d not mind being beat by Lyndsay, but his pride was deeply
mortified, whenever Flora won the game.

"A man may beat a man," he would grumble out, "but, d---- it, I don't
like being thrashed by a woman. Mrs. Lyndsay, you have no right to beat
a sailor on his own deck, at checkers."

The Captain was by no means a bad-hearted man; but he had many odd
peculiarities. One of these was his insisting on keeping his pipe in the
large, flat-bottomed, greasy candlestick. This afternoon he missed it
from its usual place.

"Sam!" he thundered, in his stentorian voice--"Sam Fraser!--What the
devil have you done with my pipe?"

"It's in the cupboard, Sir," said Sam, obsequiously.

"How dared you put it in the cupboard, when I had found out such a
_clean_ place for it?"

"Why, Sir,--I thought, Sir, the cupboard was the best place for it."

"You thought! Sir, you have no business to think, without I give you
leave. If I had put it in the pitch-pot, you had no right to take it
out, unordered by me!"

Sam bowed with the gravity of a judge, handing him the black, greasy
pipe, with the deference due from a subject to his sovereign prince.

The Captain had lost his eye in a storm, in which his ship (not the
_Anne_) had suffered wreck. He had effected his escape through the
cabin-window, and a splinter of the glass had pierced his eye and
destroyed his sight. This was one of the occasions in which he had been
saved by the faithful Oscar, who kept him above water until a boat
picked him up. The splinter of glass was afterwards extracted by the
surgeon of a man-of-war; and Boreas kept it in a snuff-box, which he
always carried about his person, and looked upon it in the light of a
charm.

"While I can keep this and Oscar," he said, "I shall never suffer from
shipwreck again."

It would have been a difficult matter for any one to persuade him to
part with the one or the other of these precious relics.

A great many private letters had been entrusted to his care. This was
against the law. Boreas was aware of the fact, and took advantage of it.
Every dull day, Sundays especially, he brought these letters from the
depths of his huge sea-chest, and amused himself by spelling them over,
until he must have learned their contents by heart.

Lyndsay remonstrated with him on this dishonourable conduct.

"Hout! man," he said, "the writers of these letters cheated the
Government in sending them by me. It just serves them right. I shall
re