Captain Manual had his men paraded in the weather-gangway, and after a short address, calculated to inflame their military ardor and patriotism, acquainted them that he required twenty volunteers, which was in truth half their number, for a dangerous service. After a short pause, the company stepped forward, like one man, and announced themselves as ready to follow him to the end of the world. The marine cast a look over his shoulder, at this gratifying declaration, in quest of Barnstable; but observing that the sailor was occupied with some papers on a distant part of the quarter-deck, he proceeded to make a most impartial division among the candidates for glory; taking care at the same time to cull his company in such a manner as to give himself the flower of his men, and, consequently, to leave the ship the refuse. While this arrangement was taking place, and the crew of the frigate was in this state of excitement, Griffith ascended to the deck, his countenance flushed with unusual enthusiasm, and his eyes beaming with a look of animation and gayety that had long been strangers to the face of the young man. He was giving forth the few necessary orders to the seamen he was to take with him from the ship, when Barnstable again motioned him to follow, and led the way once more to the stateroom. “Let the wind blow its pipe out,” said the commander of the Ariel, when they were seated; “there will be no landing on the eastern coast of England till the sea goes down. But this Kate was made for a sailor's wife! See, Griffith, what a set of signals she has formed, out of her own cunning head.” “I hope your opinion may prove true, and that you may be the happy sailor who is to wed her,” returned the other. “The girl has indeed discovered surprising art in this business! Where could she have learnt the method and system so well?” “Where! why, where she learnt better things; how to prize a whole-hearted seaman, for instance. Do you think that my tongue was jammed in my mouth, all the time we used to sit by the side of the river in Carolina, and that we found nothing to talk about!” “Did you amuse your mistress with treatises on the art of navigation, and the science of signals?” said Griffith, smiling. “I answered her questions, Mr. Griffith, as any civil man would to a woman he loved. The girl has as much curiosity as one of my own townswomen who has weathered cape forty without a husband, and her tongue goes like a dog-vane in a calm, first one way and then another. But here is her dictionary. Now own, Griff, in spite of your college learning and sentimentals, that a woman of ingenuity and cleverness is a very good sort of a helpmate.”