“It was some time after I had left the ‘Evangeline’ and was at home before I got to know the meaning of this here wonderful adventure.  The party, it turned out, was no less than the wife of the general as owned the ‘Violet,’ and she was running away with Mr. Robinson.  May be our men had talked about our going to the Mediterranean, but anyhow the general who was in London at the time, got scent that his wife had bolted with Mr. Robinson in the ‘Evangeline,’ and in less than twenty-four hours he was after us in his steamer.  He tracked us by speaking the vessels we passed; and the light airs and calms we had encountered easily allowed him to overhaul quickly.  And it turned out that when he had fairly sighted us, he sent the man at the wheel forward, and took the helm himself.  The crew dursn’t express their wonder aloud, though they knew he was no hand at steering, not to mention the mad agitation he was in, and they let him have his way when he headed the steamer for us, expecting that he merely wished to close us in order to speak; but when I put my helm down and the steamer passed, and they spied the general rounding his craft evidently to run us down, they threw themselves upon him to save their own lives as well as ours.  That was the sight I saw as the steamer rushed past.  A few moments after they had gone clear the poor old fellow was seized with an attack of apoplexy, which killed him right off, and thereupon they headed right away to England with the dead body aboard.

“What do you think of this for a yarn?  Would any one suppose such vengefulness could exist in a white-haired man that had known his seventieth birthday?  What did he want to go and try and drown me and my mates for? We weren’t running away with the female party.  But the world’s full of romantic capering, sir; and I tell you what it is—­’tain’t all fair sailing even in yachts, modest and pretty as the divarsion is.”