by water, Aldridge?” “Help _him_ out, you mean, sir?” said the luff; “why, if he ever got as far as the water’s edge, I’d believe in witchcraft, sir!” “Give a man time, Mr Aldridge,” answered the captain, “and he’ll get out of anything where soldiers are concerned—every year he’s boxed up, sharpens him till his very mind turns like a knife, man! It makes one mad on every point beside, I tell you, sir—whereas after he’s free, perhaps, it’s just on _that only_ his brain has a twist in it!” “No doubt, Captain Wallis,” said Aldridge, glancing over to me, as his commander got up and began walking about the cabin, spite of his halt. “D’ye know,” continued he, “I’ve thought at times what I should like best would be to have _him_ ahead of the brig, in some craft or other, and we hard in chase—I’d go after that man to the North Pole, sir, and bring him back! Without once going aboard to know he was there, I’d send word it was Jack Wallis had him in tow!” “What is Bonaparte like, then, after all, sir?” I asked, just to fill up the break. “I never saw him, nor he me,” replied Captain Wallis, stopping in his walk, “but every day he may have a sight of the brig cruising to windward; and as for the island, we see plenty of _it_, I think, Aldridge?” “Ay, ay, sir,” said Aldridge, “that we do! For my part, I can’t get the ugly stone steeples of it out of my head!” “Well,” continued the captain, “at times, when we’re beating round St Helena of a night, I’ll be hanged if I haven’t thought it began to loom as if the French Emperor stood on the top of it, like a shadow looking out to sea the other way,—and I’ve gone below lest he’d turn round till I saw his face. I’ve a notion, Mr Aldridge, if I once saw his face I’d lose what I feel against him,—just as I used always to fancy, the first five years in the _Temple_, if he were only to see _me_, he would let me out! But they say he’s got a wonderful way of coming over every one, if he likes!” After this, Captain Wallis sat down and passed the decanters, the first lieutenant observing he supposed Bonaparte was a great man in his way, but nothing to Nelson. “Don’t tack them together, Aldridge!” said his commander, quickly; “Nelson was a man all over,—he’d got the feelings of a man, and his faults—but I call _him_, yonder, a perfect demon let loose upon the world! To my mind all the blood those republicans shed, with their murdered king’s at bottom of it, got somehow into him, till he thought no more of human beings, or aught concerning ’em, than I do of so many cockroaches! But the terrible thing was, sir, his infernal schemes, and his cunning—why, he’d twist you one country against another, and get hold of both, like a man bending stun-sail halliards—there were men grew up round him quick as mushrooms, fit to carry out everything he wanted; so one could’nt wonder at him enough, Mr Aldridge, if it was only natural! I can’t tell you anything like what I felt,” he went on, “when