ven't got it,
I don't expect it. It's very odd now, but I can't just now remember the
place that the French vessel was going to; it's slipped clean out of my
memory."

"Perhaps the two-inch might help your memory," replied the captain.
"Mr Smith, let the rope be got up and put into the boat."

"Well," said the American captain, "as you say, mister, it may help my
memory. It's not the first time that I've freshened a man's memory with
a bit of two-inch myself," continued he, grinning at his own joke; "but
I don't see it coming."

"I have ordered it to be put in the boat," replied Captain Delmar,
haughtily: "my orders are not disobeyed, nor is my word doubted."

"Not by them as knows you, I dare say, captain, but you're a stranger to
me; I don't think I ask much, after all--a bit of spar and a bit of
rope--just to tell you where you may go and take a fine vessel, and
pocket a nation lot of dollars as prize-money. Well, there's the rope,
and now I'll tell you. She was going off Berbice or Surinam, to look
after the West Indiamen, who were on the coast, or expected on it, I
don't know which. There you'll find her, as sure as I stand here; but I
think that she is a bit bigger than this vessel--you don't mind that, I
dare say."

"You may go on board now, sir," said Captain Delmar.

"Well, thank ye, captain, and good luck to you."

The American captain went down the side; and as soon as our boat
returned, and was hoisted up, we made all sail for the coast of
Demerara.

"She must be a fine vessel," said Captain Delmar to me, as he was
walking the deck,--"a very fine vessel, if she is bigger than we are."

"You will excuse me, Captain Delmar, if I venture to observe that there
was an expression in the eye of the American, when he said a bit bigger,
which made me take it into my head, that in saying so, he was only
deceiving us. The Americans are not very partial to us, and would be
glad of any revenge."

"That may be, Mr Keene; but I do not see that he can be deceiving us,
by making her out to be larger, as it is putting us on our guard. Had
he said that she was smaller, it would then have been deceiving us."

"I did not take it in that sense, sir," replied I. "He said a bit
bigger; now, I can't help thinking that a bit bigger was meant to
deceive us, and that it will prove that the Frenchman is a
line-of-battle ship, and not a frigate: he wished to leave us under the
impression that it was a larger frigate