"Not exactly; but to make a long story short—"
"When you talk of cutting anything short, we are in for a yarn," said Jack.
"And you are sure to interrupt him in the middle of it," said Fritz.
"Well, in two words," said Willis, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "I was cruising about the shipyards, looking if there was a condemned craft likely to suit us—some of them had gun-shot wounds in their timbers, others had been slewed up by a shoal—and, to cut the matter short—"
"Another yarn," suggested Jack.
"I luffed up beside the hull of a cutter-looking craft that had been completely gutted. But, changed and dilapidated as that hull is, I recognized it at once to be that of the Nelson. Now do you believe in miracles?"
"But are you sure, Willis?"
"Suppose you met Ernest or Frank in the street to-morrow, pale, meagre, and in rags, would you recognize them?"
"Most assuredly."
"Well, by the same token, sailors can always recognize a ship they have sailed in. They know the form of every plank and the line of every bend. There are hundreds of marks that get spliced in the memory, and are never forgotten. But in the present case there is no room for any doubt, a portion of the figure head is still extant, and the word Nelson can be made out without spectacles."