"'Woods!' said Harry, 'I b'lieve ye, ould ship. I see'd enough o' woods, that time, arter all--and 'twan't that long agone, either--I'll not say _how_ long, but it wa'n't _last_ v'yage. A sharp, clinker-built craft of a schooner she wor; I'm not goin' to give ye her right name, but they called her the _Lubberhater_[21]--an' if there wa'n't all sorts on us aboard, it's blaming ye--an' a big double-jinted man-eatin' chap of a Yankee was our skipper, as sly as slush--more by token, he had a wart alongside o' one eye as made him look two ways at ye--Job Price by name--an' arter he'd made his fortin, I heard he's took up a teetotal chapel afloat on the Missishippey. She'd got a strapping long nose, that 'ere schooner, so, my boy, we leaves everything astarn, chase or race, I promise ye; an' as for a blessed ould ten-gun brig what kept a-cruising thereaway, why, we jest got used to her, like, and al'ays lowers our mainsail afore takin' the wind of her, by way o' good-bye, quite perlite. Blowed if it warn't rum, though, for to see the brig's white figger'ed over the swell, rollin' under a cloud o' canvas, stens'ls crowded out alow an' aloft, as she jogged arter us. Then she'd haul her wind an' fire a gun, an' go beating away up in chase of some other craft, as caught the chance for runnin' out whenever they sees the _Lubberhater_ well to sea--why, s' help me Bob, if the traders on the coast didn't pay Job Price half-a-dozen blacks apiece every trip, jist for to play that 'ere dodge. At last, one time, not long after I joined the craft, what does he do but nigh-hand loses her an' her cargo, all owin' to reckonin' over much on this here traverse. Out we comes one night in the tail of a squall, an' as soon as it clears, there sure enough we made out the brig, hard after us, as we thinks--so never a rag more Job claps on, 'cause two of his friends, ye see, was jist outside the bar in the Noon river. Well, very soon the cruiser begins to overhaul us, as one gaff-taups'l wouldn't do, nor yet another, till the flying-jib and bonnets made her walk away from them in right 'arnest--when slap comes a long-shot that that took the fore-topmast out of us in a twinkling. So when the moonlight comed out, lo an' behold, instead o' the brig's two masts stiff and straight against the haze, there was _three_ spanking sticks all ataunto, my boy, in a fine new sloop-o'-war as had fresh come on the station--the _Iris_, they called her--and a fast ship she wor. But all said and done, the schooner had the heels of her in aught short of a reef-taups'l breeze--though, as for the other two, the sloop-o'-war picked off both on 'em in the end.' [21] Query--Liberator? "At this point of the fellow's account, I, Ned Collins, began to prick up my ears, pretty sure it was the dear old _Iris_ he was talking of; and, thought I, 'Oho, my mate, we shall have you directly--listening's all fair with a chap of this breed.'