About a week dating from the occasion just alluded to, a man dressed in the garb of a common sailor knocked at the door of old widow Herbert’s house, at the foot of Copp’s Hill, ‘North End.’ A neatly dressed woman of some sixty years of age opened the door. She was still hale and hearty notwithstanding three score years had passed over her head. The refinements of civilization had never marred her health or vigorous constitution, for she had never resorted to those means of shortening life practised in these more advanced periods of refinement. No cramping and painful corsets had ever disfigured her fine natural form, nor had her feet even been squeezed into a compass far too small for their size, in order to render them of delicate proportions. No, no the good old practices of the Bay Province seventy and eighty years ago, were productive of hale and hearty old age, long lives, and useful ones, with health to enjoy life’s blessings. ‘I would see your son, my good woman,’ said the stranger to dame Herbert as she appeared at the door. ‘Jack, my boy,’ said the old lady, ‘here’s a friend who would speak to thee, come hither I say, Jack.’ ‘Ay, ay, mother.’ The son was making his noonday meal, but he soon answered the call and made his appearance at the door. ‘Your name is Jack Herbert?’ put the stranger inquiringly. ‘That’s it, your honor,’ said Jack, for there was that about the cut of the stranger’s jib, that told him he was something more than a foremast hand, perhaps a captain or a naval officer. None are more ready to pay due deference to rank than Jack-tar, for he is made most to feel its power. ‘I understand,’ said the stranger,’ that you have expressed a willingness to join an enterprise to free a couple of your old messmates from a Spanish prison. Is this the case, my honest fellow?’ ‘Aye your honor, I did say as much as that to Bill Lovell’s girl down there at the High Rock fishing hamlet.’ ‘Well, I come by her direction--and now do you hold still to your first declaration to her?’ ‘That do I, your honor.’ ‘Then come with me.’ And Jack followed the stranger to the summit of the hill which commanded a good view of the harbor, indeed its base, which was surrounded by straggling tenements, terminated in the bay itself. ‘Do you see that brig just below us here?’ asked the stranger, pointing to a well appointed vessel of that rig not far from the shore. ‘Ay, ay, sir, she sails to-morrow.’ ‘If she gets two more hands.’ ‘So I have heard, sir.’ ‘Will you ship?’ ‘In her?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Not I.’ ‘With good wages and proper treatment?’ continued the stranger. ‘Why, she’s bound into those infernal Buccanier latitudes d’ye see,’ said Jack Herbert, ‘and I don’t care about going there again unless with a good stout crew and plenty of armament.’ ‘You are prevented by _fear_ then,’ said the stranger tauntingly. ‘Why, not exactly, your honor, but you see it’s a wanton tempting of providence to leap straight into a shark’s mouth.’