“Yes, sir, one gets a military look after seeing numberless wars; and so, happily for the need of both, I have now come to the part of my secret which touches more particularly on the character of that vessel. There sat I, reflecting on the manner in which the strange seamen had been deluded by my tonguey neighbour—for, as you should know, sir, a desperate talker is that Tape, and a younker who has seen but one war at the utmost—therefore, was I thinking of the manner in which he had enticed my lawful customers from my shop, when, as one thought is the father of another, the following concluding reasoning, as our pious priest has it weekly in his reviving and searching discourses, came uppermost in my mind: If these mariners were honest and conscientious slavers, would they overlook a labouring man with a large family, to pour their well-earned gold into the lap of a common babbler? I proclaimed to myself at once, sir, that they would not. I was bold to say the same in my own mind, and, thereupon, I openly put the question to all in hearing, If they are not slavers, what are they? A question which the King himself would, in his royal wisdom, allow to be a question easier asked than answered; upon which I replied, If the vessel be no fair-trading slaver, nor a common cruiser of his Majesty, it is as tangible as the best man’s reasoning, that she may be neither more nor less than the ship of that nefarious pirate the Red Rover.” “The Red Rover!” exclaimed the stranger in green, with a start so natural as to evidence that his dying interest in the tailor’s narrative was suddenly and powerfully revived. “That indeed would be a secret worth having!—but why do you suppose the same?” “For sundry reasons, which I am now about to name, in their respective order. In the first place, she is an armed ship, sir. In the second, she is no lawful cruiser, or the same would be publicly known, and by no one sooner than myself, inasmuch as it is seldom that I do not finger a penny from the King’s ships. In the third place, the burglarious and unfeeling conduct of the few seamen who have landed from her go to prove it; and, lastly, what is well proved may be considered as substantially established These are what, sir, I should call the opening premises of my inferences, all of which I hope you will properly lay before the royal mind of his Majesty.”