f discipline. I saw him repeatedly beat and kick sick men--"

"Did you ever read Dana's 'Two Years before the Mast'?" asked
Lightbody, our heavy literary man, turning to HIS neighbor, in a
distinctly audible whisper. "Ah! there's a book! Got all this sort of
thing in it. Dev'lishly well written, too."

The Patagonian (alive for information): "What ess this Dana, eh?"

His left hand neighbor (shortly): "Oh, that man!"

His right hand neighbor (curtly): "The fellah who wrote the
Encyclopaedia and edits 'The Sun'? that was put up in Boston for the
English mission and didn't get it."

The Patagonian (making a mental diplomatic note of the fact that the
severe discipline of the editor of "The Sun," one of America's
profoundest scholars, while acting from patriotic motives, as the
second mate of an American "bottom," had unfitted him for diplomatic
service abroad): "Ah, ciel!"

"I wandered on the quays for a day or two, until I was picked up by a
Portuguese sailor, who, interesting himself in my story, offered to
procure me a passage to Fayal and Lisbon, where, he assured me, I could
find more comfortable and profitable means of returning to my own land.
Let me say here that this man, although I knew him afterward as one of
the most unscrupulous and heartless of pirates,--in fact the typical
buccaneer of the books,--was to me always kind, considerate, and, at
times, even tender. He was a capital seaman. I give this evidence in
favor of a much ridiculed race, who have been able seamen for
centuries."

"Did you ever read that Portuguese Guide-book?" asked Lightbody of his
neighbor; "it's the most exquisitely ridiculous thing--"

"Will the great American pirate kindly go on, or resume his original
functions," said Miss Jones, over the table, with a significant look in
the direction of Lightbody. But her anxiety was instantly
misinterpreted by the polite and fair-play loving Englishman: "I say,
now, don't you know that the fact is these Portuguese fellahs are
always ahead of us in the discovery business? Why, you know--"

"I shipped with him on a brig, ostensibly bound to St. Kitts and a
market. We had scarcely left port before I discovered the true
character of the vessel. I will not terrify you with useless details.
Enough that all that tradition and romance has given you of the
pirate's life was ours. Happily, through the kindness of my Portuguese
friend, I was kept from being an active participant in scen