from any
desire to get ahead, since we were already going so fast as to render it
probable we should pass the other vessel, unless we altered our course
to meet her.

Diogenes Billings, the cook, had now a little leisure to serve us a warm
breakfast. If Mr. Sennit were living, I think he would do us the justice
to say he was not forgotten. We sent the people in the boat some good hot
coffee, well sweetened, and they had a fair share of the other comfortable
eatables of which we partook ourselves. We also got out, and sent them the
masts and regular sails of the boat, which was fitted to carry two sprits.

By this time the stranger ship was within two leagues of us, and it became
necessary to act. I sent Marble aloft to examine the horizon, and he came
down to report nothing else was in sight. This boded well. I proceeded at
once to the taffrail, where I hailed the boat, desiring Sennit to haul her
up within comfortable conversing distance. This was done immediately.

"Mr. Sennit," I commenced, "it is necessary for us to part here. The ship
in sight is English, and will take you up. I intend to speak her, and will
take care that she knows where you are. By standing due east you will
easily cut her off, and there cannot be a doubt of her picking you up."

"For heaven's sake, consider a moment, Capt. Wallingford," Sennit
exclaimed, "before you abandon us out here, a thousand miles from land."

"You are just three hundred and twenty-six miles from Scilly, and not much
more from the Land's End, Mr. Sennit, with a wind blowing dead for both.
Then your own countrymen will pick you up, of a certainty, and carry you
safe into port."

"Ay--into one of the West-India Islands; if an Englishman at all, yonder
vessel is a running West-Indiaman; she may take us all the way
to Jamaica."

"Well, then you will have an opportunity of returning at your leisure. You
wished to take me almost as much out of my course; or, if not absolutely
out of my course, quite as much out of my time. I have as little relish
for Plymouth as you seem to have for Jamaica."

"But, the stranger may be a Frenchman--now, I look at him, he has a French
look."

"If he should be French, he will treat you well. It will be exchanging
beef for soup-maigre for a week or two. These Frenchmen eat and drink as
well as you English."

"But, Capt. Wallingford, their prisons! This fellow, Bonaparte, exchanges
nobody this war, and if I get into France I am a ruined m