_The Three Cutters_ may be supposed to have been written to fill out the volume containing _The Pirate_ and those twenty engravings from drawings by Clarkson Stanfield, which still make the first edition a desirable possession. This function, whether it was originally designed or not, is very agreeably fulfilled by the history of the _Arrow_, the _Active_, and _Happy-go-lucky_. Although he wrote very few of them, Marryat had a happy hand with a short story. _The S. W. and by W. and 1/4 W. Wind_ and _Moonshine_ are very happy examples of the magazine story. _The Three Cutters_ is somewhat longer than either, but the difference in bulk is due less to any greater amount of pure story there is than to the care with which Marryat introduces his three vessels, and sketches their respective starting-places--Plymouth, Portsmouth, and St. Malo. Here again it is to be noted that Marryat is far more at home in the man-of-war than in the smuggler or the yacht. Mr. Appleboy, with his forty-five years' service, and the interesting story which remains untold of the something which took place in '93 or '94, his seventeen daily tumblers of gin-toddy, his mate and his midshipman, is a part, and not an inferior one, of Marryat's inimitable naval gallery. The _Happy-go-lucky_ is perhaps rather a smuggler of the Pays Bleu than of the British Channel, but she is sufficiently in place in a story not intended to be too slavishly faithful to life. Morrison, the sailing-master, with his augury of the blue pigeon, is real, and nothing can be more consistent with human nature than that he should have cursed the bird when he did finally find himself in prison. As for the adventures, they belong to the region of the fantastic, which does not pretend to be anything else. The idea of a yacht which endeavours the capture of a smuggler, and is herself made prize by him, is of course a motive for farce.