Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England Hair-Breadth Escapes, by Rev H.C. Adams. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPES, BY REV H.C. ADAMS. DEDICATION. To the Rev G.G. Ross, D.C.L., Principal of St Andrew's College, Grahamstown, Cape Colony. My dear Ross, I dedicate this Tale to you for two reasons: first, because it is, in some sort, a souvenir of a very interesting visit to South Africa, rendered pleasant by the kind hospitality shown us by so many in Grahamstown, and by no one more than yourself. Secondly and chiefly, because it gives me the opportunity of expressing publicly to you my sympathy in the noble work you are carrying on, under the gravest difficulties--difficulties which (I am persuaded) many would help to lighten, who possess the means of doing so, were they but acquainted with them. H.C. Adams. Dry Sandford, _August 1876_. CHAPTER ONE. THE HOOGHLY--OLD JENNINGS--SHORT-HANDED--THE THREE BOYS--FRANK--NICK-- ERNEST--DR LAVIE--TENERIFFE. It was the afternoon of a day late in the November of the year 1805. His Majesty's ship _Hooghly_, carrying Government despatches and stores, as well as a few civil and military officers of the East India Company's service, was running easily before the trade wind, which it had caught within two days' sail of Madeira--and was nearing the region of the tropics. The weather, which had been cold and stormy, when the passengers left England some weeks before, had been gradually growing bright and genial; until for the last three or four days all recollections of fog and chill had vanished from their minds. The sky was one vast dome of the richest blue, unbroken by a single cloud, only growing somewhat paler of hue as it approached the horizon line. The sea stretched out into the distance--to the east, an endless succession of purple wavelets, tipped here and there with white; to the west, where the sun was slowly sinking in all its tropical glory, one seething mass of molten silver. It was indeed a glorious sight, and most of our readers will be of opinion that those who had the opportunity of beholding it, would--for the time at least--have bestowed little attention on anything else. But if they had been at sea as long as Captain Wilmore, they might perhaps have thought differently. Captain Wilmore had been forty years a sailor; and whether given, or not given, to admire brilliant skies and golden sunsets in his early youth, he had at all events long ceased to trouble himself about them. He was at the outset of this story sitting in his cabin--having just parted from his first lieutenant, Mr Grey-- and was receiving with a very dubious face the report of an old quartermaster. A fine mastiff was seated by the captain's chair, apparently listening with much gravity to what passed.