"

"It was to have been the reward of a service done, and not an earnest,
like its fellow, to induce you to undertake the duty."

"Ah! you have helped me to the very word I wanted. I fancied it was not in
earnest, like the one I got, and so I left the job half finished."

"Half finished, scoundrel! you never commenced what you swore so stoutly
to perform."

"Now are you on as wrong a course, my Master, as if you steered due east
to get to the Pole. I religiously performed one half my undertaking; and,
you will acknowledge, I was only half paid."

"You would find it difficult to prove that you even did that little."

"Let us look into the log. I enlisted to walk up the hill as far as the
dwelling of the good Admiral's widow, and there to make certain
alterations in my sentiments, which it is not necessary to speak of
between us."

"Which you did not make; but, on the contrary, which you thwarted, by
telling an exactly contradictory tale."

"True."

"True! knave?--Were justice done you, an acquaintance with a rope's end
would be a merited reward."

"A squall of words!--If your ship steer as wild as your ideas, Captain,
you will make a crooked passage to the south. Do you not think it an
easier matter, for an old man like me, to tell a few lies than to climb
yonder long and heavy hill? In strict justice, more than half my duty was
done when I got into the presence of the believing widow; and when I
concluded to refuse the half of the reward that was unpaid, and to take
bounty from t'other side."

"Villain!" exclaimed Wilder, a little blinded by resentment, "even your
years shall no longer protect you from punishment. Forward, there! send a
crew into the jolly boat, sir, and bring me this old fellow in the skiff
on board the ship. Pay no attention to his outcries; I have an account to
settle with him, that cannot be balanced without a little noise."

The mate, to whom this order was addressed, and who had answered the hail,
jumped on the rail, where he got sight of the craft he was commanded to
chase. In less than a minute he was in the boat, with four men, and
pulling round the bows of the ship, in order to get on the side necessary
to effect his object. The self-styled Bob Bunt gave one or two strokes
with his skulls, and sent, the skiff some twenty or thirty fathoms off,
where he lay, chuckling like a man who saw only the success of his
cunning, without any apparent apprehensions of the consequences. But, t