tain Lockett in the town
and, faith, if you had been a dozen admirals, rolled into one, he
couldn't have spoken more highly of you.

"It seems, Mrs. O'Halloran, that Bob has been the special angel who
has looked after poor Jack, on board the Antelope."

"What ridiculous nonsense, doctor!" Bob exclaimed, hotly.

"Not at all, Bob; it is too modest you are, entirely. It is
yourself is the boy who has done the business, this time; and it is
a silver tay service, or some such trifle as that, that the owners
will be sending you, and small blame to them. Captain Lockett tells
me he owns a third of the ship; and he reckons the ship's share of
what they have taken, this little cruise, won't be less than
five-and-twenty thousand.

"Think of that, Mrs. O'Halloran, five-and-twenty thousand pounds!
And here is Edward Burke, M.D., working his sowl out, for a
miserable eight or ten shillings a day."

"But what has Bob done?"

"I hadn't time to learn it all, Mrs. O'Halloran, for the captain
was in a hurry. It seems to me that the question ought to be, what
is it that he hasn't done?

"It all came in a heap, together, and I am not sure of the exact
particulars; but it seems to me that he swam out and cut the cable
of a Spanish sloop of war, and took the end in his mouth and towed
her out to sea, while the guns were blazing in all directions at
him. Never was such an affair!

"Then he humbugged the captain of an English frigate, and the
commander of the Spanish forts, and stole a vessel chock full of
silver; and did I don't know what, besides."

Bob went off into a shout of laughter, in which the others joined.

"But what is the meaning of all this nonsense, Teddy?" Carrie
asked, as soon as she recovered her composure. "Is there anything
in it, or is it all pure invention?"

"Is there anything in it? Haven't I been telling you that there is
twenty-five thousand pounds in it, to the owners, and as much more
to the crew; and didn't the captain vow and declare that, if it
hadn't been for Bob, instead of going home to divide all this
treasure up between them, every man Jack of them would be, at this
moment, chained by the leg in a dirty Spanish prison, at Malaga!"

"Well, what does it all mean, Bob? There is no getting any sense
out of Dr. Burke."

"It is exactly what I told you, Carrie. We anchored close to a
craft that we thought was a merchantman, and that we meant to
attack in our boats. I swam on board her in the dark-