"We shall not need to test her." "You rely on your guns, then?" I had observed the care lavished on these. They were of brass, and shone like the door-plates in the main cabin. "Why, as to that," he answered evasively, "I've had to before now. The last voyage I commanded her--it was just after the war broke out with America--we fell in with a schooner off the Banks; we were outward bound for Halifax. She carried twelve nine-pounder carronades and two long nines, beside a big fellow on a traverse; and we had the guns you see--eight nine-pounders and one chaser of the same calibre--post-office guns, we call them. But we beat her off after two hours of it." "And saved the mails?" He rose abruptly (we had seated ourselves on a couple of hen-coops under the break of the poop). "You will excuse me. I have an order to give"; and he hurried up the steps to the quarter-deck. It must have been ten days after this that he stopped me in one of my eternal listless promenades and invited me to sit beside him again. "I wish to take your opinion, Mr. Ducie. You have not, I believe, found salvation? You are not one of us, as I may say?" "Meaning by 'us'?" "I and mine, sir, are unworthy followers of the Word, as preached by John Wesley." "Why, no; that is not my religion." "But you are a gentleman." I bowed. "And on a point of honour--do you think, sir, that as a servant of the King one should obey his earthly master even to doing what conscience forbids?" "That might depend--" "But on a point of honour, sir? Suppose that you had pledged your private word, in a just, nay, a generous bargain, and were commanded to break it. Is there anything could override that?" I thought of my poor old French colonel and his broken _parole_; and was silent. "Can you not tell me the circumstances?" I suggested at length. He had been watching me eagerly. But he shook his head now, sighed, and drew a small Bible from his pocket. "I am not a gentleman, sir. I laid it before the Lord: but," he continued naively, "I wanted to learn how a gentleman would look at it." He searched for a text, turning the pages with long, nervous fingers; but desisted with another sigh, and, a moment later, was summoned away to solve some difficulty with the ship's reckoning. My respect for the captain had been steadily growing. He was so amiable, too, so untiringly courteous; he bore his sorrow--whatever the cause might be--with so gentle a resignation; that I caught myself pitying even while I cursed him and his crew for their inhuman reticence.