RICHARDSON.

Thus terminated the setting-down, like many others that Captain Cuffe had resolved to give, but which usually ended in a return to good-nature and reason.  The steward was told to set a plate for Mr. Griffin among the other guests, and then the commander of the frigate followed the lieutenant on deck.  Here he found every officer in the ship, all looking at le Feu-Follet with longing eyes, and most of them admiring her appearance, as she lay on the mirrorlike Mediterranean, with the two light sails just holding her stationary.

“A regular-built snake-in-the-grass!” growled the boatswain, Mr. Strand, who was taking a look at the lugger over the hammock cloths of the waist, as he stood on the heel of a spare topmast to do so; “I never fell in with a scamp that had a more d—­n-my-eyes look!”

This was said in a sort of soliloquy, for Strand was not exactly privileged to address a quarter-deck officer on such an occasion, though several stood within hearing, and was far too great a man to enlighten his subordinates with his cogitations.  It was overheard by Cuffe, however, who just at that instant stepped into the gangway to make an examination for himself.

“It is a snake-out-of the grass, rather, Strand,” observed the captain, for he could speak to whom he pleased, without presumption or degradation.  “Had she stayed in port, now, she would have been in the grass, and we might have scotched her.”

“Well, your honor, we can English her, as it is; and that’ll be quite as nat’ral, and quite as much to the purpose, as Scotching her, any day,” answered Strand, who, being a native of London, had a magnificent sort of feeling toward all the dependencies of the empire, and to whom the word scotch, in that sense, was Greek, though he well understood what it meant “to clap a Scotchman on a rope”; “we are likely to have a flat calm all the morning, and our boats are in capital order; and, then, nothing will be more agreeable to our gentlemen than a row.”

Strand was a gray-headed seaman, and he had served with Captain Cuffe when the latter was a midshipman, and had even commanded the top of which the present boatswain had been the captain.  He knew the “cut of the captain’s jib” better than any other man in the Proserpine, and often succeeded with his suggestions, when Winchester and the other lieutenants failed.  His superior now turned round and looked him intently in the face, as if struck with the notion the other thus indirectly laid before him.  This movement was noted; and, at a sign secretly given by Winchester, the whole crew gave three hearty cheers; Strand leading off as soon as he caught the idea.  This was the only manner in which the crew of a man-of-war can express their wishes to their commander; it being always tolerated in a navy to hurrah, by way of showing the courage of a ship’s company.  Cuffe walked aft in a thoughtful manner and descended to his cabin again; but a servant soon came up, to say that the captain desired to see the first lieutenant.