"Bosun, does a man live in a hell like that for a year and a half, and forget how it looks? I 'd know her among a thousand ships!" "What's that you say, my man?" eagerly asked Seymour, stopping suddenly, having caught some part of the conversation as he was passing by. "Why, that that 'ere ship is the Radnor, sir." Talbot and his men were busy with the gun aft; no one heard but Seymour and Bentley. "The Radnor! How do you know it, man?" "I served aboard her for eighteen months, sir. I knows every line of her,--that there spliced fore shroud, the patch in the mainsail,--I put it on myself,--besides, I know her; I don't know how, but know her I do, every stick in her. Curse her--saving your honor's presence--I 'm not likely to forget her. I was whipped at the grating till I was nearly dead, just for standing up for this country, on board of her, and me a freeborn American too! I 've got her sign manual on my back, and her picture here, and I 'd give all the rest of my life to see her smashed and sunk, and feel that I 'd had some hand in the doing of it. Ay, I know her. Could a man ever forget her!" continued the seaman, turning away white with passion, and shaking his fist in convulsive rage at the frigate, which made a handsome picture in spite of all. Seymour's face was as white as Thompson's was. "The Radnor! The Radnor! Why, that's the ship Miss Wilton is on. Oh, Bentley, what can be done now?" he said, the whole situation rising before him. "If we lead that ship through the pass it means wreck for her. Dacres, who commands the Radnor, is a new man on this station. And if we don't try the pass, this ship is captured. And our country, our cause, receives a fatal blow! Was ever a man in such a situation before?" Bentley looked at him with eyes full of pity. "We are approaching the shoal now, sir, and unless we would be on it, we will have to bring the ship by the wind at once."