"'Where in all the earth did you hail from?' he said. 'I thought you were dead and gone?'
"'And I thought you were the same,' said I, 'and no mistake.'
"'Alive and hearty though, as you see, Pilot; only a little at sea amongst the mounseers.'
"'But what about the Hoboken?' says I.
"'What Hoboken?' says he.
"'Were you not aboard a Yankee cruiser some months back?'
"'Never was aboard a Yankee in all my life,' says Bill.
"And no more he was, for he never left the Nelson till she was high and dry in Havre dockyard; so, the short and the long of it is, that I must have been wrong in that instance."
"So I should think," remarked Fritz.
"Yet the resemblance was very remarkable; the only difference was a carbuncle on the nose, which the real Bill has and the other has not, but which I had forgotten."