To Willis was confided the office of chartering a ship for the homeward voyage, and there were not a few obstacles to overcome in order to accomplish this.  French ship-masters at that time engaged in very little legitimate business; they embarked their capital in privateering, prefering to capture the merchantmen of England to risking their own.  One morning, Willis started as usual in search of a ship, but soon returned to the inn where they had established their head-quarters in a state of bewilderment; he threw himself into a chair, and, before he could utter a word, had to fill his pipe and light it.

“Well,” said he, “I am completely and totally flabbergasted.”

“What about?” inquired the two brothers.

“You could not guess, for the life of you, what has happened.”

“Perhaps not, Willis, and would therefore prefer you to tell us at once what it is.”

“After this,” continued Willis, “no one need tell me that there are no miracles now-a-days.”

“Then you have stumbled upon a miracle, have you, Willis?”

“I should think so.  That they do not happen every day, I can admit; but I have a proof that they do come about sometimes.”

“Very probably, Willis.”

“It is my opinion that Providence often leads us about by the hands, just as little children are taken to school, lest they should be tempted to play truant by the way.”

“Not unlikely, Willis; but the miracle!”

“I was going along quietly, not thinking I was being led anywhere in particular, when, all at once, I was hove up by—­If a bullet had hit me right in the breast, I could not have been more staggered.”

“Whatever hove you up then, Willis?”

“I was hove up by the sloop.”

“What sloop?”

“The Nelson.”

“Was it taking a walk, Willis?” inquired Jack.

“Have you been to sea since we saw you last?” asked Fritz.

“If I had fallen in with the craft at sea, Master Fritz, I should not have been half so much astonished.  The sea is the natural element of ships; we do not find gudgeons in corn fields, nor shoot hares on the ocean.  But it was on land that I hailed the Nelson.”

“Was it going round the corner of a street that you stumbled upon it, Willis?” inquired Jack.

“Not exactly; but to make a long story short—­”

“When you talk of cutting anything short, we are in for a yarn,” said Jack.

“And you are sure to interrupt him in the middle of it,” said Fritz.

“Well, in two words,” said Willis, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, “I was cruising about the shipyards, looking if there was a condemned craft likely to suit us—­some of them had gun-shot wounds in their timbers, others had been slewed up by a shoal—­and, to cut the matter short—­”

“Another yarn,” suggested Jack.

“I luffed up beside the hull of a cutter-looking craft that had been completely gutted.  But, changed and dilapidated as that hull is, I recognized it at once to be that of the Nelson.  Now do you believe in miracles?”