“Prisoners!” exclaimed the lieutenant; “no, no, lad, it has not got to that, yet! England has been able to wreck my craft, I must concede; but she has, as yet, obtained no other advantage over us. She was a precious model, Merry! the cleanest run, and the neatest entrance, that art ever united on the stem and stern of the same vessel! Do you remember the time, younker, when I gave the frigate my top-sails, in beating out of the Chesapeake? I could always do it, in smooth water, with a whole-sail breeze. But she was a frail thing! a frail thing, boy, and could bear but little.” “A mortar-ketch would have thumped to pieces where she lay,” returned the midshipman. “Ay, it was asking too much of her, to expect she could hold together on a bed of rocks. Merry, I loved her; dearly did I love her; she was my first command, and I knew and loved every timber and bolt in her beautiful frame!” “I believe it is as natural, sir, for a seaman to love the wood and iron in which he has floated over the depths of the ocean for so many days and nights,” rejoined the boy, “as it is for a father to love the members of his own family.” “Quite, quite, ay, more so,” said Barnstable, speaking as if he were choked by emotion. Merry felt the heavy grasp of the lieutenant on his slight arm, while his commander continued, in a voice that gradually increased in power, as his feelings predominated; “and yet, boy, a human being cannot love the creature of his own formation as he does the works of God. A man can never regard his ship as he does his shipmates. I sailed with him, boy, when everything seemed bright and happy, as at your age; when, as he often expressed it, I knew nothing and feared nothing. I was then a truant from an old father and a kind mother, and he did that for me which no parents could have done in my situation--he was my father and mother on the deep!--hours, days, even months, has he passed in teaching me the art of our profession; and now, in my manhood, he has followed me from ship to ship, from sea to sea, and has only quitted me to die, where I should have died--as if he felt the disgrace of abandoning the poor Ariel to her fate, by herself!”