is
pipe between each half-dozen words.

"_Just_ so," replied Lancey. "The master is uncommon fond of
blowin's-up and inquirin' into the natur' of things. I never know'd
another except one as beat 'im at inwestigation, but that one beat
everybody I ever seen or heard of. He was a Scotch boy, named Sandy--"

"What was his other name?" asked the skipper.

"'Aven't a notion," replied Lancey. "We never called 'im anythink else.
I don't believe he 'ad any other name. He said he was the son of an
apothecary. No doubt the schoolmaster knew 'is other name, if he 'ad
one, but he never used it, and we boys were content with Sandy. That
boy, sir, seemed to me to know everythink, and was able, I believe, to
do hanythink. He was a tremendous fighter, too, though not out o' the
way as regards size. He could lick the biggest boy in the school, and
when he made up his mind to do a thing, nothin' on earth could stop him
a-doin' of it."

"Good," said the skipper, with an emphatic puff; "that's what we
Americans call the power to go ahead. Did Sandy become a great man?"

"Don't know," answered Lancey. "He went a'ead too fast for me to
foller. One day the master gave 'im a lickin'. He vowed he'd be
revenged. Next mornin' early he got up an' smashed the school winders,
redooced the master's desk to matchwood, an' walked away whistlin'. I
never seed 'im since."

"Nor heard of him?"

"Nor 'eard of 'im."

"That was a pity," said the skipper, with a prolonged whiff.

"It was. But go on, Mister Whitlaw, with your hanecdotes. I couldn't
rightly hear all you said to the master."

"It was about torpedo warfare we were talking," said the skipper. "You
know that sort o' thing is only in its infancy, but the Americans, as
usual, had the honour of starting it fairly into being."

"The `honour,' eh?" said Lancey; "h'm! well, I'm not so sure about the
honour, but go on."

"Well, whether it be an honour or no, I won't dispute," returned the
skipper, with a puff; "but of this I am sure, that during the late war
between the North and South in America, torpedo practice was regularly
brought into play for the first time, and the case which I brought
before Mr Childers yesterday is only one of many which I could
describe. I'll not relate the same story, but another and a better.

"About the beginning of the war, in 1862, the Confederates--these were
the Southern men--blew up our ironclad, the _Cairo_, in which I lost one
of m