of a cabin-boy and told him to show me below.

It was three days before I again saw the deck. Once the sloop was under
way, Captain Lafitte came down long enough to start me overhauling the
chests of the dead third mate. This kept me occupied until the
mid-afternoon, aside from the time it took me to eat the savory meal
brought to me by the cabin-boy. Captain Lafitte remained all the time on
deck with the pilot who conned us down to the Gulf. When at last he did
come below, the sloop was pitching in a rough cross-sea and I was most
disgracefully nauseated.

The gale freshening to a downright storm, we were, as I was afterwards
told, compelled to run before it under a storm jib. At the time I knew
only that I was too seasick to care whether the ship floated or
foundered.

But on the fourth day the storm abated to a half gale, and the sloop,
being brought about and put under more sail, became so much steadier
that I made shift to eat a scant meal and crawl on deck. Such of the
weary-eyed crew as took heed of me grinned at the pale-faced landsman,
but they took on another look when at noon I helped the captain to take
his observations and work out the result. I had not spent all those
months with Pike for nothing.

Lafitte appeared highly amused at this discomfiture of his tars, and
promptly declared in their hearing that I should be rated as third
mate. The following day, when I really found my sea-legs, he proposed in
all seriousness that I should accept the berth. Having candidly declared
his bitter hatred of the British, he sought to sting me to a like hatred
by relating in full detail the account of the shameful, brutal outrage
of the _Leopard_ upon the _Chesapeake_, off Hampton Roads, hardly more
than a month past.

Despite my anger and humiliation at this unavenged insult to my flag, I
felt no longing for a seafaring life other than such as was necessary to
win me my lady. Lafitte acknowledged that, in my situation, my decision
was probably a wise one. But he went on with the statement that he, for
one, would live and die in the contest against tyranny on the high seas,
and repeated a terrible vow which he had taken against all Britons and
Spaniards. His hatred of the first I could well understand, since he was
a Frenchman. But his enmity to the latter, now the allies of his
country, I could explain only as the result of private injuries. On this
point he was as reserved as he was free in expressing his determ