“Well, I shouldn’t do it from choice; but do you see any other road out of it, seein’s how I’ve been lawfully taken a prize?” “There’s only this way that I can figure, an’ I’ve done a heap of thinkin’ on the matter since you showed yourself to be a right decent kind of a man--the first decent one I have ever heard tell of who wore a red coat.” “It’s what the man’s got inside of him, not that which he has on his back, that makes or mars him,” our prisoner said seriously; “but what is it you have figured out concernin’ me?” “Well, I don’t know how it may strike you; but I am wantin’ that you believe I am doin’ it in the way of bein’ friendly,” Abel Grant said, speaking slowly, and now I understood that that which was to follow would be of considerable importance. “If so be you didn’t give back your parole, you’d kind’er feel it your duty to hang to the oath you took, eh?” “My parole was only to last until you delivered me to the officers of the American Army?” “Ay, that’s as we understand it. Now, supposin’ we didn’t deliver you? Wouldn’t the oath you took hold?” Seth looked puzzled, and even I who had an inkling of what our “admiral” was driving at, failed to understand, seeing which he continued: “This ’ere gang that you’ve fallen in with, countin’ another that we’ve spoken of, meanin’ Sam, are a full regiment an’ a fleet, with this ’ere sloop as the only ship. Now I ain’t tryin’ to bring you ’round to our way of thinkin’; but I’ve got an idee from words you’ve let drop now an’ then, that you ain’t overly keen on fightin’ us. If that should be the case, I’m wonderin’ why you couldn’t stay right here on the sloop with me, for I ain’t enlisted to do shore duty, an’ then we’d always have a prisoner to fall back on when we got to feelin’ savage agin anythin’, an’ wanted to kick somebody.” “Meanin’ that you’d have me stay here willingly?” “Nothin’ of the kind. I’m just askin’ how it would strike you if we didn’t put an end to your parole, bindin’ you to hold your tongue as to what you might have seen and heard while in our company, if it so be your friends should re-capture you? You’re not to be asked to fight for the colonies against George III; but to kind’er loaf ’round as a general deck-hand, farin’ as we fare, an’ bein’ the same decent kind of a fellow that we’ve known these five days.” Abraham and I had come to know Seth Hartley so well that neither of us felt the slightest hesitation in endorsing this proposition of Abel Grant’s, although I had many misgivings as to what Lieutenant Winterbottom might say, if he knew that we had as comrade aboard the sloop a British marine whom we had captured.