lot," interjected Captain S--; "but I
think you are getting excited, Farquarson, so you better cease talking
about them."

"It is time I was getting up to the city. They are rattling it into
her. She'll be loaded in a jiffy, and I've much to do."

"Very well," said the bluff skipper, "get away. And it's understood
that mum's the word; but mind you're not through the wood yet. What do
you say, Yaunie?"

"I say you no speak so loud or so much. It is better not."

"Very well, old skin-the-goat," said Farquarson playfully; "I suppose
I am a bit noisy."

He then jumped aboard his vessel, and invited the trusty pilot to
follow him so that they might work out a scheme that would thwart any
possibility of a raid being made on the _Claverhouse_. He prided
himself on being fertile in strategy, and certainly his notions were
not those of an ordinary person. His confidences were given to Yaunie
without any reserve. First, he suggested inveigling the raiders from
S----'s vessel to his own, getting them down below and filling them
full of champagne or whisky, whichever they preferred; and in the
event of their remaining on board his friend's ship, they were to be
made drunk there, and that being accomplished, the vessel was to be
unmoored and taken to sea with them aboard, and they were to be landed
or cast adrift in an open boat. The recital of these dare-devil
propositions caused Yaunie's face to wear a careworn look, and when
asked what he thought of it he said--

"Well, I try to tink, bit it is impossible. You speak what cannot
happen. If you do what you say, how can you come back here? No, no;
that must not be. I have better plan. No trouble, no get drunk, no run
off with officers, no put him in boat; but leave it me: I settle
everyting, suppose trouble come."

"Agreed again, old cockaloram. I'm only saying what I'd do. As I said
before, you can do as you like, but I prefer giving these fellows
'what cheer!' I says again, what business have they to interfere with
Englishmen carryin' on their business in their own way? I say they had
no right to put a blockade on, and England should see that her
subjects are duly protected."

This eloquent pronouncement of patriotism, with comic gesture added,
excited the fiery dissent of the critical Levantine.

"Yes!" he retorted; "you tink everyting foreign should be for English.
You swagger off with other people's country and say, 'This mine.' You
like old J----b and G----d; they