your
judgment. Upon the same ship with myself, there was a gentleman
volunteer, and he came with the name of a skilful swordsman. He had
been in many duels and thought no more of standing face to face with
another man, and he cared not who he was, than taking his breakfast.
You would have said that he of all men would have been the coolest on
the deck and would have given no heed to danger. Yet the moment the
bullets whizzed he ran into the hold, and for all his land mettle he
was a coward on the sea. When everyone laughed at him and he was
becoming a thing of scorn, he asked to be tied to the mainmast, so
that he might not be able to escape. So it comes into my mind,"
concluded Carlton, "to ask this question of you gallant gentlemen, Is
courage what Sir Walter Raleigh calls it, if I mind me rightly, the
art of the philosophy of quarrel, or must it not be the issue of
principle and rest upon a steady basis of religion? I should like to
ask those artists in murder, meaning no offence to any gentleman
present who may have been out in a duel, to tell me this, why one who
has run so many risks at his sword's point should be turned into a
coward at the whizz of a cannon ball?"

"There is not much puzzle in it as it seems to me," answered Rooke;
"every man that is worth calling such has so much courage, see you,
but there are different kinds. As Mr. Carlton well called it, there is
land mettle, and that good swordsman was not afraid when his feet
were on the solid ground, then there is sea mettle, and faith he had
not much of that, a trifle too little, I grant you, for a gentleman.
So it is in measure with us all I never saw the horse I would not
mount or the wall within reason I would not take, but I cannot put my
foot in a little boat and feel it rising on the sea without a tremble
at the heart. That is how I read the riddle."

"What I hold," burst in Collier, "is that everything depends on a
man's blood. If it be pure and he has come of a good stock, he cannot
play the coward any more than a lion can stalk like a fox. Land or
sea, whatever tremble be at the heart he faces his danger as a
gentleman should, though there be certain kinds of danger, as has been
said, which are worse for some men than others. But I take it your
gentleman volunteer, though he might be a good player with the sword,
was, if you knew it, a mongrel."

"If you mean by mongrel humbly born," broke in Venner, "saving your
presence, you are talking