s days, and towards the end a highly
respected class-leader. To tell you the truth, he wasn't much to look
at, being bald as a coot and blind of one eye, besides other defects.
His mother let him run too soon, and that made his legs bandy. And
then a bee stung him, and all his hair came off. And his eye he lost
in a little job with the preventive men; but his lid drooped so, you'd
hardly know 'twas missing. He'd a way, too, of talking to himself as
he went along, so that folks reckoned him silly. It was queer how that
maggot stuck in their heads; for in handling a privateer or a Guernsey
cargo--sink the or run it straight--there wasn't his master in
Polperro. The very children could tell 'ee.

I'm telling of the year 'five, when the most of the business in
Polperro--free-trade and privateering--was managed (as the world
knows) by Mr. Zephaniah Job. This Job he came from St. Ann's--by
reason of his having shied some person's child out of a window in
a fit of temper--and opened school at Polperro, where he taught
rule-of-three and mensuration; also navigation, though he only
knew about it on paper. By-and-by he became accountant to all the
free-trade companies and agent for the Guernsey merchants; and at last
blossomed out and opened a bank with 1_l_. and 2_l_. notes, and bigger
ones which he drew on Christopher Smith, Esquire, Alderman of London.

Well, this Job was agent for a company of adventurers called the
"Pride o' the West," and had ordered a new lugger to be built for them
down at Mevagissey. She was called the _Unity_, 160 tons (that would
be about fifty as they measure now), mounting sixteen carriage guns
and carrying sixty men, nice and comfortable. She was lying on the
ways, ready to launch, and Mr. Job proposed to Cap'n Jacka to sail
over to Mevagissey and have a look at her.

Cap'n Jacka was pleased as Punch, of course. He'd quite made up his
mind he was to command her, seeing that, first and last, in the
old _Pride_ lugger, he had cleared over 40 per cent, for this very
Company. So they sailed over and took thorough stock of the new craft,
and Jacka praised this and suggested that, and carried on quite as if
he'd got captain's orders inside his hat--which was where he usually
carried them. Mr. Job looked sidelong down his nose--he was a leggy
old galliganter, with stiverish grey hair and a jawbone long enough to
make Cap'n Jacka a new pair of shins--and said he, "What do'ee think
of her?"

"Well," sai