er?" she exclaimed, in a pleading
tone. "If there is--oh! let me share it with you. Do not send me down
into the cabin." She trembled, but it was more with excitement than
fear.

"Oh! nonsense, girl--suppose there was any danger, what object could
there be in your staying on deck?" answered the colonel. "You couldn't
save me from being hurt, missie, and I don't think you would manage to
hurt any of the enemy, if there should prove to be one in the case,
after all, which is in no way certain yet."

While the colonel was speaking, Bowse again looked at the speronara. He
now, to a certainty, ascertained that she had the dark mark in her
foresail, and that she was full of men. This at once decided him in
urging Miss Garden to go below, and on her still resisting, the colonel
gave indubitable signs of anger.

"Come, come, missie, no more nonsense. Go below you must, without
further delay, and take your little nigger with you."

Ada pleaded for a few minutes more to see what was likely to happen, but
in vain, and was reluctantly compelled, in company with her maid, to go
into her cabin, there to await the result of the meeting between the two
vessels. Ada did as every right-minded girl, under the circumstances,
would do--she knelt in prayer--not through abject fear for her own
safety, did she pray, for of herself she thought not; but she prayed
that her uncle, and the brave men with him on deck, might be shielded
from danger--a danger which it was very natural that from what she had
heard she should considerably exaggerate.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

If, as is asserted, the pleasures of life consist rather in the
anticipation than in the fruition, or perhaps we may say, in the means
taken to enjoy them, rather than in the objects when obtained; so, most
assuredly, is the anticipation of evil worse than the evil itself; and
misfortunes, which appear great and terrible when looked at timidly from
a distance, diminish, if they do not altogether disappear, when grappled
with manfully.

In fact, as somebody or other observed, once upon a time, that whenever
he wrote a philosophical, a beautiful, or a noble sentiment, that
fellow, Shakspeare, was sure to have been before him; I might more
briefly express what I wanted to say, by quoting our great poet--

"Cowards die many times before their death."

Now, as neither Bowse, nor his officers or men, were characters of that
description, but, on the contrary, as brave fello