His cheer attracted the attention of the crew, and much wondering the sailors drew him up on deck.  “A Frenchman,” was the verdict in gruff Dutch.  George did not understand Dutch, but he instantly guessed their meaning.

“Not I,” he cried, in English, and was delighted to be answered in the same tongue by the skipper.

George’s account of his escape, translated by the captain, set the fat Dutchmen a-rolling.  And, after the lad had had the good square meal the skipper ordered for him, he spent the evening in going over his adventures again.  The jolly-hearted English lad became an immediate favourite with the sailors and the soldiers, for, as he soon learnt, the ship was a Dutch transport carrying troops and stores for the war in Spain.

“Where are we, sir?” George inquired of the skipper next morning when he came on deck, to find a clear sky, and land faintly seen on the starboard bow.

“Off the Isle of Wight, my lad,” replied the Dutchman.

“Can’t you put me ashore, captain?” he pleaded.

The master smiled and shook his head.

“Impossible, boy; you must go with us to Spain.  And here comes a gentleman to speak with you.”

An officer in military uniform approached, and the boy touched his cap.  With the skipper as interpreter the major made George an offer of service under him.

“We want fellows of your sort,” he said.  “And there will be brave doings in Spain, and plenty of good pay, and glory to be won.  Besides, you will be fighting under one of your own countrymen, most likely Sir George Rooke himself.  Say the word, my good lad.”

George’s face flushed.

“I have always wanted to be a soldier, sir,” he stammered.

“Of course you have, my lad.  Then we may take it that the matter is settled.  Good luck go with you, my boy.”

Here then was George Fairburn, who ought to have been driving a quill in the office of Mr. Allan, shipping merchant, of London, sailing to join the allied forces in Spain, and to fight against the French.  His head swam with the thought of it.

But what of George’s friends at home all this long while?  When Fairburn learnt that his brig had not arrived in port, though she had been spoken in Boston Deeps by another collier which was returning to the Tyne, his heart misgave him.  There had been a bad storm on the coast; it seemed only too likely that the Ouseburn Lassie had gone down in it!  When week after week passed without news it seemed more and more likely that the vessel had foundered in the gale.  News of captures by French privateers usually filtered through sooner or later; but for long there were no tidings of the Ouseburn Lassie.  The Blacketts did what they could to console the bereaved parents, but father and mother would not be comforted.  At length, months afterwards, they learnt in a casual way that a collier had been captured off Yarmouth by a French privateer, about the time the Ouseburn Lassie was making her trip; at least that was the construction the Yarmouth salts who saw the affair from the shore put upon the movements of the two vessels.  So a ray of hope came to Fairburn and his wife.