On went Bob Roberts, declaring how the flag waved on every sea, and should never float over a slave, throwing so much enthusiasm into the song that to a man all rose, and literally roared the chorus, ending with three cheers, and one cheer more for the poor girls; and as Bob Roberts stood upon the table flushed and hot, he felt quite a hero, and ready to go on that very night and rescue half-a-dozen more poor slave girls from tyranny, if they would only appeal to him for help. "Three cheers for Mr Roberts," shouted Dick, the sailor, as Billy Mustard was confiding to a friend that "a fiddle soon got outer toon in that climate." "Yes, and three cheers for Mr Long," shouted Bob. "Come up here, Tom, old man; you did more than I did." Tom Long was prevailed upon to mount the table, where he bowed again and again as the men cheered; when, as a lull came in the cheering, Billy Mustard, whose fiddle had been musically whispering to itself in answer to the well-drawn bow, suddenly made himself heard in the strain of "Rule Britannia," which was sung in chorus with vigour, especially when the singers declared that Britons never, _never_, NEVER should be slaves; which rang out far over the attap roofs of the drowsy campong. So satisfied were the singers that they followed up with the National Anthem, which was just concluded when the resident sent one of his servants to express a hope that the noise was nearly at an end. "Well, I think we have been going it," said Bob Roberts, jumping down. "Come along, Tom. I've got two splendid cigars--real Manillas." Tom Long, to whom this public recognition had been extremely painful, was only too glad to join his companion on a form beneath a tree, where the two genuine Manillas were lit, and for a quarter of an hour the youths smoked on complacently, when just as the exultation of the public singing was giving way to a peculiar sensation of depression and sickness, and each longed to throw away half his cigar, but did not dare, Adam Gray came up to where they were seated, gradually growing pale and wan. "Ah, Gray," said the ensign, "what is it?" "The major, sir, requests that you will favour him with your company directly." "My company?" cried the ensign; "what's the matter?" "Don't know, sir; but I think it's something about those slave girls. And Captain Horton requested me to tell you to come too, sir," he continued, turning to Bob Roberts. "We're going to get promotion, I know, Tom," said the middy. "No, no," said the ensign, dolefully, "it's a good wigging." Bob Roberts, although feeling far from exalted now, did not in anywise believe in the possibility of receiving what his companion euphoniously termed a "wigging," and with a good deal of his customary independent, and rather impudent, swagger he followed the orderly to a cool lamp-lit room, where sat in solemn conclave, the resident, Major Sandars, and Captain Horton.