g to you
that he was very bad indeed; but about six bells I got a draught to
take effect, and he has been sleeping ever since."

"And you didn't see the Captain brought aboard, sir?"

"I did not. 'Brought,' you say?"

Ben Jope nodded his head, and for a moment or two watched in silence
the sponging of our Major's scalp. "I've known this here ship in the
variousest kinds o' weathers," he announced at length, with quiet
conviction, "but they was fool's-play one and all compared with
what's ahead of us."

"If it comes to that again," put in Bill Adams, "I don't see but this
here Justice o' the Peace is the plum o' the whole bunch. Maybe"--he
turned to his friend--"you ain't never seen a Justice o' the Peace?
I hev'."

"W'y," asked Ben Jope, "what's there peculiar about 'em?"

"I got committed by one some years ago," Mr. Adams answered, with a
grave effort of memory. "At a place called Farnham, it was, a way
inland up the Portsmouth Road. Me and the landlord of a public there
came to words, by reason he called his house 'The Admiral Howe,' but
on his signboard was the face of a different man altogether. Whereby
I asked him why he done so. Whereby he said the painter didn't know
How. Whereby I knocked him down, and he called in the constables and
swore he'd meant it for a joke; and they took me afore a Justice; and
the Justice said he wouldn't yield to nobody in his respect for our
Navy, but here was a case he must put his foot down, and if necessary
with an iron hand; and gave me seven days. Which I mention because I
couldn't pay the fine, having no more than a few coppers besides what
I stood up in, and was then on my way home from the wreck of the
_Duck Sammy_ brig, which went ashore on the back of the Wight.
But if you ask me what was peculiar about the man, he was called
Bart.--Sir Samuel Brooks Bart.--and lived in a fine house as big as
Greenwich Hospital, with a gold watch-chain across his belly you
could have moored a pinnace by, and gold in his pockets
correspondin'. Whereby I larned ever since to know my betters when
ashore, and behave myself lowly and give 'em a wide berth. But this
isn't one, nor the beginnings of one, for I took the liberty to
s'arch his pockets."

"Indeed, sir," our hero appealed to the surgeon, "my name is Hymen--
Major Solomon Hymen--of Troy, in Cornwall. On inquiry you will find
that I am actually Chief Magistrate of that borough. Nay, I implore
you--"

The surgeon