Tom Finchs Monkey, and how he dined with the Admiral | Page 7

they expected during the period that hostilities lasted between the two rival South American republics at the time of which I speak; then wars between Chili and Peru, and the rest of these very independent states, being of as periodic occurrence of the yellow fever in the Gulf of Mexico!
Poor Jocko, as I hinted at before, came finally to grief in a very sad way.
We were chasing a suspicious looking blockade-runner, a short time after he had his remarkable invitation to dine with the admiral; our engines were moving a little more rapidly than usual; and, Jocko, who was perched on the skylight above, was looking at them with the most intense interest.
All at once, the platform on which he was resting slipped, and the talented monkey fell into the engine-room, in the midst of the machinery--there was one sharp agonised squeak, and the last page of poor Jocko's history was marked with the word Finis.
CHAPTER TWO.
ESCAPE OF THE "CRANKY JANE."
A STORY ABOUT AN ICEBERG.
One day, some three years ago or so, I chanced to be down at Sheerness dockyard, and, while there, utilised my time by inspecting the various vessels scattered about this naval repository. Some of the specimens exhibited all the latest "improvements" in marine architecture, being built to develop every destructive property--huge floating citadels and infernal machines; while others were old, and now useless, types of the past "wooden walls of old England," ships that once had braved the perils of the main in all the panoply of their spreading canvas, and whose broadsides had thundered at Trafalgar, making music in the ears of the immortal Nelson and his compeers.
Amongst the different craft that caught my eye--old hulks, placidly resting their weary timbers on the muddy bosom of the Medway, dismantled, dismasted, and having pent-houses like the roofs of barns over their upper decks in lieu of awnings; armour-plated cruisers, in the First Class Steam Reserve, ready to be commissioned at a moment's notice; and ships in various degrees of construction, on the building slips and in dry dock--was a vessel which seemed to be undergoing the operation of "padding her hull," if the phrase be admissible as explaining what I noticed about her, the planking, from which the copper sheathing had been previously stripped, being doubled, apparently, and protected in weak places by additional beams and braces being fixed to the sides. Of course, I may be all wrong in this, but it was what seemed to me to be the case.
On inquiry I learnt that the vessel was the Alert, which it may be recollected was one of the two ships in the Arctic expedition commanded by Sir George Nares. I wondered why so many workmen were busy about her, hammering, sawing, planing, riveting, fitting and boring holes with giant gimlets, so I asked the reason for this unwonted activity, when it might have been reasonably supposed that the vessel had played her part in the service, and might have been allowed to pass the remainder of her days afloat, in an honourable retreat up the estuary on which the dockyard stands.
But, no.
I was informed that the Alert had yet many more days of Arctic experience in store for her, our government having placed her at the disposal of the United States authorities to take part in the relief of Lieutenant Greeley's Polar expedition.--I may here mention in parenthesis that the vessel subsequently successfully performed the task committed to her substantial frame; and it was mainly by means of the stores deposited by her in a cache in Smith Sound that the survivors of the expedition were enabled to be transported home again in safety.-- I, really, only mention the vessel's name on account of the man who told me about her--a gentleman who entered into conversation with me about the cold regions of the north generally, and of the escapes of ships from icebergs in particular.
He was a seafaring man. I could see that at a glance, although he was not one I should have thought who had donned her majesty's uniform, for he lacked that dapper look that the blue-jackets of the service are usually distinguished by; but he was a veritable old salt, or "shell- back," none the less, sniffing of the ocean all over, and having his face seamed with those little venous streaks of pink (as if he indulged in a dab of rouge on the sly occasionally) which variegate the tanned countenances of men exposed to all the rigours of the elements, and who encounter with an equal mind the freezing blast of the frozen sea or the blazing sun of Africa.
I told this worthy that once, when on a voyage in one of the Inman line of steamers from Halifax to Liverpool, I had gone--or rather the vessel