serve his
Majesty. When he found that there was no help for it, he vowed that he
would do his duty like a man, and he kept his word.

"He was sent aboard a brig of war employed in looking after smugglers,
and though before she had never taken one, now scarcely a month passed
that through his means she did not make a prize.

"Once upon a time the brig attacked a large armed smuggler, the crew of
which had vowed that they never would be taken alive. There was a
desperate fight for more than three hours, and in the end the smugglers
kept their word, for they went down with colours flying, under the guns
of the brig which was just about to board them. On this occasion, as on
every other, Dore behaved so bravely that the captain put him on the
quarter-deck, and if he had chosen to follow it, there was the road open
to him to become an admiral. But you know there are people who cannot
give up habits, so to speak, born and bred with them, as one may say.

"Well, Dore's time of servitude was up for the smuggling affair, and
soon after that the brig put into Portsmouth harbour. The next day Dore
got leave to go and see his friends, so he hired a wherry, and got ready
for a start for Yarmouth. Just as he was shoving off, I saw him and
asked him for a cast down there, as I had some friends in those days in
the same place. Now, though he was an officer with a cocked hat on his
head, and a sword by his side, I knew that he was in no way proud, at
all events. He told me to jump into the boat, by all means. On our way
down I asked him if he was going to be long away from his ship.

"`Long away, do you say?' he answered, in an indignant tone. `I'll tell
you what it is, Vincent, it will be long, I'm thinking, before I go back
again. I've been made an officer of, it's true, but I haven't been
treated as one or looked on as one, because I wasn't born a gentleman,
and slavery in a cocked hat I, for one, will not bear.'

"In that way he talked till we got pretty nearly down to Yarmouth. At
last he worked himself up into a regular rage, for he was a passionate
man, do you see.

"`Give us a knife, some one of you,' he sang out.

"I handed him mine. When he got it, he began cutting off the buttons
from his coat. Then he unbuckled his sword, and took off his hat. He
jumped up, and holding all the things together, as it were in a lump, he
hove them away into the sea as far from him as he could, uttering at the
same time a l