the wonders of the tropics! While for me, muddy beer, gloomy fogs, dirty streets, and clumsy English children learning to dance! Well! every man to his trade. Here's a good voyage to you and my best wishes!"
Again he wet his lips with the punch, now grown cold and sticky in his glass. Captain George was so preoccupied, he forgot to acknowledge the courtesy.
"Can you keep accounts?" he asked abruptly, pointing to the papers on the table.
"Any schoolboy might keep such as these," answered Eugène, running his eye over one of the columns, and adding, as he examined it, "Nevertheless, my Captain, here is an error that will falsify the whole sum."
He pointed to a mistake in the numerals that had repeatedly escaped the other's observation, and from which much of his labour had arisen. In a few minutes, he had gone through, and corrected as many pages of calculation. The figures came right now, as if by magic. Captain George had found what he wanted.
"Where did you learn all this?" he inquired in astonishment.
"At Avranches, in Normandy," was the answer.
"Where they taught you to fence?"
"Precisely; and to shoot with musquetoon or pistol. I can pick the ace of diamonds off a card at fifteen paces with either weapon."
He spoke modestly, as he always did of his proficiency in such feats of skill. They came so easily to him.
"Will you sail with me?" asked George frankly. "You can help me with my papers, and earn your share of the plunI should say of the profits. No, my friend! you shall not leap blindfold. Listen. I have letters of marque in my cabin, and I mean them to hold good whether peace be proclaimed or not. It may be, we shall fight with a rope round our necks. The gains are heavy, but the risk is great."
"I never count risk!" was the reply.
"Then finish the punch!" said Captain George; and thus the bargain was ratified, which added yet one more to the rôle of characters Beaudésir was destined to enact on the stage of life.
