trange treason and desertion go unpunished. These fellows talk and
reason more than is always known aft."

"I've thought of all that, Winchester. I dare say you have heard of such
a thing as a King's evidence? Well, here has Raoul Yvard been tried and
found guilty as a spy; Bolt having been a witness. A few remarks
judiciously made may throw everything off on that tack; and appearances
will be preserved, so far as discipline is concerned."

"Yes, sir, that might be done, it's true; but an uneasy berth will the
poor devil have of it, if the people fancy he has been a King's
evidence. Men of that class hate a traitor worse than they do crime,
Captain Cuffe, and they'll ride Bolt down like the main tack."

"Perhaps not; and if they do, 'twill not be as bad as hanging. The
fellow must think himself luckily out of a bad scrape, and thank God for
all his mercies. You can see that he suffers nothing unreasonable, or
greatly out of the way. So send an order to the master-at-arms to knock
the irons off the chap, and send him to duty, before you turn in,
Winchester."

This settled the matter as to Ithuel, for the moment, at least. Cuffe
was one of those men who was indisposed to push things too far, while he
found it difficult to do his whole duty. There was not an officer in the
Proserpine, who had any serious doubts about the true country of Bolt,
though there was not one officer among them all who would openly avow
it. There was too much "granite" about Ithuel to permit Englishmen long
to be deceived, and that very language on which the impressed man so
much prided himself would have betrayed his origin, had other evidence
been wanting. Still there was a tenacity about an English ship of war,
in that day, that did not easily permit an athletic hand to escape its
grasp, when it had once closed upon him. In a great and enterprising
service, like that of Great Britain, an _esprit de corps_ existed in the
respective ships, which made them the rivals of each other, and men
being the great essentials of efficiency, a single seaman was
relinquished with a reluctance that must have been witnessed, fully to
be understood. Cuffe consequently could not make up his mind to do full
justice to Ithuel, while he could not make up his mind to push injustice
so far as trial and punishment. Nelson had left him a discretion, as has
been said, and this he chose to use in the manner just mentioned.

Had the case of the New Hampshire man been fa