Selina Johns wasn’t but just husband-high; turned sixteen and her hair only put up a week before, she having begged her mother’s leave to twist it in plaits for the Christmas courants.  And Abe and Billy each knew the other’s secret almost before he knew his own, for each, as you may say, kept his heart like a window and looked into his friend’s window first.

And what they did was to have it out like good fellows, and agree to wait a couple of years, unless any third party should interfere.  In two years’ time, they agreed, Selina Johns would be wise enough to choose—­ and then let the best man win!  No bad blood afterwards, and meanwhile no more talk than necessary—­they shook hands upon that.  That January, being tired of the free-trade, they shipped together on board a coaster for the Thames, and re-shipped for the voyage homeward on board the brig Hand and Glove, of London.

The Hand and Glove, Uriah Wilcox, master, was bound for Devonport with a cargo of copper and flour for the dockyard there, and came to anchor in the Downs on March 24th to join convoy under the Spider gun-brig.  On the 25th (a Sunday) it blew hard from north to west, and she let go sheet anchor.  Next day the weather moderated a bit, and, heaving up her sheet anchor, she rode to her best bower.  On the Tuesday, the wind having fallen light, the master took off a new longboat from Deal.  There was some hitch in delivering her, and she was scarcely brought alongside by five the next morning when the Commodore signalled to get under weigh.

By reason of this delay, the Hand and Glove was taken unawares, and started well astern of the fleet, which numbered over twenty sail of merchantmen; and, being a sluggard in anything short of half a gale, she made up precious little way in the light E.N.E. breeze.

Soon after seven that evening, Beachy Head bearing N.W. by W. four miles and a half, Abe Cummins on the look-out forward spied a lugger coming towards shore upon a wind.  She crossed well ahead of the Hand and Glove, and close—­as it looked—­under the stem of an East Indiaman which was then busy reefing topsails before night.  For a while Abe lost sight of her under the dark of the land; but by-and-by the wheelman took a glance over his shoulder, and there she was, creeping up close astern.  His call fetched up Captain Wilcox, who ran aft and hailed, but got no reply.  And so she came on, until, sheering close up under the Hand and Glove’s port quarter, she was able to heave a grapnel on board and throw twenty well-armed Johnnies into the old brig.  The Englishmen—­ seven in all, and taken unprepared—­were soon driven below and shut down—­four in the cabin, two in the steerage, and one in the forecastle, this last being Abe Cummins.  After a while the sentry over the hatchway called for him to come up and show where the leading ropes were, which he did at the point of a cutlass.  And precious soon the Johnnies had altered the brig’s course and stood away for the coast of France, the lugger keeping her company all night.