NOT a little disturbed, lest I should distrust the quality of his valor, the major approached me shortly after we had set sail, and having stroked his beard for a few seconds, said: "I do hope, sir, you will not think it strange I did not use my sword to avenge the insult offered me by the enemies who mixed up with my friends on the wharf. But I am a man of discretion, and my forbearance was in consideration of my friends, whose bodies might perchance gave got scarred by the blows aimed at my foes. Being a friend and fellow fortune seeker, I need have no scruple in saying to you, that I have always held it an axiom, that all great men husband their valor well, and never use it except with great discretion. In truth, and as I hope to honor the profession to which I belong, it was the exercise of that worthy discretion God implanted in my heart that saved me from two duels, the consequences of which might have been very bloody. I assure you, I have often thought how, if it had been my fate to die in either of those sanguinary contests, my wife Polly would have heen left to mourn the loss of a most excellent husband and father. And yet I have just been thinking, how nothing in the world would so much please me as to see the 'Two Marys' engaged in battle with a Sound pirate, for then it would afford me an opportunity of letting you see a little of the courage that distinguished me when at the head of my regiment in Mexico." The "Two Marys" was an exceedingly formidable craft, and very safe in a sea, of which Captain Luke Snider, fashioning after those who build very bad steamers for a very good natured government, never failed to boast. Indeed, the "Two Marys," like several of our best boasted war steamers, was not blessed with a capacity for speed, and had only made forty miles' distance in three days, which fact was ascertained by the log Luke's wife kept with a piece of chalk on the top of the companion slide. It was on the afternoon of the third day, then, that there arose a terrible storm. The wind was in the south-west, and with a pelting rain, the sea rose into such angry waves as to threaten serious consequences to all on board, and more especially to old Battle, who had quarters near the windlass bits, to which he was tied, and where, notwithstanding the major's constant solicitude, he became so lean of frame that a speedy dissolution was seriously apprehended. And this great event, so disastrous to the major's future prospects, would have been welcomed by Captain Luke, of whose deck he was making sad havoc, and who had twice been heard to say he was only a pack of useless bones, whose life would be better saved by his being thrown overboard. The major overhearing this, was not a little wounded in his pride, for he set great store by old Battle, and declared him an inseparable part of his fortunes.