'Aye, aye!' he answered, with a hollow groan, shaking his head from side
to side. 'It is a most accursed affair. Yet, bad as the tempest is, the
calm will ever come afterwards if you will but ride it out with your
anchor placed deep in Providence. Ah, lad, that is good holding ground!
But if I know you aright, your grief is more for these poor wretches
around you than for yourself.'

'It is, indeed, a sore sight to see them suffer so patiently and
uncomplainingly,' I answered, 'and for such a man, too!'

'Aye, the chicken-livered swab!' growled the seaman, grinding his teeth.

'How are my mother and my father,' I asked, 'and how came you so far
from home?'

'Nay, I should have grounded on my beef bones had I waited longer at my
moorings. I cut my cable, therefore, and, making a northerly tack as far
as Salisbury, I run down with a fair wind. Thy father hath set his face
hard, and goes about his work as usual, though much troubled by the
Justices, who have twice had him up to Winchester for examination, but
have found his papers all right and no charge to be brought against him.
Your mother, poor soul, hath little time to mope or to pipe her eye, for
she hath such a sense of duty that, were the ship to founder under her,
it is a plate galleon to a china orange that she would stand fast in the
caboose curing marigolds or rolling pastry. They have taken to prayer
as some would to rum, and warm their hearts with it when the wind of
misfortune blows chill. They were right glad that I should come down to
you, and I gave them the word of a sailor that I would get you out of
the bilboes if it might anyhow be done.'

'Get me out, Solomon!' said I; 'nay, that may be put outside the
question. How could you get me out?'

'There are many ways,' he answered, sinking his voice to a whisper, and
nodding his grizzled head as one who talks upon what has cost him much
time and thought. 'There is scuttling.'

'Scuttling?'

'Aye, lad! When I was quartermaster of the galley _Providence_ in the
second Dutch war, we were caught betwixt a lee shore and Van Tromp's
squadron, so that after fighting until our sticks were shot away and our
scuppers were arun with blood, we were carried by boarding and sent as
prisoners to the Texel. We were stowed away in irons in the afterhold,
amongst the bilge water and the rats, with hatches battened down and
guards atop, but even then they could not keep us, for the irons got
adrift, and Will Adams,