"No; to the Portuguese. Well, I believe that will be best. I have received information that the French and Spanish fleets are off Cape Trafalgar; and our fellows are likely to have a brush with them soon, if they haven't had it already." "Indeed, sir! Well, Admiral Nelson ain't likely to leave many of 'em to follow us to the Cape. We're pretty safe from them, anyhow." "You're right there, I expect, Jennings," said the skipper, relaxing for the first time into a grim smile. "Well, then, shape the ship's course for the Cape Verdes, and, mind you, keep the matter of those scoundrels deserting as quiet as possible. If some of the passengers get hold of it, they'll be making a bother. Now you may go, Jennings. Stay, hand me those letters about the boys that came on board at Plymouth. I've been too busy to give any thought to them till now. But I must settle something about them before we reach the Cape, and I may as well do so now." The quartermaster obeyed. He handed his commanding officer the bundle of papers he had indicated, and then left the cabin, willing enough to be dismissed. The captain, throwing himself with an air of weariness back on his sofa, broke the seal of the first letter, muttering to himself discontentedly the while. "I wonder why I am to be plagued with other people's children? Because I have been too wise to have any of my own, I suppose! Well, Frank is my nephew, and blood is thicker than water, they say--and for once, and for a wonder, say true. I suppose I _am_ expected to look after him. And he's a fine lad too. I can't but own that. But what have I to do with old Nat Gilbert's children, I wonder? He was my schoolfellow, and pulled me out of a pond once, when I should have been drowned if he hadn't I suppose _he_ thought that was reason enough for putting off his boy upon me, as his guardian. Humph! I don't know about that. Let us see, any way, what sort of a boy this young Gilbert is. This is from old Dr Staines, the schoolmaster he has been with for the last four or five years. I wonder what he says of the boy? At present I know nothing whatever about him, except that he looks saucy enough for a midshipman, and laughs all day like a hyena! "`Gymnasium House, Hollingsley, "`September 29th, 1805. "`Sir,--You are, no doubt, aware that I have had under my charge, for the last five years, Master George Gilbert, the son of the late Mr Nathaniel Gilbert, of Evertree, a most worthy and respectable man. I was informed, at the time of the parent's decease, that you had been appointed the guardian of the infant; but as Mr Nathaniel had, with his customary circumspection, lodged a sum in the Hollingsley bank, sufficient to cover the cost of his son's education for two years to come, there was no need to trouble you. You were also absent from England, and I did not know your direction.