"I 'm blest if I like this orderin' business," said one grizzled seaman; "they said he was h--l on orders, but what I shipped for was prize money and a chance to get a lick at them bloody Britishers; not for to clean brass work, an' scrape spars, an' flemish down, an' holy-stone decks, which he won't let us spit terbacker on. I don't call this no fighting fur liberty, not by a durn sight." "Shut up, Bill," replied another; "you've got to obey orders. This yere ain't no old tea wagon, no fishing-boat, you old scowbanker, it's a wessel-o'-war; and may I never see Nantucket again if the old man," using a merchantman's expression, "ain't goin' to be captain of the old hooker while he's in it. And if you call this hard work and growl at this kind o' dissyplin'--well, all I got ter say, you'd oughter been on the old Radnor. Curse the British devils!" he cried, grinding his heel in the deck. "I 'd give twenty years of my life to be alongside her in a ship half her size; yes, even in this one, and I tell ye yon 's the man to put her there, if he gets a chance. Ain't that so, mates?" "Ay, ay, Jack, 'tis true," came a deep-toned chorus of approval. "Besides," went on the forecastle orator, "we all know'd wot kind of a officer he is. Fightin' and prize money is wot we all want; and here 's where we 'll git it, you 'll see, eh, mates?" "Ay, ay; Jack's right, Bill." "Then blow the dissyplin', say I; I'll take orders from a man wot ain't afraid o' nothin', wot hates the red rag we knows of, wot won't send me where he won't go himself. Fightin' and prize money, he 's our man. Besides, wot's the use o' kickin', we got to do it; we're bound by them articles of war we signed," continued this deep-sea philosopher. "Now, pass me my can o' grog, Tom, I 'm dry as a cod. Here 's to America, and damn the British, too," continued this sea lawyer, drinking his toast amid shouts of approval from the men. Left to himself, Seymour, after the men had received their grog, and other necessary duties had been attended to, turned the deck over to Lieutenant Wallingford, whose watch it was with Philip Wilton, and, descending the poop-deck ladder, disappeared through the same door which had received the two officers into the cabin. Three weeks had elapsed since the raid upon the Wilton place, and the scene had shifted from Virginia to the sea, or rather to the great bay which gives entrance to it, from the Delaware River. It was a clear cold day in the early part of December, and the American Continental ship Ranger had just left her moorings off Philadelphia, with orders to proceed to English waters; stopping at Brest to receive the orders of the commissioners in Paris, and then, in case no better ship could be found, to ravage the English Channel and coast, as a warning that like processes, on the part of England on our own shores, should not go unpunished.