,--

"We hopes your honour will excuse us, if we've taken a minute or two to
work out this here traverse, and reduce it to plain sailing; but the
purposal as your honour has laid athwart our hawse fetched us all up
standin' just at first, and it warn't until we'd had time to pay off,
and gather way on t'other tack, as I may say, that we was able to get
the bearins of it. You see, sir, there's only about sixty on us all
told, now that we've sent away a prize crew, and we reckon that there
ain't far short of 220 hands aboard of Johnny, yonder. Nevertheless and
notwithstanding, howsumdever, as your honour says, they're little better
than so many tailors, and tailors was never worth very much that ever
any of us heard on at a good stand-up fight; so the long and the short
of it is this, sir; you put us alongside, and _we'll have her_ in the
twinklin' of a purser's lantern. Ain't that it, boys?"

"Ay, ay, that's it, Bob; you've paid it out without so much as a single
kink; we mean to have her," responded a voice in the crowd.

"Then three cheers for the skipper, and may he get us lots of prize-
money," exhorted Bob, to the intense amusement of Captain Brisac; and
the cheers were given with such energy that I have no doubt they were
distinctly heard on board the Frenchman.

Captain Brisac briefly thanked the men for their plucky response to his
call, and then sent them back to their quarters, all impatience for the
eventful moment to arrive.

The frigate was rapidly nearing us, but I thought there would be time to
get my head plastered up; so I rushed below, and found Bolus standing at
the table, with his coat off and his shirt-sleeves rolled up; a
formidable array of long, narrow-bladed knives, sharp enough to cut one
if only _looked_ hard at, on one hand, and an equally formidable array
of saws, tweezers, long needles, silken thread, etcetera, etcetera, on
the other.

"Here, doctor," I exclaimed; "the skipper's compliments, and will you
`clap a plaster over my mast-head,' and bear a hand about it, please;
the Frenchman will be alongside of us in less than five minutes, and we
are going to board and carry him with a rush."

"And _you_, I presume, intend to head the boarders as usual," remarked
the doctor, with a quiet grin. "What is the extent of the damage?
Here, sit down and let me have a look at it; don't be impatient; I'll
undertake to tinker you up as good as new in two or three minutes," he
continued, as I