t I have helped ashore there.'

'What do you take me for, then?' I asked.

'Well, 'tis no business of mine, sir,' he answered. 'There are some
trades that had best not even be spoken about.'

'You think that I am a conspirator?'

'Well, master, since you have put a name to it. Lor' love you, sir,
we're used to it.'

'I give you my word that I am none.'

'An escaped prisoner, then?'

'No, nor that either.'

The man leaned upon his oar, and I could see in the gloom that his face
was thrust forward, and that it was wrinkled with suspicion.

'If you're one of Boney's spies--' he cried.

'I! A spy!' The tone of my voice was enough to convince him.

'Well,' said he,' I'm darned if I know what you are. But if you'd been
a spy I'd ha' had no hand in landing you, whatever the skipper might
say.'

'Mind you, I've no word to say against Boney,' said the other seaman,
speaking in a very thick rumbling voice. 'He's been a rare good friend
to the poor mariner.'

It surprised me to hear him speak so, for the virulence of feeling
against the new French Emperor in England exceeded all belief, and high
and low were united in their hatred of him; but the sailor soon gave me
a clue to his politics.

'If the poor mariner can run in his little bit of coffee and sugar, and
run out his silk and his brandy, he has Boney to thank for it,' said he.
'The merchants have had their spell, and now it's the turn of the poor
mariner.'

I remembered then that Buonaparte was personally very popular amongst
the smugglers, as well he might be, seeing that he had made over into
their hands all the trade of the Channel. The seaman continued to pull
with his left hand, but he pointed with his right over the
slate-coloured dancing waters.

'There's Boney himself,' said he.

You who live in a quieter age cannot conceive the thrill which these
simple words sent through me. It was but ten years since we had first
heard of this man with the curious Italian name--think of it, ten
years, the time that it takes for a private to become a non-commissioned
officer, or a clerk to win a fifty-pound advance in his salary. He had
sprung in an instant out of nothing into everything. One month people
were asking who he was, the next he had broken out in the north of Italy
like the plague; Venice and Genoa withered at the touch of this swarthy
ill-nourished boy. He cowed the soldiers in the field, and he outwitted
the statesmen in the council ch