villainously, but curiosity got the better of me for the moment, and I determined to postpone my visit to friend Bolus, until I had heard what the skipper had to say.

In a minute or two every man was on the quarter-deck, hat in hand, and expectancy in every feature.

“My lads,” commenced the skipper, “I have sent for you, because I have a proposition to make, and I wish to see for myself how you individually take it. When the frigate astern was first made out this morning, I was in hopes that the little ‘Scourge’ would prove active enough to keep us out of reach of the Frenchman’s shot; but you have seen for yourselves how completely fallacious that hope has been. The frigate goes two feet to our one, and were she being fought as so beautiful a craft ought to be, all hands of us would, by this time, be fairly under way for a French prison. But you see how it is; there are a lot of tinkers and tailors aboard there; they are not seamen, and do not deserve the luck of being sent to sea in such a fine vessel; it is evident that, though they may possibly know how to sail her, they cannot fight her. They cannot possibly keep her long; the English are certain to have her sooner or later, and since that is the case, why should not we have her? No, stay a moment; don’t cheer, lads, until you have heard me out. Of course, anything like a regularly fought action between us and her is out of the question; she is a two-and-thirty twelve-pounder, against which we can only show eight six pounders; a single broadside from her—well delivered—would send us to the bottom. But I think there is just a possibility—by a little manoeuvring on our part—of getting alongside her; and if that can be done, I am of opinion that, by a bold rush from all hands, we might secure possession of her. No doubt there will be plenty of hard knocks to be had for the asking; but even that is better than a French prison. What say you, my lads?”

A hearty cheer was the first response; then there was a general putting of heads together, and much eager talking for about a couple of minutes. Finally a topman—one Bob Adams—a magnificent specimen of the British tar, a perfect Hercules in build, and one of the prime seamen of the ship, shouldered his way to the front, and, with an elaborate sea-scrape and a tug at his forelock, addressed the skipper,—

“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 

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