Thompson looked at the girl with astonishment, then desiring her to wait where she was for a moment, descended into his cabin. After a short delay he returned to the deck bearing in his hands a small box which he handed to the bonne, saying, "Addel-ly! I knows you ladies are fond of gold chains. I knows, too, that I have been rather too soapy with you, but if you'll say you forgive me, as you knows I did it for the pretty one's sake, I'll give you that." Adèle walked aft and descended to the cabin, where she examined the chain, which was of solid gold, and the one that Jerry had looted from the pirate Seh-wang. After carefully weighing it in her hands, and reflecting for a few moments, the bonne returned to the deck, and having found out the patient Thompson, informed him "that it was verray good, she vas content," and added in an undertone, "Je voudrais être trompée, tous les jours à ce prix là!" [Illustration: Decoration] CHAPTER XXVII. Those who have never been away from their native land, can hardly imagine the intense excitement which prevailed on board the Stinger, when the word was passed along the deck that the Start had been made. "Land ho!" shouted the boys who had remained up to get the first glimpse of the long-watched-for light. "Tumble out, chaps, and see the land." Hearing this, the ordinary seamen and boys of the watch below turned out and went on deck; while the older men of the crew, after vainly pretending not to care, at last followed their example. Under other circumstances the latter would have kept their beds until the time came for them to go on duty, but the Start light was to them a proof that they would shortly be free men again: and, leaving the snug shelter of their hammocks, they crawled on deck, and after gazing at the bright beam, fell to at discussion as eagerly as their more youthful shipmates. "That ain't the Start light; it's the Shambles," growled an aged tar, who, wrapped up to the eyes in a lammy frock, strongly resembled a polar bear. "I tell ye it's the Start," urged another speaker; "I was borned not far off it, and I ought to know." "You was borned?" contemptuously observed the old man who had first spoken; "you, was borned? Well, I suppose every one has been borned as well as you. But I say it's the Shambles, and I don't care a button who says it isn't." "There's the Portland light," cried another; and so they made out each beacon as it came in view, and yarned away the time utterly regardless of its being their watch below. The "watch on deck" worked like lightning; and Tortle, who was on the bridge with Cravan, observed they were as smart a crew as he had ever commanded. "Yes," sneered the first lieutenant, "they can move quick enough, the lubbers, now they smell the land; they are not as smart as this in a gale of wind."