n myself properly if I don't. It is fearful to know there
are so many of them, `swarming,' as our captain said."

"The worst of it is that many of the boatmen and small traders on the
coast," said Aileen, "are also pirates, or little better."

"Dreadful!" exclaimed her friend. "Why, oh _why_ do people go to sea at
all?"

"To transport merchandise, I suppose," said Aileen. "We should be
rather badly off without tea, and silk, and spices, and such things--
shouldn't we?"

"Tea and silk! Aileen. I would be content to wear cotton and drink
coffee or cocoa--which latter I hate--if we only got rid of pirates."

"Even cotton, coffee, and cocoa are imported, I fear," suggested Aileen.

"Then I'd wear wool and drink water--anything for peace. Oh _how_ I
wish," said Miss Pritty, with as much solemn enthusiasm as if she were
the first who had wished it, "that I were the Queen of England--_then_
I'd let the world see something."

"What would you do, dear?" asked Aileen.

"Do! Well, I'll tell you. Being the head of the greatest nation of the
earth--except, of course, the Americans, who assert their supremacy so
constantly that they _must_ be right--being the head, I say, of the
greatest earthly nation, with that exception, I would order out all my
gun-ships and turret-boats, and build new ones, and send them all round
to the eastern seas, attack the pirates in their strongholds, and--and--
blow them all out o' the water, or send the whole concern to the bottom!
You needn't laugh, Aileen. Of course I do not use my own language. I
quote from our captain. Really you have no idea what strong, and to me
quite new expressions that dear man used. So powerful too, but _never_
naughty. No, never. I often felt as if I ought to have been shocked by
them, but on consideration I never was, for it was more the manner than
the matter that seemed shocking. He was so gentle and kind, too, with
it all. I shall _never_ forget how he gave me his arm the first day I
was able to come on deck, after being reduced to a mere shadow by
sea-sickness, and how tenderly he led me up and down, preventing me, as
he expressed it, from lurching into the lee-scuppers, or going slap
through the quarter-rails into the sea."

After a little more desultory converse, Aileen asked her friend if she
were prepared to hear some bad news.

Miss Pritty declared that she was, and evinced the truth of her
declaration by looking prematurely horrified.