bout the world for a good many years.

Amongst other experiences, he had, after "jumping the bounty" two
or three times, found himself a sergeant in the Federal Army before
Gettysburg. During that most bloody battle, he informed me that a "Reb"
drew a bead on him at about a dozen yards' distance, and fired, He said
he felt just as if somebody had punched him in the chest, and knocked
him flat on his back on top of a sharp stone--no pain at all, nor any
further recollection of what had happened, until he found himself at the
base, in hospital. When the surgeons came to examine him for the bullet,
they found that it had struck the broad brass plate of his cross-belt
fairly in the middle, penetrating it and shattering his breast bone. But
after torturing him vilely with the probe, they were about to give up
the search in despair, when he told them he felt a pain in his back.
Examining the spot indicated by him, they found a bullet just beneath
the skin, which a touch with the knife allowed to tumble out. Further
examination revealed the strange fact that the bullet, after striking
his breast-bone, had glanced aside and travelled round his body just
beneath the skin, without doing him any further harm. In proof of his
story, he showed me the two scars and the perforated buckle-plate.

At another time, being in charge of a picket of Germans, he and his
command were captured by a party of Confederates, who haled him before
their colonel, a southern gentleman of the old school. In the course of
his interrogation by the southern officer, he was asked where he hailed
from. He replied, "London, England." "Then," said the colonel, "how is
it you find yourself fighting for these accursed Yankees?" The cockney
faltered out some feeble excuse or another, which his captor cut short
by saying, "I've a great respect for the English, and consequently I'll
let you go this time. But if ever I catch you again, you're gone up.
As for those d-----d Dutchmen, they'll be strung up inside of five
minutes." And they were.

So with yarn, song, and dance, the evening passed pleasantly away;
while the two old hookers jogged amicably along side by side, like two
market-horses whose drivers are having a friendly crack. Along about
midnight we exchanged crews again, and parted with many expressions of
good-will--we to the southward, she to the eastward, for some particular
preserve believed in by her commander.

In process of time we made the land o