“Are you in search of rudder-fish, my friend, that you hang so closely under my counter?” demanded Wilder.  “The bay is said to be full of delicious bass, and other scaly gentlemen, that would far better repay your trouble.”

“He is well paid who gets the bite he baits for,” returned the other, turning his head, and exhibiting the cunning eye and chuckling countenance of old Bob Bunt, as Wilder’s recent and treacherous confederate had announced his name to be.

“How now!  Dare you trust yourself with me, in five-fathom water, after the villanous trick you have seen fit”—­

“Hist! noble Captain, hist!” interrupted Bob, holding up a finger, to repress the other’s animation, and intimating, by a sign, that their conference must be held in lower tones; “there is no need to call all hands to help us through a little chat.  In what way have I fallen to leeward of your favour, Captain?”

“In what way, sirrah!  Did you not receive money, to give such a character of this ship to the ladies as (you said yourself) would make them sooner pass the night in a churchyard, than trust foot on board her?”

“Something of the sort passed between us, Captain; but you forgot one half of the conditions, and I overlooked the other; and I need not tell so expert a navigator, that two halves make a whole.  No wonder, therefore, that the affair dropt through between us.”

“How!  Do you add falsehood to perfidy?  What part of my engagement did I neglect?”

“What part!” returned the pretended fisherman, leisurely drawing in a line, which the quick eye of Wilder saw, though abundantly provided with lead at the end, was destitute of the equally material implement—­the hook; “What part, Captain!  No less a particular than the second guinea.”

“It was to have been the reward of a service done, and not an earnest, like its fellow, to induce you to undertake the duty.”

“Ah! you have helped me to the very word I wanted.  I fancied it was not in earnest, like the one I got, and so I left the job half finished.”

“Half finished, scoundrel! you never commenced what you swore so stoutly to perform.”

“Now are you on as wrong a course, my Master, as if you steered due east to get to the Pole.  I religiously performed one half my undertaking; and, you will acknowledge, I was only half paid.”

“You would find it difficult to prove that you even did that little.”

“Let us look into the log.  I enlisted to walk up the hill as far as the dwelling of the good Admiral’s widow, and there to make certain alterations in my sentiments, which it is not necessary to speak of between us.”

“Which you did not make; but, on the contrary, which you thwarted, by telling an exactly contradictory tale.”

“True.”

“True! knave?—­Were justice done you, an acquaintance with a rope’s end would be a merited reward.”