content to vegetate here like a wisp of sea-weed left at high-water mark. It was lucky I met you to-night. In twenty-four hours, at most, I hope to be off the Needles if the wind holds."
Beaudésir looked interrogatively at the pile of accounts on the table.
"You have turned trader, my Captain?" said he. "You will make a fortune in two voyages. At College they pretended I had some skill in reading characters. You have luck written on your forehead. I wish I was going with you, were it only as a clerk."
Captain George pondered for a while before he answered, nay, he filled and emptied his glass, took two or three turns in the narrow apartment, which admitted indeed but of what sailors called "a fisherman's walk—two steps and overboard," and finally, pulling back the shutter, pointed to the light in the foretop of his brigantine.
"You won't catch me afloat again," said he, "in a craft like a walnut-shell, with a scrap of paper for a sail. No, no. There she rides, my lad, the lady that would take me round the world, and never wet a stitch on my back from head to heel. Why, close-hauled, in a stiff breeze, there's not a King's cutter in the Channel can hold her own with her; and off a wind, she'd have the whole fleet hull-down in six hours, making such good weather of it, too, all the while! I wish you could see her by daylight, with her straight run, and her raking masts, and bran new spars, and a fresh lick of paint I gave her in dock before we came round. She looks as trim as a pincushion, and as saucy as a dancing-girl. She carries a few popguns too, in case of accidents; and when she shows her teeth, she means to bite, you may take your oath! I'll tell you what, Eugène, you must come on board to-morrow before I weigh. I should like to show you over 'The Bashful Maid' myself, and I hope to get my anchor up and shake out my fore-top-*sail with the afternoon tide."
Landsman, Frenchman, though he was, Beaudésir's eyes kindled, and he caught his friend's enthusiasm like wild-*fire.
"I would give my right arm to be going with you," said he. "Excitement, adventure, storms, seamanship, and all
