omething. Now is your opportunity,
Will, for making your fortune. Don't throw it away. By the time you
are paid off you'll have your pockets full of money, and then come and
settle down here. That is what I intend to do."

His reasonings and arguments seemed irresistible. Still I held off. I
was balancing between my wish to go and see Aunt Bretta at Southsea and
the old lady and her niece at Plymouth, and trying to find my way back
to my ship. I had an idea that the latter was the right thing to do.
Still, unhappily, I had not always been accustomed to do what was right,
and now found it easy to do what was wrong. I told him, in reply, what
I wished to do, and what I thought I ought to do; but he laughed at all
my reasonings, and before the day was over I had consented to go and
enter on board the lugger. In those days not many people thought there
was any harm in privateering. Many do not think so now. Still there
were some who looked upon it as little better than a sort of lawful
piracy, and made but little scruple in running down an enemy's
privateer.

I found the _Hirondelle_ everything La Motte had described her. We had
not been out a week before we had taken a couple of prizes, and we
recaptured a number of English vessels which had been taken by the enemy
and were on their way into French ports. As we were low in the water
and had short stumps for masts, by lowering our sails we could lie
concealed till we could make out what sort of craft were heaving in
sight. We therefore ran but little risk of catching a Tartar, as
privateers very often do.

I remained in the privateer upwards of a year and a half, and at last
peace came, and the crew were paid off, and she was laid up. Though I
had spent my money pretty freely when I was on shore, still I found
that, what with wages and prize-money, I had fully four hundred pounds
in my pocket. This I might well look on as a handsome fortune to begin
life with on shore, and carefully managed it was enough to set a young
man up in business. I have known numbers of seamen go on shore with far
larger sums, and spend the whole in the course of a few days, but then
they have never--poor ignorant fellows!--read the book of Solomon, or,
if they have, profited by the wise advice contained in it. I spent a
few days with the La Motte family, but the thoughts of Aunt Bretta, and
still more, perhaps, that quiet evening spent at Plymouth, were
constantly coming into