“But now you’ve got the calash, lad, it’s of no use to you,” he added; “it will never make a sail, nor even an ensign.  I’m thinking, Eau-douce, you’d no’ be sorry to see its value in good siller of the king?”

“Money cannot buy it, Lieutenant,” returned Jasper, whose eye lighted with all the fire of success and joy.  “I would rather have won this calash than have obtained fifty new suits of sails for the Scud!”

“Hoot, hoot, lad! you are going mad like all the rest of them.  I’d even venture to offer half a guinea for the trifle rather than it should lie kicking about in the cabin of your cutter, and in the end become an ornament for the head of a squaw.”

Although Jasper did not know that the wary Quartermaster had not offered half the actual cost of the prize, he heard the proposition with indifference.  Shaking his head in the negative, he advanced towards the stage, where his approach excited a little commotion, the officers’ ladies, one and all, having determined to accept the present, should the gallantry of the young sailor induce him to offer it.  But Jasper’s diffidence, no less than admiration for another, would have prevented him from aspiring to the honor of complimenting any whom he thought so much his superiors.

“Mabel,” said he, “this prize is for you, unless —­ "

“Unless what, Jasper?” answered the girl, losing her own bashfulness in the natural and generous wish to relieve his embarrassment, though both reddened in a way to betray strong feeling.

“Unless you may think too indifferently of it, because it is offered by one who may have no right to believe his gift will be accepted.”

“I do accept it, Jasper; and it shall be a sign of the danger I have passed in your company, and of the gratitude I feel for your care of me —­ your care, and that of the Pathfinder.”

“Never mind me, never mind me!” exclaimed the latter; “this is Jasper’s luck, and Jasper’s gift:  give him full credit for both.  My turn may come another day; mine and the Quartermaster’s, who seems to grudge the boy the calash; though what he can want of it I cannot understand, for he has no wife.”

“And has Jasper Eau-douce a wife?  Or have you a wife yoursel’, Pathfinder?  I may want it to help to get a wife, or as a memorial that I have had a wife, or as proof how much I admire the sex, or because it is a female garment, or for some other equally respectable motive.  It’s not the unreflecting that are the most prized by the thoughtful, and there is no surer sign that a man made a good husband to his first consort, let me tell you all, than to see him speedily looking round for a competent successor.  The affections are good gifts from Providence, and they that have loved one faithfully prove how much of this bounty has been lavished upon them by loving another as soon as possible.”

“It may be so, it may be so.  I am no practitioner in such things, and cannot gainsay it.  But Mabel here, the Sergeant’s daughter, will give you full credit for the words.  Come, Jasper, although our hands are out, let us see what the other lads can do with the rifle.”