“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 foretopsail with the afternoon tide.” Landsman, Frenchman, though he was, Beaudésir’s eyes kindled, and he caught his friend’s enthusiasm like wildfire. “I would give my right arm to be going with you,” said he. “Excitement, adventure, storms, seamanship, and all 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?”