“Take another glass,” said the stranger, affably.

Israel, to drown his heavy-heartedness, complied.  The liquor began to take effect.

“Ever at sea?” said the stranger, lightly.

“Oh, yes; been a whaling.”

“Ah!” said the other, “happy to hear that, I assure you.  Jim!  Bill!” And beckoning very quietly to two brawny fellows, in a trice Israel found himself kidnapped into the naval service of the magnanimous old gentleman of Kew Gardens—­his Royal Majesty, George III.

“Hands off!” said Israel, fiercely, as the two men pinioned him.

“Reglar game-cock,” said the cousinly-looking man.  “I must get three guineas for cribbing him.  Pleasant voyage to ye, my friend,” and, leaving Israel a prisoner, the crimp, buttoning his coat, sauntered leisurely out of the inn.

“I’m no Englishman,” roared Israel, in a foam.

“Oh! that’s the old story,” grinned his jailers.  “Come along.  There’s no Englishman in the English fleet.  All foreigners.  You may take their own word for it.”

To be short, in less than a week Israel found himself at Portsmouth, and, ere long, a foretopman in his Majesty’s ship of the line, “Unprincipled,” scudding before the wind down channel, in company with the “Undaunted,” and the “Unconquerable;” all three haughty Dons bound to the East Indian waters as reinforcements to the fleet of Sir Edward Hughs.

And now, we might shortly have to record our adventurer’s part in the famous engagement off the coast of Coromandel, between Admiral Suffrien’s fleet and the English squadron, were it not that fate snatched him on the threshold of events, and, turning him short round whither he had come, sent him back congenially to war against England; instead of on her behalf.  Thus repeatedly and rapidly were the fortunes of our wanderer planted, torn up, transplanted, and dropped again, hither and thither, according as the Supreme Disposer of sailors and soldiers saw fit to appoint.

CHAPTER XVI.

IN WHICH ISRAEL IS SAILOR UNDER TWO FLAGS, AND IN THREE SHIPS, AND ALL IN ONE NIGHT.

As running down channel at evening, Israel walked the crowded main-deck of the seventy-four, continually brushed by a thousand hurrying wayfarers, as if he were in some great street in London, jammed with artisans, just returning from their day’s labor, novel and painful emotions were his.  He found himself dropped into the naval mob without one friend; nay, among enemies, since his country’s enemies were his own, and against the kith and kin of these very beings around him, he himself had once lifted a fatal hand.  The martial bustle of a great man-of-war, on her first day out of port, was indescribably jarring to his present mood.  Those sounds of the human multitude disturbing the solemn natural solitudes of the sea, mysteriously afflicted him.  He murmured against that untowardness which, after condemning him to long sorrows on the land, now pursued him with added griefs on the deep.  Why should a patriot, leaping for the chance again to attack the oppressor, as at Bunker Hill, now be kidnapped to fight that oppressor’s battles on the endless drifts of the Bunker Hills of the billows?  But like many other repiners, Israel was perhaps a little premature with upbraidings like these.