liberated Puritan said: "My good comrade on the
right is engaged at his devotions, and I also would be reading a Bible
if I had one, but my worthy father studied the Good Book so much that
men judged it had driven him crazy, and I having few wits to lose
have been afraid to open it ever since. As for Mr. Graham, if I catch
the air he is singing, it is a song of the malignants against which as
a Psalm-singing Puritan I lift my testimony. So a toothsome story of
the sea, if it please you, Mr. Carlton."

"Apart from the fighting, gentlemen," began Carlton, who was a man of
careful speech and stiff mind, "for I judge you do not hanker after
battle-tales, seeing we shall have our stomach full ere many days be
past, if the Prince can entice Conde into the open, there were not
many things worth telling. But this was a remarkable occurrence, the
like of which I will dare say none of you have seen, though I know
there are men here who have been in battle once and again. Upon the
'Catherine' there was a gentleman volunteer, a man of family and fine
estate, by the name of Hodge Vaughan. Early in the fight, when the
Earl of Sandwich was our admiral and Van Ghent commanded the Dutch,
Vaughan received a considerable wound, and was carried down into the
hold. Well, it happened that they had some hogs aboard and, the worse
for poor Hodge Vaughan, the sailor who had charge of them, like any
other proper Englishman, was fonder of fighting than of feeding pigs,
and so left them to forage for themselves. As they could get nothing
else, and liked a change in their victuals when it came within their
reach, they made their meal off Vaughan, and when the fight was over
there was nothing left of that poor gentleman except his skull, which
was monstrous thick and bade defiance to the hogs. This is not a
common happening," continued Carlton with much composure, "and I thank
my Maker I was not carried into that hold to be a hog's dinner. Yet I
give you my word of honor that the tale is true."

"Lord! it was a cruel ending for a gallant gentleman," said Collier,
"and it makes gruesome telling. Have you anything else sweeter for the
mouth, for there be enough of hogs on the land as well as on sea, and
some of them go round the field, where men are lying helpless, on two
legs and not on four, from whom heaven defend us."

"Since you ask for more," replied Carlton, "a thing took place about
which there was much talk, and on it I should like to have