"The _Aurora_," cried the Admiral with a sudden elation, which might have passed as the flare-up of a man in his cups who has sat for a while in maudlin dejection. "By heavens, Acton, you have hit it! where should I find such a vessel for this purpose? Why, aboard of her in a few days you would be alongside the _Minorca_, if you are fair in the scent of the trail of her wake, and wanting that, why, your noble and beautiful little clipper will have been at Rio a fortnight before the barque heaves in sight. May I accompany you?--but you must allow me to do so. You must permit me to be your companion, for, by God, Captain Acton, it is for you to recover your daughter and your property, but it is for me to greet that malefactor, my son." He smote his thigh hard with the palm of his hand. The noise was like the report of a pistol. He was wont to strike himself thus in the days of his command when angered, or when he expressed a purpose, which he intended to fulfil though it meant life or death. "Certainly, Sir William," said Captain Acton. "I shall rejoice to have you with me." "Good, good!" cried the old fellow, and rolling across to his friend, he grasped him by the hand, and held on, looking at his friend with a face a-work with emotion, with an expression indeed that seemed perilously close to further dry sobs. "But," said Captain Acton, who was perhaps helped to a display of comparative composure of mind by the Admiral's reception of the news, "though if possible we shall sail to-morrow evening or the following day in pursuit, my opinion is, sir, that even if Mr Lawrence were left to his own shifts he would never be able to compass his undertaking. First of all, he has a highly respectable man, who has proved a good servant to me, to deal with in his mate. Will Mr Eagle permit him to carry the _Minorca_ to Rio? Will the crew have nothing to say? What will be thought by all hands when it gets about that my daughter is on board, a prisoner in confinement in the cabin? And is my daughter so enamoured of Mr Lawrence that because he has placed her in a highly equivocal situation she will be willing to marry him, or to have anything to say to him on their arrival at Rio?" "Oh no, oh no!" interposed Miss Acton; "she would not be our Lucy if she did." "My conviction is," continued the Captain, "that when Eagle and the crew get scent of Mr Lawrence's intentions, and understand the blackguardly act he has been guilty of in trepanning my daughter, they will turn upon him and either do him some serious mischief or lock him up, and under Eagle, proceed direct to Kingston, or if they have not gone far, return to Old Harbour." "That's what will happen!" cried Miss Acton. "Would our sailors permit a stranger like Mr Lawrence to steal your daughter and your ship and what is in her, and be dismissed from your service by him at Rio Janeiro with promises of your paying them treble wages when they got home, and applied to you? Oh no, no, no!"