“And let me tell you, John Adams,” continued the sailor, when the pipe was fairly alight, “I’ve not smoked a pipe in such koorious circumstances since I lit one, an’ had my right fore-finger shot off when I was stuffin’ down the baccy, in the main-top o’ the Victory at the battle o’ Trafalgar. But it was against all rules to smoke in action, an’ served me right. Hows’ever, it got me my discharge, and that’s how I come to be in a Yankee merchantman this good day.”
At the mention of battle and being wounded in action, the old professional sympathies of John Adams were awakened.
“What battle might that have been?” he asked.
“Which?” said Jack.
“Traflegar,” said the other.
Jack Brace took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at Adams, as though he had asked where Adam and Eve had been born. For some time he could not make up his mind how to reply.
“You don’t mean to tell me,” he said at length, “that you’ve never heard of the—battle—of—Trafalgar?”
“Never,” answered Adams, with a faint smile.
“Nor of the great Lord Nelson?”
“Never heard his name till to-day. You forget, Jack, that I’ve not seen a mortal man from Old England, or any other part o’ the civilised world, since the 28th day of April 1789, and that’s full nineteen years ago.”