"Now are you coming to your senses," said he. "There was cursed little to the enterprise, Richard, and that's the truth. I got down to Dover, and persuaded the master of a schooner to carry me to Rotterdam. That was not so difficult, since your Terror of the Seas was locked up safe enough in the Texel. In Rotterdam I had a travelling-chaise stripped, and set off at the devil's pace for the Texel. You must know that the whole Dutch nation was in an uproar--as much of an uproar as those boors ever reach--over the arrival of your infamous squadron. The Court Party and our ambassador were for having you kicked out, and the Republicans for making you at home. I heard that their High Mightinesses had given Paul Jones the use of the Texel fort for his wounded and his prisoners, and thither I ran. And I was even cursing the French sentry at the drawbridge in his own tongue, when up comes your commodore himself. You may quarter me if wasn't knocked off my feet when I recognized the identical peacock of a sea-captain we had pulled out of Castle Yard along with you, and offered a commission in the Royal Navy." "Dolly hadn't told you?" "Dolly tell me!" exclaimed his Lordship, scornfully. "She was in a state to tell me nothing the morning I left, save only to bring you to England alive, and repeat it over and over. But to return to your captain,--he, too, was taken all aback. But presently he whipt out my name, and I his, without the Jones. And when I told him my errand, he wept on my neck, and said he had obtained unlimited leave of absence for you from the Paris commissioners. He took me up into a private room in the fort, where you were; and the surgeon, who was there at the time, said that your chances were as slim as any man's he had ever seen. Faith, you looked it, my lad. At sight of your face I took one big gulp, for I had no notion of getting you back to her. And rather than come without you, and look into her eyes, I would have drowned myself in the Straits of Dover. "Despite the host of troubles he had on his hands, your commodore himself came with us to Rotterdam. Now I protest I love that man, who has more humanity in him than most of the virtuous people in England who call him hard names. If you could have seen him leaning over you, and speaking to you, and feeling every minute for your heart-beats, egad, you would have cried. And when I took you off to the schooner, he gave me an hundred directions how to care for you, and then his sorrow bowled him all in a heap." "And is the commodore still at the Texel?" I asked, after a space.