sale, and as you said in the last letter that I received that you were
getting very sick of having nothing to do, I thought you might like the
job."

"Certainly I should like it, Edgar, and that purchase of the ship seems
a very satisfactory one, though, of course, the profit will be yours and
not mine, as I had nothing to do with it."

"Oh, yes, it is your business, father; she is bought with your money,
and I am glad that I have been able to do something for the firm. I
shall soon be getting my prize money, which will keep me in cash for a
very long time."

"We won't argue about that now, Edgar. At any rate I shall be glad to
see to the sale of these Eastern goods, though, of course, it will be
but a small thing."

"I don't know, father. I think that it will be rather a large thing. At
any rate there is something between eighty and a hundred tons of them."

"Between eighty and a hundred tons!" his father replied. "You mean with
the dried fruits, of course."

"Not at all, father! The fruits will be sold in the ordinary way in the
prize court."

"Then, what can these things be?"

"I should say the great proportion of them are carpets--Turkish,
Persian, and Syrian."

"A hundred tons of such carpets as those, Edgar, would be worth a very
large sum, indeed; surely you must be mistaken?"

"It's the accumulation of years of piracy, father; perhaps from hundreds
of ships captured by those scoundrels. But, of course, they are not all
carpets. There are silks, muslins, embroidered robes, Egyptian scarves
and manufactures, and other sorts of things. We have not opened above a
dozen bales out of some twelve hundred, and have, therefore, no idea of
the relative value of the others. We were a tender of the _Tigre's_, our
craft being a prize taken by her, and all of us, officers and men, being
borne on her books, the whole ship divides. Still, if the things are
worth as much as we think, it will bring us in a handsome sum. And there
is, besides, twelve thousand five hundred in cash, the proceeds of the
sale of the vessels we captured; and we also share with the other ships
under Sir Sidney Smith's command in the value of the vessels and cargoes
they have captured as they tried to reach an Egyptian port. They say
they were worth something like forty thousand, of which the _Tigre's_
share will be about half."

"Well, Edgar, if there are a hundred tons of such goods as you describe,
your cargo must be a valuable one inde