By this time the stranger ship was within two leagues of us, and it became necessary to act. I sent Marble aloft to examine the horizon, and he came down to report nothing else was in sight. This boded well. I proceeded at once to the taffrail, where I hailed the boat, desiring Sennit to haul her up within comfortable conversing distance. This was done immediately. "Mr. Sennit," I commenced, "it is necessary for us to part here. The ship in sight is English, and will take you up. I intend to speak her, and will take care that she knows where you are. By standing due east you will easily cut her off, and there cannot be a doubt of her picking you up." "For heaven's sake, consider a moment, Capt. Wallingford," Sennit exclaimed, "before you abandon us out here, a thousand miles from land." "You are just three hundred and twenty-six miles from Scilly, and not much more from the Land's End, Mr. Sennit, with a wind blowing dead for both. Then your own countrymen will pick you up, of a certainty, and carry you safe into port." "Ay--into one of the West-India Islands; if an Englishman at all, yonder vessel is a running West-Indiaman; she may take us all the way to Jamaica." "Well, then you will have an opportunity of returning at your leisure. You wished to take me almost as much out of my course; or, if not absolutely out of my course, quite as much out of my time. I have as little relish for Plymouth as you seem to have for Jamaica." "But, the stranger may be a Frenchman--now, I look at him, he has a French look." "If he should be French, he will treat you well. It will be exchanging beef for soup-maigre for a week or two. These Frenchmen eat and drink as well as you English." "But, Capt. Wallingford, their prisons! This fellow, Bonaparte, exchanges nobody this war, and if I get into France I am a ruined man!" "And if I had gone into Plymouth, I fear I should have been a ruined man, too." "Remember, we are of the same blood, after all--people of the same stock--just as much countrymen as the natives of Kent and Suffolk. Old Saxon blood, both of us." "Thank you, sir; I shall not deny the relationship, since it is your pleasure to claim it. I marvel, however, you did not let your cousin's ship pass without detaining her." "How could I help it, my dear Wallingford? Lord Harry is a nobleman, and a captain, and what could a poor devil of a lieutenant, whose commission is not a year old, do against such odds! No--no--there should be more feeling and good-fellowship between chaps like you and me, who have their way to make in the world." "You remind me of the necessity of being in motion.--Adieu, Mr. Sennit--cut, Moses!"