The presence of the first officer was now added to the party, who came down for a cup of tea, fresh from duty, and flavouring strongly of a pilot cheroot. "How does she head, Mr Wood?" asked the captain. "Sou'-west-by-west, sir--a splendid night, under everything that will draw--spray up to the starboard cathead!" "But as to this story, again, Captain Collins?" said Mrs St Clair, as soon as she had poured out the chief mate's cup. "Well," said the captain, "if you choose to listen till bedtime to a plain draught of the affair, why I suppose I must tell it you; and what remains then may stand over till next fine night. It _may_ look a little romantic, being in the days when most people are such themselves, but, at any rate, we sailors--or else we should never have been at sea, you know; so you'll allow for that, and a spice to boot of what we used to call at sea 'lovemaking'; happily there were no soft speeches in it, like those in books, for then I shouldn't tell it at all. * * * * * "By the time I was twenty-four, I had been nine years at sea, and at the end of the war, was third lieutenant of a crack twenty-eight, the saucy _Iris_--as perfect a sloop-model, though over-sparred certainly, as ever was eased off the ways of Chatham, or careened to a north-easter. The Admiralty had almost learned to build by that day, and a glorious ship she was, _made_ for going after the small fry of privateers, pirates, and slavers, that swarmed about the time. Though I had roughed it in all sorts of craft, from a first-rate to a dirty French lugger prize, and been eastward, so as to see the sea in its pride at the Pacific, yet the feeling you have depends on the kind of ship you are in. I never knew so well what it was to be fond of a ship and the sea; and when I heard of the poor _Iris_, that had never been used to anything but blue water on three parts of the horizon at least, laying her bones not long after near Wicklow Head, I couldn't help a gulp in the throat. I once dreamt I had gone down in her, and risen again to the surface with the loss of my brains, such as I had had; while at the same moment, there I was, still sitting below on a locker in the wardroom, with the arms of her beautiful figure-head around me, and her mermaid's tail like the best-bower cable, with an anchor at the end of it far away out of soundings, over which I bobbed and dipped for years and years, in all weathers, like a buoy. We had no Mediterranean time of it, though, in the _Iris_, off the Guinea coast, from Cape Palmas to Cape Negro; looking out to windward for white squalls, and to leeward for black ones, and in-shore for Spanish cattle-dealers, as we called them, had made us all as sharp as so many marling-spikes; and our captain was a man that taught us seamanship, with a trick or two beyond. The slavers had not got to be so clever then, either, with their schooners and