is mouth and handed it back.

"No, no," he said, with decision, "it's only the old associations that
it calls up, that's all. As for baccy, I've bin so long without it now,
that I don't want it; and it would only be foolish in me to rouse up the
old cravin'. There, you light it, Jack. I'll content myself wi' the
smell of it."

"Well, John Adams, have your way. You are king here, you know; nobody
to contradict you. So I'll smoke instead of you, if these young ladies
won't object."

The young ladies referred to were so far from objecting, that they were
burning with impatience to see a real smoker go to work, for the tobacco
of the mutineers had been exhausted, and all the pipes broken or lost,
before most of them were born.

"And let me tell you, John Adams," continued the sailor, when the pipe
was fairly alight, "I've not smoked a pipe in such koorious
circumstances since I lit one, an' had my right fore-finger shot off
when I was stuffin' down the baccy, in the main-top o' the _Victory_ at
the battle o' Trafalgar. But it was against all rules to smoke in
action, an' served me right. Hows'ever, it got me my discharge, and
that's how I come to be in a Yankee merchantman this good day."

At the mention of battle and being wounded in action, the old
professional sympathies of John Adams were awakened.

"What battle might that have been?" he asked.

"Which?" said Jack.

"Traflegar," said the other.

Jack Brace took the pipe out of his mouth and looked at Adams, as though
he had asked where Adam and Eve had been born. For some time he could
not make up his mind how to reply.

"You don't mean to tell me," he said at length, "that you've never heard
of the--battle--of--Trafalgar?"

"Never," answered Adams, with a faint smile.

"Nor of the great Lord Nelson?"

"Never heard his name till to-day. You forget, Jack, that I've not seen
a mortal man from Old England, or any other part o' the civilised world,
since the 28th day of April 1789, and that's full nineteen years ago."

"That's true, John; that's true," said the seaman, slowly, as if
endeavouring to obtain some comprehension of what depths of ignorance
the fact implied. "So, I suppose you've never heerd tell of--hold on;
let me rake up my brain-pan a bit."

He tilted his straw hat, and scratched his head for a few minutes,
puffing the while immense clouds of smoke, to the inexpressible delight
of the open-mouthed youngsters around him.

"You--y