correct English, for the purpose of improving their acquaintance. The seaman congratulated himself on having made so happy a discovery, while his friends looked on in mute admiration of the celerity with which he had completed his conquest.
"He's a smart chap, mate," enunciated Bottle-Jack, with a glance of intense approval at the two figures receding up the sunny street, as Célandine marched their companion off, avowedly for the purpose of refreshing him with cooling drinks in return for his good-nature—"a smart young chap, and can hold his own with the best of 'em as ever hoisted a petticoat, silk or dowlas. See now, that's the way to do it in these here latitudes! First he hails 'em, speaking up like a man, then he ranges alongside, and gets the grapplers out, and so tows his prize into port in a pig's whisper. He's a smart young chap, I tell ye, and a match for the sauciest craft as ever sailed under false colours, and hoisted a red pennant at the main."
But Smoke-Jack shook his head, and led his shipmate, nothing loth, into a tempting store-house, redolent with the fragrance of limes, tobacco, decaying melons, and Jamaica rum. He said nothing, however, until he had quenched his thirst; then after a vigorous pull at a tall beaker, filled with a fragrant compound in which neither ice nor alcohol had been forgotten, observed, as if the subject still occupied his thoughts—
"I knows the trim on 'em, I tell ye; I knows the trim on 'em. As I says to the young chap now, I never found one yet as would steer kind in a sea-way."
Meanwhile, Célandine, moved by an impulse for which she could not account, or perhaps dreading to analyse a sentiment that might after all be founded on a fallacy, led the young seaman into a cool, quiet room in a wooden house, on the shady side of the street, of which the apparent mistress was a large bustling negress, with a numerous family of jet-black children, swarming and crawling about the floor like garden-snails after a shower. This proprietress seemed to hold the Quadroon in considerable awe, and was delighted to bring the best her house afforded for the entertainment of such visitors. Slap-jack, accommo-
