t of a sudden from youth to manhood.

There was Ben Gillam, a giff-gaffing blade home from the north sea, so
topful of spray that salt water spilled over at every word.

"Split me fore and aft," exclaims Ben, "if I sail not a ship of my own
next year! I'll take the boat without commission. Stocking and my
father have made an offer," he hinted darkly. "I'll go without
commission!"

"And risk being strangled for't, if the French governor catch you."

"Body o' me!" flouts Ben, ripping out a peck of oaths that had cost
dear and meant a day in the stocks if the elders heard, "who's going to
inform when my father sails the only other ship in the bay? Devil sink
my soul to the bottom of the sea if I don't take a boat to Hudson Bay
under the French governor's nose!"

"A boat of your own," I laughed. "What for, Ben?"

"For the same as your Prince Rupert, Prince Robber, took his. Go out
light as a cork, come back loaded with Spanish gold to the water-line."
Ben paused to take a pinch of snuff and display his new embroidered
waist-coat.

"Look you at the wealth in the beaver trade," he added. "M. Radisson
went home with George Carteret not worth a curse, formed the Fur
Company, and came back from Hudson Bay with pelts packed to the
quarter-deck. Devil sink me! but they say, after the fur sale, the
gentlemen adventurers had to haul the gold through London streets with
carts! Bread o' grace, Ramsay, have half an eye for your own purse!"
he urged. "There is a life for a man o' spirit! Why don't you join
the beaver trade, Ramsay?"

Why not, indeed? 'Twas that or turn cut-purse and road-lifter for a
youth of birth without means in those days.

Of Jack Battle I saw less. He shipped with the fishing boats in the
summer and cruised with any vagrant craft for the winter. When he came
ashore he was as small and eel-like and shy and awkward as ever, with
the same dumb fidelity in his eyes.

And what a snowy maid had Rebecca become! Sitting behind her
spinning-wheel, with her dainty fingers darting in the sunlight, she
seemed the pink and whitest thing that ever grew, with a look on her
face of apple-blossoms in June; but the sly wench had grown mighty
demure with me. When I laughed over that ending to our last lesson,
she must affect an air of injury. 'Twas neither her fault nor mine, I
declare, coaxing back her good-humour; 'twas the fault of the face. I
wanted to see where the white began and the pink ended.