This settled the matter as to Ithuel, for the moment, at least.  Cuffe was one of those men who was indisposed to push things too far, while he found it difficult to do his whole duty.  There was not an officer in the Proserpine, who had any serious doubts about the true country of Bolt, though there was not one officer among them all who would openly avow it.  There was too much “granite” about Ithuel to permit Englishmen long to be deceived, and that very language on which the impressed man so much prided himself would have betrayed his origin, had other evidence been wanting.  Still there was a tenacity about an English ship of war, in that day, that did not easily permit an athletic hand to escape its grasp, when it had once closed upon him.  In a great and enterprising service, like that of Great Britain, an esprit de corps existed in the respective ships, which made them the rivals of each other, and men being the great essentials of efficiency, a single seaman was relinquished with a reluctance that must have been witnessed, fully to be understood.  Cuffe consequently could not make up his mind to do full justice to Ithuel, while he could not make up his mind to push injustice so far as trial and punishment.  Nelson had left him a discretion, as has been said, and this he chose to use in the manner just mentioned.

Had the case of the New Hampshire man been fairly brought before the British Admiral, his discharge would have been ordered without hesitation.  Nelson was too far removed from the competition of the separate ships, and ordinarily under the control of too high motives, to be accessory to the injustice of forcibly detaining a foreigner in his country’s service; for it was only while under the malign influence to which there has already been allusion, that he ceased to be high-minded and just.  Prejudiced he was, and in some cases exceedingly so; America standing but little better in his eyes than France herself.  For the first of these antipathies he had some apology; since in addition to the aversion that was naturally produced by the history of the cisatlantic Republic, accident had thrown him in the way, in the West Indies, of ascertaining the frauds, deceptions, and cupidities of a class of men that never exhibit national character in its brightest and most alluring colors.  Still, he was too upright of mind willingly to countenance injustice, and too chivalrous to oppress.  But Ithuel had fallen into the hands of one who fell far short of the high qualities of the Admiral, while at the same time he kept clear of his more prominent weaknesses, and who was brought within the sphere of the competition between the respective ships and their crews.

Winchester, of course, obeyed his orders.  He roused the master-at-arms from his hammock, and directed him to bring Ithuel Bolt to the quarter-deck.

“In consequence of what took place this morning,” said the first lieutenant, in a voice loud enough to be heard by all near him, “Captain Cuffe has seen fit to order you to be released, Bolt, and turned to duty again.  You will know how to appreciate this leniency, and will serve with greater zeal than ever, I make no doubt.  Never forget that you have been with a yard-rope, as it might be, round your neck.  In the morning you will be stationed and berthed anew.”