AND THE PITCH HOT.

"He is born for all weathers;
Let the winds blow high or blow low,
His duty keeps him to his tethers,
And where the gale drives he must go.

"The wind blew hard, the sea ran high,
The dingy scud drove 'cross the sky,
All was safe lashed, the bowl was slung,
When careless thus Ned Halyard sung."

Said the commodore, with a knowing shake of his head, "Ah! gentlemen, if
the fellow, whoever he was, who was creeping away so nimbly in that
lazy-looking brigantine, with English colors at the peak, had written
down in detail what he had been doing on that secluded nook of an
island, and sent the information off to us in a letter, we could have
read it without breaking the seal. We could have told him that that
little scoundrel with one eye had purposely misled us, and had given him
warning to quit his strong-hold; and that he had hastily got his plunder
and people on board his vessel, blown up and set fire to his nest, and
that the brigantine he was now on board of was once upon a time the
notorious schooner 'Centipede!' Yes, we knew all that by instinct."

Piron sat with his eyes fixed upon the speaker, taking in every word as
it fell from his lips, the teeth set close together and the hand
clenched which supported his head on the table. Paddy Burns and Tom
Stewart, too, looked eagerly that way, as did Harry Darcantel, while
Hardy sipped his wine and puffed his cigar leisurely, as if he knew the
tale by heart.

"It had fallen nearly calm. A light air perhaps in the royals, though
nothing down below. But as we hauled down our colors at sunset, which
had been hoisted to let the fellow know who we were, down came his also.
Then there we both lay looking at each other. He knew by instinctive
experience that we were the American corvette 'Scourge,' mounting
eighteen twenty-four-pounder carronades and two long eighteens in the
bow ports; for the brigantine had once or twice determined their exact
calibres, and that we were the fastest cruiser, with the wind a point or
two free, that had been seen in the West Indies for twenty years.

[Illustration]

"Yes, he knew all about us, but he was still a little in doubt
whether we knew all about _him_. He lay--unfortunately, perhaps, for
him--a little beyond the range of our long guns, or else he might have
been spared a good deal of time and uneasiness, and we a long chase and
considerable risk. Ah! as the night came