ds, having so many away in prizes;
and the boat will be useful, in place of the one we had smashed up
in the gale. Let a couple of men throw the nets and things
overboard, and then run her up to the davits."

Then he said to Terence: "Prisoners! Go forward and make yourself
useful;" and he pointed towards the forecastle.

Terence gave a yell of despair, threw his hat down on the deck and,
in a volley of Portuguese, begged the captain to let them go. The
latter, however, only waved his hand angrily; and two sailors,
coming up, seized Terence by the arms and dragged him forward. Ryan
was called upon deck, and also ordered forward. He too remonstrated,
but was cut short by a threatening gesture from the captain.

For a time they preserved an appearance of deep dejection, Terence
tugging his hair as if in utter despair, till Ryan whispered:

"For heaven's sake, Terence, don't go on like that, or I shall
break out in a shout of laughter."

"It is monstrous, it is inhuman!" Terence exclaimed, in Portuguese.
"Thus to seize harmless fishermen, who have so narrowly escaped
drowning; the sea is less cruel than these men. They have taken our
boat, too, our dear good boat. What will our mothers think, when we
do not return? That we have been swallowed up by the sea. How they
will watch for us, but in vain!"

Fortunately for the success of their story, the lugger hailed from
a northern French port and, as not one on board understood either
Spanish or Portuguese, they had no idea that the latter was the
language in which the prisoners were speaking. After an hour of
pretended despair, both rose from the deck on which they had been
sitting and, on an order being given to trim the sails, went to the
ropes and aided the privateersmen to haul at them and, before the
end of the day, were doing duty as regular members of the crew.

"They are active young fellows," the captain said to his first
mate, as he watched the supposed Spaniards making themselves
useful. "It was lucky for them that they had a fair store of
provisions and water in their boat. We are very short handed, and
they will be useful. I would have let them go if it had not been
for the boat but, as we have only one left that can swim, it was
too lucky a find to give up."

The craft had been heading north when Ryan had first seen her, and
she held that course all day. Terence gathered from the talk of the
sailors that they were bound for Brest, to which port she belo