y course as long as God will let me. D'ye see?"

De Catinat again nodded, though in truth the seaman's metaphors left him
with but a very general sense of his meaning.

"We're comin' abreast of that there town, and in ten minutes we shall
know if there is any trouble waiting for us. But I'll tell you a story
as we go that'll show you what kind o' man you've shipped with. It was
ten years ago that I speak of, when I was in the _Speedwell_, sixty-ton
brig, tradin' betwixt Boston and Jamestown, goin' south with lumber and
skins and fixin's, d'ye see, and north again with tobacco and molasses.
One night, blowin' half a gale from the south'ard, we ran on a reef two
miles to the east of Cape May, and down we went with a hole in our
bottom like as if she'd been spitted on the steeple o' one o' them
Honfleur churches. Well, in the morning there I was washin' about, nigh
out of sight of land, clingin' on to half the foreyard, without a sign
either of my mates or of wreckage. I wasn't so cold, for it was early
fall, and I could get three parts of my body on to the spar, but I was
hungry and thirsty and bruised, so I just took in two holes of my
waist-belt, and put up a hymn, and had a look round for what I could
see. Well, I saw more than I cared for. Within five paces of me there
was a great fish, as long pretty nigh as the spar that I was grippin'.
It's a mighty pleasant thing to have your legs in the water and a beast
like that all ready for a nibble at your toes."

"_Mon Dieu!_" cried the French soldier. "And he have not eat you?"

Ephraim Savage's little eyes twinkled at the reminiscence.

"I ate him," said he.

"What!" cried Amos.

"It's a mortal fact. I'd a jack-knife in my pocket, Same as this one,
and I kicked my legs to keep the brute off, and I whittled away at the
spar until I'd got a good jagged bit off, sharp at each end, same as a
nigger told me once down Delaware way. Then I waited for him, and
stopped kicking, so he came at me like a hawk on a chick-a-dee. When he
turned up his belly I jammed my left hand with the wood right into his
great grinnin' mouth, and I let him have it with my knife between the
gills. He tried to break away then, but I held on, d'ye see, though he
took me so deep I thought I'd never come up again. I was nigh gone when
we got to the surface, but he was floatin' with the white up, and twenty
holes in his shirt front. Then I got back to my spar, for we'd gone a
long fift