and introduce his lordship into the best circles there; only I shall have him accompanied on his calls by a sentry of two disguised as valets.  For the Earl’s to be on sale, mind; so much ransom; that is, the nobleman, Lord Selkirk, shall have a bodily price pinned on his coat-tail, like any slave up at auction in Charleston.  But, my lad with the yellow mane, you very strangely draw out my secrets.  And yet you don’t talk.  Your honesty is a magnet which attracts my sincerity.  But I rely on your fidelity.”

“I shall be a vice to your plans, Captain Paul.  I will receive, but I won’t let go, unless you alone loose the screw.”

“Well said.  To bed now; you ought to.  I go on deck.  Good night, ace-of-hearts.”

“That is fitter for yourself, Captain Paul, lonely leader of the suit.”

“Lonely?  Aye, but number one cannot but be lonely, my trump.”

“Again I give it back.  Ace-of-trumps may it prove to you, Captain Paul; may it be impossible for you ever to be taken.  But for me—­poor deuce, a trey, that comes in your wake—­any king or knave may take me, as before now the knaves have.”

“Tut, tut, lad; never be more cheery for another than for yourself.  But a fagged body fags the soul.  To hammock, to hammock! while I go on deck to clap on more sail to your cradle.”

And they separated for that night.

CHAPTER XV.

THEY SAIL AS FAR AS THE CRAG OF AILSA.

Next morning Israel was appointed quartermaster—­a subaltern selected from the common seamen, and whose duty mostly stations him in the stern of the ship, where the captain walks.  His business is to carry the glass on the look-out for sails; hoist or lower the colors; and keep an eye on the helmsman.  Picked out from the crew for their superior respectability and intelligence, as well as for their excellent seamanship, it is not unusual to find the quartermasters of an armed ship on peculiarly easy terms with the commissioned officers and captain.  This birth, therefore, placed Israel in official contiguity to Paul, and without subjecting either to animadversion, made their public intercourse on deck almost as familiar as their unrestrained converse in the cabin.

It was a fine cool day in the beginning of April.  They were now off the coast of Wales, whose lofty mountains, crested with snow, presented a Norwegian aspect.  The wind was fair, and blew with a strange, bestirring power.  The ship—­running between Ireland and England, northwards, towards the Irish Sea, the inmost heart of the British waters—­seemed, as she snortingly shook the spray from her bow, to be conscious of the dare-devil defiance of the soul which conducted her on this anomalous cruise.  Sailing alone from out a naval port of France, crowded with ships-of-the-line, Paul Jones, in his small craft, went forth in single-armed championship against the English host.  Armed with but the sling-stones