"What eyes!" murmured Vernon; but as he suddenly aroused from his reverie, he stammered like a schoolgirl. Tempest could read the signs of the times, for he had experienced all the bliss of young love. "Whose eyes?" he asked, smiling as he spoke. "Whose? As if there were any other eyes on earth. I know you can sympathize with me, Tempest--I am in love." "I know that." "Could I help it? Did you ever see any one in your whole life more beautiful than----" "Bertha," added Tempest softly. "No--Pauline!" "She is pretty, and I have no doubt she is as good as her face is lovely." "Thank you, Tempest, for that. I don't want you to think I disparage Bertha, for I have no wish; but when compared to Pauline----" "Stay, captain. Let us be just. To me, my wife is the most beautiful, the most peerless woman on earth. To me she is perfection. I know of nothing which could be compared to her beauty, to the flash of her eye, to the sweetness of her smile. But what she is to me, Pauline Jones may be to you. Let us not make comparisons. We each judge from our own standpoint." "But you are prejudiced----" "Stay, captain, I have not finished. If you thought of my wife as I do--if she was to you the perfection of heaven transferred to earth, you would hate me for being her husband, for you would want her. If Pauline was to me what you think her, I should hate you, for I should wish to claim such beauty and perfection for myself. No, no, old fellow! Our loves are all they should be. And I pray Heaven to strike me dead that moment I first begin to think any woman more beautiful or more perfect than my Bertha." "Sail, ho!" That cry put a stop to all love talk. From love-sick swains the officers were speedily transformed into warriors. "Where away?" asked Vernon. "Due east." "What ensign does she fly?" "I cannot see. She is a schooner, and evidently armed." "Bear down upon her, that we may know her value." All was excitement and flurry. The crew were anxious for a brush with the enemy, and had come to think the _Lively Bee_ invincible. No United States war ship was near, and so the field was open to the little privateer. To the great disgust of the crew, however, the distant craft flew the Stars and Stripes, and so, was not an enemy. For several days the _Lively Bee_ flew over the water without seeing the sail of an enemy's ship. The men were getting weary and disheartened. Amusements palled on them, and they were fast settling into a state of chronic grumbling. Then it was that the masthead shouted: "Sail, ho!" And the very words sent a thrill through the crew, for they knew that unless there was a doubt about the nationality of the vessel, no cry would have been raised. "Where away?" "South, southwest," was the reply. "What is she like?" "A schooner." "Good, and her ensign?" "She flies the English colors." Vernon ordered the Union Jack of England to be run up, and all appearances of war to be obliterated.