During all the time occupied by the foregoing scenes and dialogue, Fid and the negro had been diligently discussing the contents of the bag, under the fence where they were last seen. As the appetite of the former became appeased, his didactic disposition returned, and, at the precise moment when Wilder was left alone in the tower, he was intently engaged in admonishing the black on the delicate subject, of behaviour in mixed society. “And so you see, Guinea,” he concluded, “in or der to keep a weather-helm in company, you are never to throw all aback, and go stern foremost out of a dispute, as you have this day seen fit to do According to my l’arning, that Master Nightingale is better in a bar-room than in a squall; and if you had just luffed-up on his quarter, when you saw me laying myself athwart his hawse in the argument, you see we should have given him a regular jam in the discourse, and then the fellow would have been shamed in the eyes of all the by-standers. Who hails? what cook is sticking his neighbour’s pig now?” “Lor’! Misser Fid,” cried the black, “here masser Harry, wid a head out of port-hole, up dereaway in a light-house, singing-out like a marine in a boat wid a plug out!” “Ay, ay, let him alone for hailing a top-gallant yard, or a flying-jib-boom! The lad has a voice like a French horn, when he has a mind to tune it! And what the devil is he manning the guns of that weather-beaten wreck for? At all events, if he has to fight his craft alone, there is no one to blame but himself, since he has gone to quarters without beat of drum, or without, in any other manner, seeing fit to muster his people.” As Dick and the negro had both been making the best of their way towards the ruin, from the moment they discovered the situation of their friend, by this time they were within speaking distance of the spot itself. Wilder, in those brief, pithy tones that distinguish the manner in which a sea officer issues his orders, directed them to raise the ladder. When he was liberated, he demanded, with a sufficiently significant air, if they had observed the direction in which the stranger in green had made his retreat? “Do you mean the chap in boots, who was for shoving his oar into another man’s rullock, a bit ago, on the small matter of wharf, hereaway, in a range, over yonder house, bringing the north-east chimney to hear in a line, with the mizen-top-gallant-mast-head of that ship they are warping into the stream?” “The very same.” “He made a slant on the wind until he had weathered yonder bit of a barn, and then he tacked and stretched away off here to the east-and-by-south, going large, and with studding sails alow and aloft, as I think, for he made a devil of a head-way.” “Follow,” cried Wilder, starting forward in the direction indicated by Fid, without waiting to hear any more of the other’s characteristic explanations.