r
him, in sea-boots and oilskins, towered Captain Colenso--rejuvenated,
transfigured; his body swaying easily to every lurch and plunge of the
brig, his face entirely composed and cheerful, his salt-rimmed eyes
contracted a little, but alert and even boyishly bright. An heroical
figure of a man!

My heart warmed to Captain Colenso; and next morning, as we bowled
forward with a temperate breeze on our quarter, I took occasion to
compliment him on the _Lady Nepean's_ behaviour.

"Ay," said he abstractedly; "the old girl made pretty good weather of
it."

"I suppose we were never in what you would call real danger?"

He faced me with sudden earnestness. "Mr. Ducie, I have served the Lord
all my days, and He will not sink the ship that carries my honour."
Giving me no time to puzzle over this, he changed his tone. "You'll
scarce believe it, but in her young days she had a very fair turn of
speed."

"Her business surely demands it still," said I. Only an arrant landsman
could have reconciled the lumbering old craft with any idea of
privateering; but this was only my theory, and I clung to it.

"We shall not need to test her."

"You rely on your guns, then?" I had observed the care lavished on
these. They were of brass, and shone like the door-plates in the main
cabin.

"Why, as to that," he answered evasively, "I've had to before now. The
last voyage I commanded her--it was just after the war broke out with
America--we fell in with a schooner off the Banks; we were outward bound
for Halifax. She carried twelve nine-pounder carronades and two long
nines, beside a big fellow on a traverse; and we had the guns you
see--eight nine-pounders and one chaser of the same calibre--post-office
guns, we call them. But we beat her off after two hours of it."

"And saved the mails?"

He rose abruptly (we had seated ourselves on a couple of hen-coops under
the break of the poop). "You will excuse me. I have an order to give";
and he hurried up the steps to the quarter-deck.

It must have been ten days after this that he stopped me in one of my
eternal listless promenades and invited me to sit beside him again.

"I wish to take your opinion, Mr. Ducie. You have not, I believe, found
salvation? You are not one of us, as I may say?"

"Meaning by 'us'?"

"I and mine, sir, are unworthy followers of the Word, as preached by
John Wesley."

"Why, no; that is not my religion."

"But you are a gentleman." I bowed. "And on a poin