“Forget you!” cried the captain, passionately; “never! My love for you grows stronger every day; and as to beauty, was there ever a woman so beautiful as you?”
“La!”
Captain Humphrey was about to throw himself on his knees as well as his big boots would allow; but just then the door opened, and fresh visitors were announced, and though the topic of the captain’s appointment to the sloop of war Queen Jane, for the extermination of the West Indian buccaneers, formed the staple of the conversation, he had to leave at last with nothing warmer than a smile, but full of a great deal of hope.
For love had blinded the eyes of the stout captain lately introduced to the fashionable beauty, and welcomed on account of the fact that he had lately succeeded to the Devonshire estates of the Armstrongs, consequent upon the death of his cousin James, who had been killed in a duel arising out of some affair of gallantry, the husband of the lady in question objecting to Captain James Armstrong’s advances, and running him through the body.
So, deeply in love with as pretty a bit of artificiality as ever dressed, or rather believing himself deeply in love, Captain Humphrey joined his well-found ship at Falmouth, sailed for the far west and the land of the torrid sun; and the men of Bristol rubbed their hands, thought of their freights, and sat down to their ledgers, while they waited for the news of the hanging of Commodore Junk.
Chapter Twenty.
The Pirate Chase.
“It’s like hunting a will-o’-the-wisp on Dartmoor,” cried Captain Humphrey, as he sat in one of his ship’s boats, wiping the perspiration from his sun-scorched face. “One day I’m ready to swear it is all a myth, the next that there are a dozen Commodore Junks.”