a soul
stirring about the quays at that hour; nobody, therefore, saw the ship
go out; and the two custom-house officers and the watchman--the only
Englishmen aboard her--were fast asleep, and were secured before they
had time or opportunity to raise an alarm. So neatly, indeed, was the
trick done that the first intimation poor old Peter White--the owner of
the ship and cargo--had of his loss was when, at the first streak of
dawn, he slipped out of bed and went to the window to gloat over the
sight of the safely-arrived ship, moored immediately opposite his house
but on the other side of the harbour, where she had been berthed upon
her arrival on the previous afternoon. The poor old gentleman could
scarcely credit his eyes when those organs informed him that the berth,
occupied but a few hours previously, was now vacant. He looked, and
looked, and looked again; and finally he caught sight of the ropes by
which the _Weymouth_ had been moored, dangling in the water from the
bows and quarters of the ships to which she had been made fast. Then an
inkling of the truth burst upon him, and, hastily donning his clothes,
he rushed downstairs, let himself out of the house, and sped like a
madman down the High Street, across Hope Square, and so on to the Nothe,
in the forlorn hope that the ship, which, with her cargo, represented
the bulk of the savings of a lifetime, might still be in sight. And to
his inexpressible joy she was; not only so, she was scarcely two miles
off the port, under sail, and heading for the harbour in company with a
British sloop-of-war. She had been recaptured, and ere the news of her
audacious seizure had reached the ears of more than a few of the
townspeople she was back again in her former berth, and safely moored by
chains to the quay.

It was clear to me, and to the rest of the _Weymouth's_ crew, when we
mustered that same morning to be paid off, that the incident had
inflicted a terribly severe shock upon Mr White's nerves. The poor old
boy looked a good ten years older than when he had boarded us in the
roads on the previous afternoon and had shaken hands with Captain Winter
as he welcomed him home and congratulated him upon having successfully
eluded the enemy's cruisers and privateers; but there was a fierce
glitter in his eyes and a firm, determined look about his mouth which I,
for one, took as an indication that the fright, severe as it undoubtedly
was, had not quelled the old man's coura