"Joe is well. He is first mate, now. Poor Probert is on his back in hospital, at Portsmouth. We had a sharp brush with a French privateer, but we beat her off. We had five men killed, and Probert had his leg taken off by an eighteen pound shot. We clapped on a tourniquet, but he had a very narrow escape of bleeding to death. Fortunately it was off Ushant and, the wind being favourable, we got into Portsmouth on the following morning; and the doctors think that they will pull him round.
"You have grown a good bit, since I saw you last."
"Not much, I am afraid," Bob replied dolefully, for his height was rather a sore point with him. "I get wider, but I don't think I have grown half an inch, since I came here."
"And how goes on the Spanish?"
"First rate. I can get on in it almost as well as in English."
"So you are in for some more fighting!"
"So they say," Bob replied, "but I don't think I am likely to have as close a shave, of a Spanish prison, as I had of a French one coming out here."
"No; we had a narrow squeak of it, that time."
"Was war declared when you came away?"
"No; the negotiations were broken off, and everyone knew that war was certain, and that the proclamation might be issued at any hour. I have not had a very fast run, and expected to have learned the news when I got here; but you are sure to hear it, in a day or two. That was why I came here. Freights were short for, with the ports of France and Spain both closed, there was little enough doing; so the owners agreed to let me drop trading and make straight for Gibraltar, so as to be ready to put out as soon as we get the declaration of war.