“Count you these for nothing?” asked the Rover, at the elbow of his lieutenant, after allowing him time to embrace the whole of the grim band with his eye. “See! here is a Dane, ponderous and steady as the gun at which I shall shortly place him. You may cut him limb from limb, and yet will he stand like a tower, until the last stone of the foundation has been sapped. And, here, we have his neighbours, the, Swede and the Russ, fit companions for managing the same piece; which, I’ll answer, shall not be silent, while a man of them all is left to apply a match, or handle a sponge. Yonder is a square-built athletic mariner, from one of the Free Towns. He prefers our liberty to that of his native city; and you shall find that the venerable Hanseatic institutions shall give way sooner than he be known to quit the spot I give him to defend. Here, you see a brace of Englishmen; and, though they come from the island that I love so little, better men at need will not be often found. Feed them, and flog them, and I pledge myself to their swaggering, and their courage. D’ye see that thoughtful-looking, bony miscreant, that has a look of godliness in the midst of all his villany? That fellow fish’d for herring till he got a taste of beef, when his stomach revolted at its ancient fare; and then the ambition of becoming rich got uppermost. He is a Scot, from one of the lochs of the North.” “Will he fight?” “For money—the honour of the Macs—and his religion. He is a reasoning fellow, after all: and I like to have him on my own side in a quarrel. Ah! yonder is the boy for a charge. I once told him to cut a rope in a hurry, and he severed it above his head, instead of beneath his feet, taking a flight from a lower yard into the sea, as a reward for the exploit. But, then, he always extols his presence of mind in not drowning! Now are his ideas in a hot ferment; and, if the truth could be known, I would wager a handsome venture, that the sail in sight is, by some mysterious process, magnified to six in his fertile fancy.” “He must be thinking, then, of escape.”