again about a sun-dial corrected for the meridian of Bury St.
Edmunds. 'My dear,' I answered, 'there is but one thing to be done
with a flute, and that is to learn it.' In this way I discovered
what I will go no further than to describe as my Bent."

Mr. Badcock put the flute to his lips and blew into it. A tune
resulted.

"But," persisted Billy Priske, after a dozen bars or so, "the latest
thing to be mentioned was my appetite: and 'tis wonderful to me how
you gentlemen are letting the conversation stray, this afternoon."

"The worst of a flute," said Mr. Badcock, withdrawing it from his
lips with obvious reluctance, "and the objection commonly urged by
its detractors, is that a man cannot blow upon it and sing at the
same time."

"I don't say," said Billy, seriously, "as that mayn't be a reas'nable
objection; only it didn't happen to be mine."

"You have heard the tune," said Mr. Badcock. "Now for the words--

"I attempt from love's sickness to fly, in vain,
Since I am myself my own fever and pain."

"Bravo!" my father cried. "Mr. Badcock has hit it. You are in love,
Billy, and beyond a doubt."

"Be I?" said Billy, scratching his head. "Well, as the saying is,
many an ass has entered Jerusalem."

CHAPTER XI.

WE FALL IN WITH A SALLEE ROVER.

"We laid them aboard the larboard side--
With hey! with ho! for and a nonny no!
And we threw them into the sea so wide,
And alongst the Coast of Barbary."
_The Sailor's Onely Delight_.

My father, checked in the midst, or rather at the outset, of a
panegyric upon love, could not rest until he had found an ear into
which to deliver it; but that same evening, after the moon had risen,
drew Nat aside on the poop, and discharged the whole harangue upon
him; the result being that the dear lad, who already fancied himself
another Rudel in quest of the Lady of Tripoli, spent the next two
days in composing these verses, the only ones (to my knowledge) ever
finished by him:

NAT FIENNES' SONG TO THE UNDISCOVERED LADY.

"Thou, thou, that art
My port, my refuge, and my goal,
I have no chart,
No compass but a heart
Trembling t'ward thee and to no other pole.

"My star! Adrift
On seas that well-nigh overwhelm,
Still when they lift
I strain toward the rift,
And steer, and hold my courage to the helm.