“I am sorry for the poor thing; but where is the woman that does not always want something more than she has? This time yesterday she would have given her hair--angels alive! what would she _not_ have given? to be as she now is, safe aboard such a vessel as this; and now that she is safe aboard--rescued from raw terrapin and the risks of the society of two Spanish sailors (and I must like their looks better before I give them a handsomer name than _that_)--she craves to be with her mother--very natural, of course--who is, probably, at the bottom of the ocean, and she wants to be put ashore at Lima.” I delivered the request of the men, as expressed by Yan Bol. “Oh, yes. Let grog be served out to all hands; and the men may sing, certainly. Disturb me? Not down here. And I like my people to be merry. Fortune has fiddled to-day; let the beggars dance.” Jimmy was in the cabin. I bade him carry a can of rum to the men, and went on deck, receiving, without knowing how to answer, a look of inquiry from the lady Aurora as I passed her. “The men may make merry,” said I to Bol. “There is grog gone forward. Tell them that the captain is free from pain; and will you keep a lookout in the waist--or in the head if you like, ’tis all one--while I get a bite in the cabin?” “Yaw, dot vill I. By der vay, Mr. Fielding, vhas dere von hoondred und dirty, or vhas dere von hoondred und twenty, cases prought on boardt? Vertz swears to von hoondred und dirty; Friendt, von hoondred und twenty. I myself gounts von hoondred und dirty-two. Dere vhas a leedle vager in dis--shoost von day of a man’s grog, dot vhas all.” “I made one hundred and forty cases,” said I. “But are they all dollars?” And bursting into a laugh, I left him to chew upon that thought, and returned to the cabin. I bowed to the lady, and took the chair I usually occupied at the table. She rose, came to my side with a bottle of claret, poured some into a glass, and made as if she would wait upon me. I was not a little confounded. Her handsome presence, her fine person embarrassed me. My career had but poorly qualified me for an easy address in conversing with ladies. Much of my life had been spent upon the ocean, in the society of some of the roughest of my own calling. For months at a stretch I had never set eyes on a woman, and when I was ashore, whether in foreign parts or in my own country, the girls I fell in with were not of a sort to teach me to know exactly what to do when I chanced upon the company of a Señorita Aurora. I did the best I could with the imperfect and monkey-like speech of the hands and shoulders to induce her to desist from waiting upon me and return to her chair; and in this I was helped by the arrival of Jimmy, to whom I gave several unnecessary orders, merely to emphasize to the lady the desire. I gesticulated that she should sit, and cease to do me more honor than I had impudence to support.