’s lamp, a retinue will be at your door to do your bidding.  First a dragoman, with great baggy trousers of silk, a little gold-embroidered jacket over a colored vest, a girdle whose most ample folds form an arsenal of no mean proportions, and over the swarthy face, reposing among the black, glossy curls of a well-poised head, the red Turkish fez; or, if Ali has an ambition to be thought possessed of much piety of the orthodox Islamic type, the fez gives way to a turban, white, or green if he be a pilgrim from Mecca.  Behind this important personage, as much a feature of the East as the Sphinx or the Pyramids, stand at a respectful distance, making profound salutations, a cook,—­probably a Greek or Italian,—­three muleteers, and a donkey-boy.  Behind them still are two horses,—­alas! not blooded Arabs madly champing their bits,—­one for yourself and the other for Ali.  Three mules bear patiently on their backs, always more or less raw, the canvas and poles of the two tents.  In the rear is a small donkey, covered all over with culinary utensils, nibbling fat cactus-leaves with undisguised satisfaction.  For a daily expenditure scarcely greater than is necessary to keep soul and body together at a fashionable New York hotel on the American plan, you become the commander of this company,