he opportunity, for three or four months
of enforced idleness on the Egyptian coast was not at all to his taste.
The extra pay that he would receive was a consideration, but the fact
that he was to be nominally--for Edgar had explained the situation to
him--in command was the great inducement.

He had fortunately passed his examination and obtained his certificate
as captain before sailing on the present voyage. Had it not been for
this he could not have accepted Edgar's offer. The voyage was a rapid
one. They stopped for two days at Gibraltar to take in water. They had
some little trouble with the prize-agent there, for of course the ship's
papers showed that she had been a prize, and she should have been sent
there to be condemned and sold. Sir Sidney Smith, however, had written,
saying that as the ships on the station were already short-handed, he
could not spare a prize crew, and that he had therefore only the choice
of burning the prize or of selling her there, and that a court of
officers from the various ships-of-war had fixed her value at L850, and
a purchaser having been found at that price, he had deemed it expedient
to sell her, and now forwarded his bill for the amount, to be divided in
the usual course by the prize officials at Gibraltar, as if they had
sold her themselves. He stated that as she had been loaded with
munitions of war for the French army, no question could arise as to the
lawfulness of her capture.

The officials shook their heads over the irregularity, but as the
defence of Acre had made a great sensation in England, and a vote of
thanks had been passed by both Houses of Parliament, and by many of the
corporate bodies in England, to Sir Sidney and those serving under him,
they agreed to set the matter right; and thereupon, on the evidence
given by Wilkinson and Edgar as to the circumstances of the capture,
they formally condemned the ship and authorized the sale that had been
effected. That point satisfactorily settled, they sailed at once, shaped
their course, after issuing from the Straits, a hundred miles west of
the usual ship track, and met with no suspicious sail until they entered
the Chops of the Channel. Then one or two craft that looked like French
privateers were observed; but the _Suzanne_ was a fast vessel and kept
her distance from them, holding her course up Channel, and one morning,
soon after daybreak, dropped anchor among a number of other merchantmen
on the Mother bank of