ha'n't you really a nigger or so aboard o' ye--if it was jist one?" "Squash the one!" says Job, shakin' his head nellicholly like--an' "Sorry for it," says the chap, "'cause ye see I'm the leftenant belongin' to the _Irish_, an' I carn't titch yer schooner if so be ye ha'n't a slave aboard." "Lawk a'mighty!--no!" sings out Job Price, 'cause, bein' half-blinded he couldn't ha' noted the lot o' man-o'-war's-men sooner. "But I _can_," says the other, "for piratecy, ye see; an' what's more," he says, "there's no help for it now, I'm afeard, mister what-they-call-ye." "'Well, mate, after that ye may fancy our skipper turns terrible down in the mouth; so without a word more they parbuckles us all down below into the cabin--an' what does this here leftenant do but he strips the whole lot, rigs out as many of his men in our duds, hoists out a big cask o' water on the brig's far side, and pulls round for the schooner--hisself togged out like the skipper, and his odd hands laid down in the boat's bottom.' You won't wonder at my being highly amused with the fellow's yarn, since the fact was that it happened to be one of my own adventures in the days of the _Iris_, two or three years before, when we saw a good many scenes together, far more wild and stirring, of course, in the thick of the slave trade; but really the ugly rascal described it wonderfully well. "'Well,' said Harry, 'I gets my chin shoved up in the starn-windy, where I seed the whole thing, and tould the skipper accordently. The schooner's crew looked out for the water like so many oysters in a tub; the leftenant jumps up the side with his men after him, an' not so much as the cross of two cutlashes did we hear afore the onion-jack flew out a-peak over her mains'l. In five minutes more, the schooner fills away before the breeze, and begins to slide off in fine style after the pair o' brigs, as was nigh half-hull down to seaward by this time. There we was, left neck and heel below in the trader, and he hauled up seemin'ly for the land; an' arter a bit, says the skipper to me, "Foster, my lad, I despise this way o' things," says he; "ain't there no way on gettin' clear?" "Never say die, captin!" I says; an' says he, "I calc'late they left considerable few hands aboard?" "None but them sleepy-like scum o' iv'ry men," I says, but be blowed if I see'd what better we was, till down comes a little nigger cabin-boy for some'at or other, with a knife in his hand. Job fixes his eye on him--I've heerd he'd a way in his eye with niggers as they couldn't stand--an' says he, soft-sawderin' like, "Come here, will ye, my lad, an' give us a drink," so the black come for'ard with a pannikin, one foot at a time, an' he houlds it out to the skipper's lips--for, d'ye see, all on us had our flippers lashed behind our backs. "Now," says he, "thankee, boy--look in atwixt my legs, and ye'll find a dollar." With that, jest as the boy stoops, Job Price