“I ought to ask your pardon, Mr. Wallace, for not recognising you sooner, too.  But one does not distinguish well by moonlight.  I am delighted to see you, sir, and now hope that, with my assistance, a stop can be put to the career of the brig.”

“What, Mr. Mate, do you turn against your craft?” said Wallace, under the impulsive feeling which induces all loyal men to have a distaste for treachery of every sort, “the seaman should love the very planks of his vessel.”

“I fully understand you, Mr. Wallace, and will own that, for a long time, I was tied to rascality by the opinions to which you allude.  But, when you come to hear my explanation, I do not fear your judgment in the least.”

Mulford now led the way into the house, whither Rose had already retreated, and where she had lighted candles, and made other womanly arrangements for receiving her guests.  At Harry’s suggestion, some of the soup was placed over coals, to warm up for the party, and our heroine made her preparations to comfort them also with a cup of tea.  While she was thus employed, Mulford gave the whole history of his connection with the brig, his indisposition to quit the latter, the full exposure of Spike’s treason, his own desertion, if desertion it could be called, the loss of the schooner, and his abandonment on the rock, and the manner in which he had been finally relieved.  It was scarcely possible to relate all these matters, and altogether avoid allusions to the schemes of Spike in connection with Rose, and the relation in which our young man himself stood toward her.  Although Mulford touched on these points with great delicacy, it was as a seaman talking to seamen, and he could not entirely throw aside the frankness of the profession.  Ashore, men live in the privacy of their own domestic circles, and their secrets, and secret thoughts, are “family secrets,” of which it has passed into a proverb to say, that there are always some, even in the best of these communities.  On shipboard, or in the camp, it is very different.  The close contact in which men are brought with each other, the necessity that exists for opening the heart and expanding the charities, gets in time to influence the whole character, and a certain degree of frankness and simplicity, takes the place of the reserve and acting that might have been quickened in the same individual, under a different system of schooling.  But Mulford was frank by nature, as well as by his sea-education, and his companions on this occasion were pretty well possessed of all his wishes and plans, in reference to Rose, even to his hope of falling in with the chaplain of the Poughkeepsie, by the time his story was all told.  The fact that Rose was occupied in another room, most of the time, had made these explanations all the easier, and spared her many a blush.  As for the man-of-war’s men, they listened to the tale, with manly interest and a generous sympathy.