t of honour--do you
think, sir, that as a servant of the King one should obey his earthly
master even to doing what conscience forbids?"

"That might depend--"

"But on a point of honour, sir? Suppose that you had pledged your
private word, in a just, nay, a generous bargain, and were commanded to
break it. Is there anything could override that?"

I thought of my poor old French colonel and his broken _parole_; and was
silent. "Can you not tell me the circumstances?" I suggested at length.

He had been watching me eagerly. But he shook his head now, sighed, and
drew a small Bible from his pocket. "I am not a gentleman, sir. I laid
it before the Lord: but," he continued naively, "I wanted to learn how a
gentleman would look at it." He searched for a text, turning the pages
with long, nervous fingers; but desisted with another sigh, and, a
moment later, was summoned away to solve some difficulty with the ship's
reckoning.

My respect for the captain had been steadily growing. He was so amiable,
too, so untiringly courteous; he bore his sorrow--whatever the cause
might be--with so gentle a resignation; that I caught myself pitying
even while I cursed him and his crew for their inhuman reticence.

But my respect vanished pretty quickly next day. We were seated at
dinner in the main cabin--the captain at the head of the table, and, as
usual, crumbling his biscuit in a sort of waking trance--when Mr. Reuben
Colenso, his eldest son and acting mate, put his solemn face in at the
door with news of a sail about four miles distant on the lee bow. I
followed the captain on deck. The stranger, a schooner, had been
lying-to when first descried in the hazy weather; but was standing now
to intercept us. At two miles' distance--it being then about two
o'clock--I saw that she hoisted British colours.

"But that flag was never sewn in England," Captain Colenso observed,
studying her through his glass. His cheeks, usually of that pallid ivory
colour proper to old age, were flushed with a faint carmine, and I
observed a suppressed excitement in all his crew. For my part, I
expected no better than to play target in the coming engagement: but it
surprised me that he served out no cutlasses, ordered up no powder from
the hold, and, in short, took no single step to clear the _Lady Nepean_
for action or put his men in fighting trim. The most of them were
gathered about the fore-hatch, to the total neglect of their guns, which
they had be