saw you last?" asked Fritz.

"If I had fallen in with the craft at sea, Master Fritz, I should not
have been half so much astonished. The sea is the natural element of
ships; we do not find gudgeons in corn fields, nor shoot hares on the
ocean. But it was on land that I hailed the _Nelson_."

"Was it going round the corner of a street that you stumbled upon it,
Willis?" inquired Jack.

"Not exactly; but to make a long story short--"

"When you talk of cutting anything short, we are in for a yarn," said
Jack.

"And you are sure to interrupt him in the middle of it," said Fritz.

"Well, in two words," said Willis, knocking the ashes out of his pipe,
"I was cruising about the shipyards, looking if there was a condemned
craft likely to suit us--some of them had gun-shot wounds in their
timbers, others had been slewed up by a shoal--and, to cut the matter
short--"

"Another yarn," suggested Jack.

"I luffed up beside the hull of a cutter-looking craft that had been
completely gutted. But, changed and dilapidated as that hull is, I
recognized it at once to be that of the _Nelson_. Now do you believe
in miracles?"

"But are you sure, Willis?"

"Suppose you met Ernest or Frank in the street to-morrow, pale,
meagre, and in rags, would you recognize them?"

"Most assuredly."

"Well, by the same token, sailors can always recognize a ship they
have sailed in. They know the form of every plank and the line of
every bend. There are hundreds of marks that get spliced in the
memory, and are never forgotten. But in the present case there is no
room for any doubt, a portion of the figure head is still extant, and
the word _Nelson_ can be made out without spectacles."

"But how did it get there?"

"You know, Master Fritz, it could not have told me, even if I had
taken the trouble to inquire."

"Very true, Willis."

"I was determined, however, to find it out some other way, so I
steered for a cafe near the harbor, where the pilots and long-shore
captains go to play at dominoes. I was in hopes of picking up some
stray waif of information, and, sooth to say, I was not altogether
disappointed."

"Another meeting, I'll be bound," said Jack.

"My falling in with the _Nelson_ astonished you, did it not?"

"Rather."

"Then I'll bet my best pipe that this one will surprise you still
more. You recollect my comrade, Bill, _alias_ Bob, of the _Hoboken_?"

"Yes, perfectly."

"Then I met him."

"What! the man who had b