“Enough said, sir, enough said; there was not an honester trader nor a happier man in all the Union, until your infernal pillaging an burning squadron in the Chesapeake captured and ruined me; but I paid it off on the prize-master, although we were driven on the rocks after all. I paid it off, and, God help me, I have never thriven since, enemy although he was. I see the poor fellow’s face yet, as I!”--He checked himself suddenly, as if aware that he might say more than could be conveniently retracted. “But I dare not be taken; let that satisfy you, Master Cringle, so go below--below with you, sir”--I saw he had succeeded in lashing himself into a fury--“or, by the Almighty God, who hears me, I shall be tempted to do another deed, the remembrance of which will haunt me till my dying day.” All this passed in no time, as we say, much quicker than one can read it; and I now saw that the corvette had braced up sharp to the wind again, on the same tack that we were on; so I slipped down like an eel, and once more stretched myself beside Paul, on the lee side of the cabin. We soon found that she was indeed after us in earnest, by the renewal of the cannonade, and the breezing up of the small arms again. Two round shot now tore right through the deck, just beneath the larboard coamings of the main hatchway; the little vessel’s deck, as she lay over, being altogether exposed to, the enemy’s fire, they made her whole frame tremble again, smashing every thing in their way to shivers, and going right out through her bottom on the opposite side, within a dozen streaks of her keel, while the rattling of the clustered grapeshot every now and then made us start, the musketry all the while peppering away like a hail shower. Still the skipper, who I expected every moment to see puffed away from the tiller like smoke, held upon deck as if he had been bullet-proof, and seemed to escape the hellish tornado of missiles of all sorts and sizes by a miracle. “He is in league with the old one, Paul,” said I; “howsoever, you must be nabbed, for you see the ship is forereaching on you, and you can’t go on t’other tack, surely, with these pretty eyelet holes between wind and water on the weather side there? Your captain is mad why will you, then, and all these poor fellows, go down, because he dare not surrender, for some good deed of his own, eh?” The roar of the cannon and noise of the musketry made it necessary for me to raise my voice here, which the small scuttle, like Dionysius’s ear, conveyed unexpectedly to my friend, the captain, on deck. “Hand me up my pistols, Paul.” It had struck me before, and I was now certain, that from the time he had become so intensely excited as he was now, he spoke with a pure English accent, without the smallest dash of Yankeeism. “So, so; I see--no wonder you won’t strike, you renegade,” cried I.