etween this and the yard-arm, and it may save you some
su-perfluous lying if I tell you that in August, last year, the _Lady
Nepean_ packet, Captain Colenso, outward bound for Halifax, met the
_Hitchcock_ privateer off the Great Bank of Newfoundland, and beat her
off after two hours' fighting. You were on board of her?"

"I tended the stern gun."

"_Very_ good. The next day, being still off the Banks, she fell in with
Commodore Rodgers, of the United States frigate _President_, and
surrendered to him right away."

"We sank the mails."

"You did, my man. Notwithstanding which, that lion-hearted hero treated
you with the forbearance of a true-born son of freedom." Captain
Seccombe's voice took an oratorical roll. "He saw that you were
bleeding from your fray. He fed you at his hospitable board; he would
not suffer you to be de-nuded of the least trifle. Nay, what did he
promise?--but to send your father and his crew and passengers back to
England in their own ship, on their swearing, upon their sacred honour,
that she should return to Boston harbour with an equal number of
American prisoners from England. Your father swore to that upon the Old
and New Testaments, severally and conjointly; and the _Lady Nepean_
sailed home for all the world like a lamb from the wolf's jaws, with a
single American officer inside of her. And how did your dog-damned
Government respect this noble confidence? In a way, sir, that would have
brought a blush to the cheek of a low-down attorney's clerk. They
re-pudiated. Under shelter of a notification that no exchange of
prisoners on the high seas would count as valid, this perjured tyrant
and his myrmidons went back on their captain's oath, and kept the brig;
and the American officer came home empty-handed. Your father was told to
resume his duties, immortal souls being cheap in a country where they
press seamen's bodies. And now, Mister First Officer Colenso, perhaps
you'll explain how he had the impudence to come within two hundred miles
of a coast where his name smelt worse than vermin."

"He was coming back, sir."

"Hey?"

"Back to Boston, sir. You see, Cap'n, father wasn't a rich man, but he
had saved a trifle. He didn't go back to the service, though told that
he might. It preyed on his mind. We was all very fond of father; being
all one family, as you might say, though some of us had wives and
families, and some were over to Redruth, to the mines."

"Stick to the point."

"But