“And did you hear where she was going to?”
“Yes, I did, and I’ve a notion I could put my finger upon her now, if I choosed. Captain, you haven’t got a coil of two-inch which you could lend me—I ain’t got a topsail brace to reeve and mine are very queer just now. I reckon they’ve been turned end for end so often, that there’s an end of them.”
“You say that you know where the vessel is—where is she?”
“Captain, that’s telling—can’t I have the two inch?”
“We have not a whole coil of two-inch left, sir,” said the master, touching his hat. “We might spare him enough for a pair of new braces.”
“Well, well, I’m reasonable altogether, and if so be you haven’t got it, I don’t expect it. It’s very odd now, but I can’t just now remember the place that the French vessel was going to; it’s slipped clean out of my memory.”
“Perhaps the two-inch might help your memory,” replied the captain. “Mr Smith, let the rope be got up and put into the boat.”
“Well,” said the American captain, “as you say, mister, it may help my memory. It’s not the first time that I’ve freshened a man’s memory with a bit of two-inch myself,” continued he, grinning at his own joke; “but I don’t see it coming.”
“I have ordered it to be put in the boat,” replied Captain Delmar, haughtily: “my orders are not disobeyed, nor is my word doubted.”
“Not by them as knows you, I dare say, captain, but you’re a stranger to me; I don’t think I ask much, after all—a bit of spar and a bit of rope—just to tell you where you may go and take a fine vessel, and pocket a nation lot of dollars as prize-money. Well, there’s the rope, and now I’ll tell you. She was going off Berbice or Surinam, to look after the West Indiamen, who were on the coast, or expected on it, I don’t know which. There you’ll find her, as sure as I stand here; but I think that she is a bit bigger than this vessel—you don’t mind that, I dare say.”