over.

"Then we made our acquaintance; and, although his colour is no whiter than
the back of a whale, I care not who knows it, after master Harry, there is
no man living who has an honester way with him, or in whose company I take
greater satisfaction. To be sure, your Honour, the fellow is something
contradictory and has a great opinion of his strength and thinks his equal
is not to be found at a weather-earing or in the bunt of a topsail; but
then he is no better than a black, and one is not to be too particular in
looking into the faults of such as are not actually his fellow creatures."

"No, no; that would be uncharitable in the extreme."

"The very words the chaplain used to let fly aboard the 'Brunswick!' It is
a great thing to have schooling, your Honour; since, if it does nothing
else, it fits a man for a boatswain, and puts him in the track of steering
the shortest course to heaven. But, as I was saying, there was I and
Guinea shipmates and in a reasonable way friends, for five years more; and
then the time arrived when we met with the mishap of the wreck in the
West-Indies."

"What wreck?" demanded his officer.

"I beg your Honour's pardon; I never swing my head-yards till I'm sure
the ship won't luff back into the wind; and, before I tell the particulars
of the wreck, I will overrun my ideas, to see that nothing is forgotten
that should of right be first mentioned."

The Rover, who saw, by the uneasy glances that she cast aside, and by the
expression of her countenance how impatient his companion was becoming for
a sequel that approached so tardily, and how much she dreaded an
interruption, made a significant sign to her to permit the straight-going
tar to take his own course, as the best means of coming at the facts they
both longed so much to hear. Left to himself, Fid soon took the necessary
review of the transactions, in his own quaint manner; and, having happily
found that nothing which he considered as germain to the present relation
was omitted, he proceeded at once to the more material, and what was to
his auditors by far the most interesting, portion of his narrative.

"Well, as I was telling your Honour," he continued, "Guinea was then a
maintopman, and I was stationed in the same place aboard the 'Proserpine,'
a quick-going two-and-thirty, when we fell in with a bit of a smuggler,
between the islands and the Spanish Main; and so the Captain made a prize
of her, and ordered her into port; fo