ion; we might have been much worse off."

We might indeed, for very often the French privateers treated their
prisoners with great cruelty, robbing them of their money and clothes,
and half starving them. They were then sent on shore, and thrust into
some wretched, dirty prison, where they were allowed to linger out their
days till the end of the war. Such we had expected to be our fate.

The Frenchmen believed that the English did not treat their prisoners
any better. They had a story written by one of their countrymen, a
French officer, who had broken his parole and got back to France, to the
effect that French prisoners were fed in England on horse-flesh and
beans. He declared that on one occasion the inspecting officer of
prisons rode into a court-yard of a prison, where he left his horse, and
that as soon as he had disappeared, the famished prisoners set upon it,
and tearing the horse to pieces, devoured it and the saddle also; and
that when the officer got back, he found only the stirrup-iron and the
bit in the horse's mouth.

Whatever we may think of the digestibility of the morsels carried off by
the hungry prisoners, the tale seems to have been eagerly swallowed by
the countrymen of the narrator.

La Motte endeavoured to cheer me up, by talking of old times and of our
adventures in the Mediterranean and elsewhere,--indeed, I felt his
presence a very great comfort. He was of a most cheerful, happy
disposition, and allowed nothing to put him out.

"I was on my way home from the West Indies in a fine brig, the _Ann_,
and I had a little venture on board of my own, with which I hoped to
make a good addition to my fortune, and perhaps, before long, to settle
down and marry. Well, it's all gone; but what's the use of sighing?
What has happened to me has happened to a thousand other better men much
less able to bear it. So I say to myself, `Better luck next time.' I
never can abide those people who sigh, and moan, and groan if any mishap
overtakes them, as if they were the only unfortunate people in the
world. To everybody they meet they tell their woes, as if nothing else
was of so much consequence. You are not one of those, Weatherhelm, I
know, nor am I. Everything comes right in the mill at last, if we will
but wait patiently till the mill turns round."

La Motte rattled on in this way till he talked me into better spirits
again. At all events, he prevented me from dwelling on my misfortunes.

"No