Blown to bits; bits so inconceivably, so ineffably¹, so "microscopically²" small that—but let us not anticipate.

About the darkest hour of a very dark night, in the year 1883, a large brig lay becalmed on the Indian Ocean, not far from that region of the Eastern world which is associated in some minds with spices, volcanoes, coffee, and piratical junks, namely, the Malay Archipelago.

Two men slowly paced the brig's quarter-deck for some time in silence, as if the elemental quietude which prevailed above and below had infected them. Both men were broad, and apparently³ strong. One of them was tall; the other short. More than this the feeble light of the binnacle-lamp failed to reveal.

"Father," said the tall man to the short one, "I do like to hear the gentle pattering of the reef points on the sails; it is so suggestive of peace and rest. Doesn't it strike you so?"

"Can't say it does, lad," replied the short man, in a voice which, naturally mellow⁵ and hearty⁶, had been rendered nautically⁷ harsh and gruff by years of persistent⁸ roaring in the teeth of wind and weather. "More suggestive to me of lost time and lee-way."

The son laughed lightly, a pleasant, kindly⁹, soft laugh, in keeping with the scene and hour.

"Why, father," he resumed after a brief pause, "you are so sternly practical that you drive all the sentiment out of a fellow. I had almost risen to the regions of poetry just now, under the pleasant influences of nature."

"Glad I got hold of 'ee, lad, before you rose," growled¹⁰ the captain of the brig—for such the short man was. "When a young fellow like you gets up into the clouds o' poetry, he's like a man in a balloon—scarce knows how he got there; doesn't know very well how he's to get down, an' has no more idea where he's goin' to, or what he's drivin' at, than the man in the moon. Take my advice, lad, an' get out o'

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