'

'But when the George the Second drove ashore, Uncle, on the coast of
Cornwall, in a dismal gale, two hours before daybreak, on the fourth
of March, 'seventy-one, she had near two hundred horses aboard; and the
horses breaking loose down below, early in the gale, and tearing to and
fro, and trampling each other to death, made such noises, and set up
such human cries, that the crew believing the ship to be full of devils,
some of the best men, losing heart and head, went overboard in despair,
and only two were left alive, at last, to tell the tale.'

'And when,' said old Sol, 'when the Polyphemus--'

'Private West India Trader, burden three hundred and fifty tons,
Captain, John Brown of Deptford. Owners, Wiggs and Co.,' cried Walter.

'The same,' said Sol; 'when she took fire, four days' sail with a fair
wind out of Jamaica Harbour, in the night--'

'There were two brothers on board,' interposed his nephew, speaking very
fast and loud, 'and there not being room for both of them in the only
boat that wasn't swamped, neither of them would consent to go, until
the elder took the younger by the waist, and flung him in. And then
the younger, rising in the boat, cried out, "Dear Edward, think of your
promised wife at home. I'm only a boy. No one waits at home for me. Leap
down into my place!" and flung himself in the sea!'

The kindling eye and heightened colour of the boy, who had risen from
his seat in the earnestness of what he said and felt, seemed to remind
old Sol of something he had forgotten, or that his encircling mist had
hitherto shut out. Instead of proceeding with any more anecdotes, as he
had evidently intended but a moment before, he gave a short dry cough,
and said, 'Well! suppose we change the subject.'

The truth was, that the simple-minded Uncle in his secret attraction
towards the marvellous and adventurous--of which he was, in some sort,
a distant relation, by his trade--had greatly encouraged the same
attraction in the nephew; and that everything that had ever been put
before the boy to deter him from a life of adventure, had had the usual
unaccountable effect of sharpening his taste for it. This is invariable.
It would seem as if there never was a book written, or a story told,
expressly with the object of keeping boys on shore, which did not lure
and charm them to the ocean, as a matter of course.

But an addition to the little party now made its appearance, in the
shape of a gentleman in a wi