"'Ullo, Bill, 'ere's another one come back from Davy Jones," said a black-whiskered man, leaning over with his face close to mine. "He's swallowed a bloomin' volcano, from the looks of him." "Where am I?" I murmured. "Wot a question!" was the answer. "This is the same old world, and full of trouble. Did ye take us for angels and me for St. Peter?" "Help me up," I answered. The man bent down and hauled me out by the shoulders to a sitting position; then I saw how it was. _Prisonnier!_ I was captured, and here was a fine ending to the glorious life that I had been anticipating. I suppose now that if I had spoken all my thoughts since I had left Belair, and asked even only a few of the many questions that my common-sense prompted me to keep to myself, I should have been considered stark, staring mad, let alone being a simpleton. It is almost ridiculous to look back at it and think that I did not know certainly who was the President of the United States, or anything about the history of the last two years. If any one had told me that the British killed their prisoners, I should not have doubted it, and what was to become of me I had not the least idea, but I saw that I was not alone in the strait. Out of the crew of nineteen men that were in the long-boat, ten, including the wounded seaman, were sitting dejectedly in the bow and stern-sheets. Together with the Englishmen, we crowded the barge uncomfortably, but not dangerously. The British sailors appeared to be rather a beefy set, and they were in high spirits over their capture. An officer, with his hair standing up in tall curls over his forehead, sat in the stern-sheets bareheaded. He was nursing a wounded hip carefully, and half leaning against a little midshipman, who had his arm thrown about his shoulder. Raising my eyes from the boat, I perceived that the frigate was drifting with her topsail against the mast only a few hundred yards from us. I began to feel a bitter hatred of her, and it gave me pleasure to see the long white gashes in her sides, and to notice the effect of the gunnery of the _Young Eagle_ plainly apparent. "Halloa, Johnny Bull!" said some one behind me with a laugh, "I guess you run against something, didn't you, a short while ago? Ship looks kind of unhealthy, like a man's face with the small-pox." I turned. It was Sutton, the foretopman, speaking. He did not appear to be very much depressed by his surroundings, nor did he fear the result of his impudence, to judge of his expression. "Stow your jaw," answered one of the Englishmen. "There are worse things than small-pox." I noticed that the man's face was pitted deeply. "That's so," Sutton replied; "there's the cat, for instance. I beg your pardon for not thinking of it; I shouldn't slight an acquaintance of yours for anything."