“Why not?  We were bound to Brest when we fell in with them; and, if they will take us there, it will only save us the trouble of doing it ourselves.”

“Don’t be deceived by any such hope, Miles.  I’ve been in the hands of Frenchmen, before I knew you; and there is little hope of getting out of them, so long as the ship and cargo will pay for detention.  No, no, my dear boy; you know I love you better than anything on ’arth, my dear, old soul of a mother, and little Kitty, excepted,—­for it wouldn’t be religious to like you better than my own flesh and blood,—­but, after these two, I like you better than any one on ’arth; and I can’t be quiet, and see you run your property into the fire.  Never let the ship go into France, after what has happened, if you can help it.”

“Can we possibly help it?  Or do you propose that four men shall re-take this vessel from seventeen?”

“Well, the odds are not so great, Miles,” Marble rejoined, looking coolly round at the noisy set of little Frenchmen, who were all talking together over their soup; certainly not a very formidable band in a hand-to-hand encounter, though full of fire and animation.  “There are four of us, and only seventeen of them, such as they are.  I rather think we could handle ’em all, in a regular set-to, with fists.  There’s Neb, he’s as strong as a jackass; Diogenes is another Hercules; and neither you nor I am a kitten.  I consider you as a match, in a serious scuffle, for the best four among them chaps.”

This was not said in the least boastingly, though certainly the estimate of comparative force made by my mate was enormously out of the way.  It was true, that we four were unusually powerful and athletic men; but it was also true, that six of the French might very well be placed in the same category.  I was not subject to the vulgar prejudice of national superiority, I hope; one of the strongest of all the weaknesses of our very weak nature.  I have never yet been in a country, of which the people did not fancy themselves, in all particulars, the salt of the earth; though there are very different degrees in the modes of bragging on such subjects.  In the present instance, Marble had not the least idea of bragging, however; for he really believed we four, in an open onslaught, fire-arms out of the question, might have managed those seventeen Frenchmen.  I think, myself, we might have got along with twice our number, taking a fair average of the privateer’s men, and reducing the struggle to the arms of nature; but I should have hesitated a long time in making an open attack on even them.