Strange to say, his tongue did not aid in the identification of his nationality. It was not often heard; but even when it was, its utterance would have defied the most linguistic ear; and neither from that, nor other circumstance known to them, could any one of his three companions lay claim to him as a countryman. When he spoke--a rare occurrence already hinted--it was with a liberal misplacement of "h's" that should have proclaimed him an Englishman of purest Cockney type. At the same time his language was freely interspersed with Irish "ochs" and "shures"; while the "wees" and "bonnys", oft recurring in his speech, should have proved him a sworn Scotchman. From his countenance you might have drawn your own inference and believed him any of the three; but not from his tongue. Neither in its accent, nor the words that fell from him, could you have told which of the three kingdoms had the honour of giving him birth. Whichever it was, it had supplied to the Service a true British tar: for although you might mistake the man in other respects, his appearance forbade all equivocation upon this point. His costume was that of a common sailor, and, as a matter of course, his name was "Bill". But as he had only been one among many "Bills" rated on the man-o'-war's books (now gone to the bottom of the sea) he carried a distinctive appellation, no doubt earned by his greater age. Aboard the frigate he had been known as "Old Bill"; and the soubriquet still attached to him upon the spar. CHAPTER THREE. THE SERPENT'S TONGUE. The presence of a ship's topsail-yard thus bestridden plainly proclaimed that a ship had been wrecked--although no other evidence of the wreck was within sight. Not a speck was visible upon the sea to the utmost verge of the horizon; and if a ship had foundered within that field of view, her boats and every vestige of the wreck must either have gone to the bottom, or in some other direction than that taken by the topsail-yard, which supported the three midshipmen and the sailor Bill. A ship had gone to the bottom--a British man-of-war,--a corvette on her way to her cruising ground, on the Guinea coast. Beguiled by the dangerous current that sets towards the seaboard of the Saara, in a dark stormy night she had struck upon a sand-bank; got bilged; and sank almost instantly among the breakers. Boats had been got out, and men had been seen crowding hurriedly into them; others had taken to such rafts, or spars, as could be detached from the sinking vessel; but whether any of these, or the overladen boats, had succeeded in reaching the shore, was a question which none of the four astride the topsail-yard were able to answer.