“The metal?”
“Is still heavier. In every particular is she a ship a size above your own.”
“Doubtless she is the property of the King?”
“She is.”
“Then shall she change her masters. By heaven she shall be mine!”
Wilder shook his head, answering only with an incredulous smile.
“You doubt it,” resumed the Rover. “Come hither, and look upon that deck. Can he whom you so lately quitted muster fellows like these, to do his biddings?”
The crew of the ‘Dolphin’ had been chosen, by one who thoroughly understood the character of a seaman, from among all the different people of the Christian world. There was not a maritime nation in Europe which had not its representative among; that band of turbulent and desperate spirits. Even the descendant of the aboriginal possessors of America had been made to abandon the habits and opinions of his progenitors, to become a wanderer on that element which had laved the shores of his native land for ages, without exciting a wish to penetrate its mysteries in the bosoms of his simple-minded ancestry. All had been suited, by lives of wild adventure, on the two elements, for their present lawless pursuits and, directed by the mind which had known how to obtain and to continue its despotic ascendancy over their efforts, they truly formed a most dangerous and (considering their numbers) resistless crew. Their Commander smiled in exultation, as he watched the evident reflection with which his companion contemplated the indifference, or fierce joy, which different individuals among them exhibited at the appearance of an approaching conflict. Even the rawest of their numbers, the luckless waisters and after-guard, were apparently as confident of victory as those whose audacity might plead the apology of uniform and often repeated success.
“Count you these for nothing?” asked the Rover, at the elbow of his lieutenant, after allowing him time to embrace the whole of the grim band with his eye. “See! here is a Dane, ponderous and steady as the gun at which I shall shortly place him. You may cut him limb from limb, and yet will he stand like a tower, until the last stone of the foundation has been sapped. And, here, we have his neighbours, the, Swede and the Russ, fit companions for managing the same piece; which, I’ll answer, shall not be silent, while a man of them all is left to apply a match, or handle a sponge. Yonder is a square-built athletic mariner, from one of the Free Towns. He prefers our liberty to that of his native city; and you shall find that the venerable Hanseatic institutions shall give way sooner than he be known to quit the spot I give him to defend. Here, you see a brace of Englishmen; and, though they come from the island that I love so little, better men at need will not be often found. Feed them, and flog them, and I pledge myself to their swaggering, and their courage. D’ye see that thoughtful-looking, bony miscreant, that has a look of godliness in the midst of all his villany? That fellow fish’d for herring till he got a taste of beef, when his stomach revolted at its ancient fare; and then the ambition of becoming rich got uppermost. He is a Scot, from one of the lochs of the North.”
“Will he fight?”