my lack of wardrobe.

"_Sacre!_" he exclaimed. "But I sail at once. Come! I have it. I lost my
third mate in a brush with an English privateer last month. He was a
cleanly man of much your build. You shall ship in his berth."

I pointed to the nearest flatboat. "That is the extent of my seamanship,
Monsieur Captain."

He shrugged. "The clothes will fit, if the berth does not. You can save
your present costume for your landing."

I bowed assent, and we at once swung along side by side to a wharf where
his boat was in waiting for him. With a courtesy which I did not then
appreciate, though I noted how it impressed the half-dozen swarthy,
red-capped oarsmen, he sprang first into the stern-sheets. The moment I
stepped in after him, the men pushed off. They rowed with a skill and
regularity of stroke that speedily brought us out around the brig which
blocked our view, when we approached the most graceful sloop upon which
I had ever set eyes.

Not being a seaman, I can only say that the _Siren's_ masts and yards
seemed to me to be unusually long, and the former strongly inclined to
the stern--raked, I believe is the marine term. Her hull, which was
painted a dull gray, with a narrow stripe of red, was sharp in the bow,
broad and overhanging at the stern, and low-set in the water.

When we came aboard, I noticed that the sloop's decks were cleaner and
more orderly than those of any other merchant vessel I had seen at close
quarters, and that besides a number of carronades, she carried abaft the
mainmast a great pivot-gun that could have found few mates afloat
elsewhere than aboard a man-of-war. It was a long French
twenty-four-pounder, which is really a twenty-six-and-a-half-pounder by
English weight. As is well known, many frigates carry no heavier longs
than eighteen-pounders.

Observing my interested glance, Captain Lafitte said, with a smile: "As
you see, doctor, Monsieur Clark is disinclined to deliver his sloop and
cargo to the Spanish privateers without a protest."

"Is the _Siren_, then, his vessel?" I asked in surprise.

"For this voyage, at least," he answered; and leaving me to guess what
this might mean, he turned and called out a series of nautical orders in
a voice like a trumpet.

Instantly such a swarm of sailors poured up from the forecastle and
hatchways and rushed here and there about the decks that I wondered they
did not run one another down. Between times the Captain beckoned to a
grinning imp