Why, he was once chased all the way from Hainan to Swatow by pirates." "Was he ?" I cried, excited too at this.

"Do tell us, Weeks, all about it." "There ain't anything to tell," said he nonchalantly, but pleased, I could see, at putting Tom Jerrold into the shade for the moment; "only, that they beat 'em off as they were trying to board father's ship off Swatow, when a vessel of war, that was just then coming down from Formosa, caught the beggars in the very act of piracy, before they could run ashore and escape up the hills--as they always do, my dad said, whenever our blue-jackets are after them." "And then--" I asked, on his pausing at this interesting point, after rousing Jerrold's and my interest in that way, a thing which was quite in keeping with Sam Weeks' character, his disposition being naturally an exasperating one, to other people, that is,--"what happened then ?" "Oh, nothing," he replied coolly; adding after another tantalising pause, "I recollect, though, now, dad said as how the beggars were all taken to Canton and given over to the mandarins for trial." "Yes," said I, "and--" "Well, some of 'em were tortured in bamboo cages, he told me, and he said, too, that they made awful faces in their agony," Weeks continued, his face looking as if he enjoyed the reminiscence; "while the others, twenty in number, were all put up in a row kneeling on the ground, with their pigtails tied up over their heads so as to leave their necks bare, and the executioner who had a double-bladed sword like a butcher's cleaver, sliced off their heads as if they were so many carrots.

It must have been jolly to see 'em rolling on the ground." "You cold-blooded brute!" exclaimed Tom Jerrold; but I only shuddered and said nothing.

"You seem to revel in it!" "If you'd heard all my dad told me of what those beggars do to the people they capture, sometimes making them walk the plank and shutting them up in the hold of their own ship and burning them in a lump, you'd be glad of their being punished when caught! I only hope they won't seize our vessel; but, I tell you what, I'm certain we haven't seen the last of those two craft yet.

They'll come back after us at nightfall, just you see!" "By Jove, I hope not!" said Tom, impressed by Weeks' communication all the more from the fact of his not being generally talkative, always "keeping himself to himself" as the saying goes.