"Stay where you are--you must not expose yourself to the men,--tut, tut!--What! after all we have seen together, to let a trick of your fancy get the better of your manhood in this disgraceful way!--Why," and he mused for a moment, "it _is_ odd enough too, that she should come here without hands, and all to give us a second crop off her old timbers; but egad, I have it! I'll lay my life Tom has been overhauling her in the Channel, and has sent the old bird adrift, well knowing to whose door the Race would bring her!--Ah! poor Tom! many an ugly job he has brought me through; however, they say that _Gull thing_ that I got him the command of is a switching fast sailer, and if he has but a stanch crew, he may make a good thing of it yet--that is, if he can only keep from getting more than moderately drunk. But come along till we see what this after-cabin has got for us. We have our letters of marque now, and need not be ashamed to show our faces under that authority to man or devil!--Come," and he dragged his reluctant associate almost close to the spot where I lay, in another and still more dreadful relapse of horror. The young man leaned against a timber, with his head sunk upon his breast, and shuddered violently. "Adam," said he at length, "we have never thriven in anything since the night we had that business in this abominable den of blood. You and I then were, or ought to have been, country gentlemen, and he was no more than a careless sailor at worst; but with all the money we got in Bordeaux for the fruits of our villany, we are three miserable adventurers to-day, if the damning cargo she carries has not sunk the Gull already--Mother of God defend me! there is young Manson!" I can no more account for it now, than I could help it then, but the truth is, I had risen at this mention of the Gull in a sort of reckless frenzy, for I had no control over either my words or actions, and started out on the floor before them, a very ghastly and hideous spectacle; for I was pale and haggard with fear and desperation, and my face was bloody from a scratch I had got in the dark. The eyes of the repentant sinner fastened on me as I rose, and his terror was full as horribly depicted on his countenance, as that of his already punished associate had been on his; he fell flat on his face, and even the hardened ruffian at his side leaped back with a shout of horror as I rose before him with my hands held up, and a storm of denunciation that I could not control bursting from my lips. What I said I did not even then know, but it soon betrayed my mortal nature, and Forrest, with a blow of his fist, struck me back whence I had risen, then drew a pistol and came close up to me to make sure. I prayed for mercy now as wildly as I had before denounced vengeance, and in the extremity of my terror shut my eyes and clung to the very boards. A flash first came through my closed eyelids, and then a rushing and flapping burst of flame like interminable lightning. The