Mr. Rogers, "would like to hurry that
reckoning a bit. Well, well, I can make shift to fit you up with
something for a week or two, and maybe by that time there'll be an
opening aboard one of the Packets. Just now, in Christmas week,
business is slack enough, but what do you say to going mate on a vessel
as far as the Downs?"

"Nothing I should like better," says Jacka.

"You'd better have a look at her first," says Mr. Rogers.

So he takes Jacka off to the Market Strand, calls for a waterman's
wherry, and inside of ten minutes they were being pulled out to the
Roads.

"There's your ship," says Mr. Rogers, as they pushed out beyond the old
dock into Carrick Roads.

Jacka opened first his eyes and then his mouth. The vessel was a kind
of top-sail schooner, but with a hull there was no mistaking, the more
by token that the tide was swinging her stern-on, and showing him a pair
of windows picked out in red paint, with shutter-boards and brass hinges
shining.

"Mr. Rogers," he said, "I han't read the _Sherborne Mercury_ lately,
but is--is the war over?"

"No, nor likely to be."

"But, Mr. Rogers, sir, either that there ship is a Dutchman or else I
be."

"Look at her flag, you old fool."

"Never see'd the like of it."

"That's the flag of the Principality of Nibby-Gibby. Ever heard of it?"

"Can't say I have."

"No more did I till the day before yesterday, and I won't swear I've got
it right yet. But 'tis somewhere up the Baltic I understand.
That there ship--her name, by the way, is the _Burgomeister Van der
Werf_--is bound up Channel with sugar from Jamaica--with a licence.
Maybe you folks up to Polperro don't know what that means?"

"I only know that, if I'd ran across her in the old _Pride_, I'd have
clapped a crew on board and run her into a British port and no questions
asked."

Says Mr. Rogers, "If that's the way you Polperro men keep abreast of
Board of Trade regulations, it strikes me you might have done worse than
lose your billet with the _Pride of the West_."

In the time left before the waterman brought them alongside, Mr. Rogers
explained, as well as he could, the new system (as it was then) of
licences; by which the Government winked at neutral vessels carrying
goods into the enemy's ports, in spite of the blockade, and bringing us
back Baltic timber for shipbuilding.

"But a Dutchman isn' no neutral," Captain Jacka objected.

"I did hear," said Mr. Rogers, stroking his chin and l