"'There be my papers, sir,' said this enticing person, tossing down a parcel of by no means dirty manuscripts. The register especially, as well as the manifest, seemed surprisingly clean, and the former, instead of being carefully enclosed in a tin box, as customary in merchant vessels, was wrapped up in brown paper. I opened the manifest, and glanced at a bundle of copies of bills of lading, called ship's blanks. The cargo answered his description, and the bills of lading seemed to correspond with the manifest. I then lifted the register, and by it perceived that the vessel purported to be two years old, yet the document, in place of being torn and chafed at the foldings, and dirty, greasy, and defaced, was quite sound.--When I opened it, after unfolding the brown paper in which it was wrapped, and threw it on the table, it absolutely and truly opened of itself, and lay flat on the table, as if unused to the rumples and creases--to the no small surprise of Jonathan himself I could perceive--thus seeming to say, 'Take a look at me, Master Donovan, I am worth the perusal, perhaps.'--'Ha, ha,' thought I, 'my fine fellow, the creases in that register are very fresh, I guess--it has not been quite two years folded, or I never saw the Liffey;' but I said never a word aloud, to the apparent great comfort of the skipper, who, I could see, sat on thorns, while I was overhauling the papers--for, thinks I, if he sees into me, he will haul his wind, and not come to an entry at Kingston at all, and on the high seas I cannot touch him; but then, again, as the devil would have it, were we even to decoy him into port, another man-of-war may nab him before us. My game, said I to myself, is to lull his suspicions as well as I can; and having done so, I returned to the frigate, and we ran down to Port Royal very lovingly together. "They had caught a shark during my absence, and found a tin case, loaded with a dozen musket balls, with a ship's manifest and register in it, in his maw. I lost no time in repairing to the cabin, and communicating to the captain my suspicions that the brig was an American, sailing under false papers; recommending that the frigate should stick close and seize him whenever he had passed the Rubicon by reporting at the fort at Port Royal. He agreed to all my suggestions; and after determining that I was to board and seize the vessel before others could have an opportunity of doing so, ordered in dinner, and laughing, threw the bright white iron case to me that had been cut out of the maw of the shark. "I opened it, and, to my surprise, found that, according to the best of my recollection, the manuscript copy of the manifest answered word for word, nail for nail, with the one I had seen--the measurement of the Yankee brig Alconda being identically the same, out and out, with that of the 'Stormy Peterel of St John's, New Brunswick.'