rs and neutrals."

"But we hope, sir, there'll be no bungling in anything that the
Proserpine undertakes. Nine times in ten an English man-of-war succeeds
when she makes a bold dash in boats against one of these picaroons. This
lugger is so low in the water, too, that it will be like stepping from
one cutter into another to get upon her decks; and then, sir, I suppose,
you don't doubt what Englishmen will do?"

"Aye, Winchester, once on her deck, I make no doubt you'd carry her; but
it may not be so easy as you imagine to get on her deck. Of all duty to
a captain, this of sending off boats is the most unpleasant. He cannot
go in person, and if anything unfortunate turns up he never forgives
himself. Now, it's a very different thing with a fight in which all
share alike, and the good or evil comes equally on all hands."

"Quite true, Captain Cuffe; and yet this is the only chance that the
lieutenants have for getting ahead a little out of the regular course. I
have heard, sir, that you were made commander for cutting out some
coasters in the beginning of the war."

"You have not been misinformed, and a devil of a risk we all ran. Luck
saved us--and that was all. One more fire from a cursed carronade would
have given a Flemish account of the whole party; for, once get a little
under, and you suffer like game in a _batteau_." Captain Cuffe wished to
say _battue_; but, despising foreign languages, he generally made sad
work with them whenever he did condescend to resort to their terms,
however familiar. "This Raoul Yvard is a devil incarnate himself at this
boarding work, and is said to have taken off the head of a master's mate
of the Theseus with one clip of his sword when he retook that ship's
prize in the affair of last winter--that which happened off Alicant!"

"I'll warrant you, sir, the master's mate was some slender-necked chap
that might better have been at home, craning at the girls as they come
out of a church-door. I should like to see Raoul Yvard or any Frenchman
who was ever born take off _my_ head at a single clip!"

"Well, Winchester, to be frank with you, I should _not_. You are a good
first; and that is an office in which a man usually wants all the head
he has; and I'm not at all certain you have any to spare. I wonder if
one could not hire a felucca, or something larger than a boat, in this
place, by means of which we could play a trick upon this fellow, and
effect our purpose quite as well as by go