‘Hark ye, brother,’ said an old tar in reply to Terrence, and, by way of expressing an opinion, ‘whatever my friends may say for or against me, and whatever may be my other good points, they can’t say I’m much of a scholar, but for all that I think I know something about human nature, and damme if I wouldn’t trust this big Englishman with a match beside the magazine, if it had as many openings as a Chinese junk has windows.’ ‘Well--’ said another very quietly, ‘I did think that captain Channing was a little hasty when he found out--’ ‘Hey? What the divil did ye say?’ put in Terrence Moony fiercely, ‘the captain to blame,’ and he clenched a fist the size of a small infant’s head; ‘where’s the man that will say that?’ ‘Avast there, brother,’ said the offender, ‘I say I _did_ think him a little hasty at first, but then you see the result is all right, and no doubt the captain was within soundings all the while.’ ‘To be sure he was,’ said Terrence, cooling his ire somewhat slowly. ‘I have seen as fine a seaman as this Englishman,’ said a third, whipt up to the end of a yard on board a British man of war, at the signal of a gun, but he didn’t come down _reformed_ this man is, because why, d’ye see, he come down stiff and dead, and the next hour fed the sharks alongside. Now it seems to me that the best punishment must be that sort which brings a man into the port of repentance, and not such as will knock a hole in his bottom, and sink him before he gets in sight of it.’ ‘That’s jist the talk, now,’ said Terrence Moony. ‘What’s the use of hanging a man? thin he’s no use at all, nather to himself nor any body else. Arrah, it’s a mighty miserable use to put a man to.’ ‘Who’d have thought that the young man, our commander God bless him,’ said an old weather-beaten mariner, would have had the mercy and discrimination to have done this piece of work. I’ve sailed upon the sea eight and thirty years, and I never saw a thing handsomer done on the ocean.’ Terrence here clapped his hands with delight. He had a perfect infatuation, a sort of _monomania_ relative to Captain Channing, and the faithful fellow would have deemed it an enviable lot to have laid down his life for him at any moment. ‘Aain’t he a jewel, thin?’ said Terrence. ‘Look ye, messmates, did it ever occur to any of ye that our captain is a _Pirate_, after all,’ said the old seaman. ‘Hey? What’s that?’ said Terrence, ‘do you want me to kill you intirely, Mr. Bolt, or why the divil are ye calling the captain names?’ ‘I don’t mean to cast any reflections upon Captain Channing. No, he’s a captain to live and die under; that all will agree To. But, supposing, mess-mates, a British man-of-war should come down from Boston harbor, here-a-way, and run us aboard and take the pretty little Constance, as she would do? I can tell you, brothers. Captain Channing would be dangling from the yard arm of that same man-of-war an hour afterwards as a _Pirate!_’