“Then let her carry a national flag, and be d—­d to her,” answered Spike fiercely.  “I can show you law for what I say, Mr. Mulford.  The American flag has its stripes fore and aft by law, and this chap carries his stripes parpendic’lar.  If I commanded a cruiser, and fell in with one of these up and down gentry, blast me if I wouldn’t just send him into port, and try the question in the old Alms-House.”

Mulford probably did not think it worth while to argue the point any further, understanding the dogmatism and stolidity of his commander too well to deem it necessary.  He preferred to turn to the consideration of the qualities of the steamer in sight, a subject on which, as seamen, they might better sympathize.

“That’s a droll-looking revenue cutter, after all, Capt.  Spike,” he said—­“a craft better fitted to go in a fleet, as a look-out vessel, than to chase a smuggler in-shore.”

“And no goer in the bargain!  I do not see how she gets along, for she keeps all snug under water; but, unless she can travel faster than she does just now, the Molly Swash would soon lend her the Mother Carey’s Chickens of her own wake to amuse her.”

“She has the tide against her, just here, sir; no doubt she would do better in still water.”

Spike muttered something between his teeth, and jumped down on deck, seemingly dismissing the subject of the revenue entirely from his mind.  His old, coarse, authoritative manner returned, and he again spoke to his mate about Rose Budd, her aunt, the “ladies’ cabin,” the “young flood,” and “casting off,” as soon as the last made.  Mulford listened respectfully, though with a manifest distaste for the instructions he was receiving.  He knew his man, and a feeling of dark distrust came over him, as he listened to his orders concerning the famous accommodations he intended to give to Rose Budd and that “capital old lady, her aunt;” his opinion of “the immense deal of good sea-air and a v’y’ge would do Rose,” and how “comfortable they both would be on board the Molly Swash.”

“I honour and respect, Mrs. Budd, as my captain’s lady, you see, Mr. Mulford, and intend to treat her accordin’ly.  She knows it—­and Rose knows it—­and they both declare they’d rather sail with me, since sail they must, than with any other ship-master out of America.”

“You sailed once with Capt.  Budd yourself, I think I have heard you say, sir?”

“The old fellow brought me up.  I was with him from my tenth to my twentieth year, and then broke adrift to see fashions.  We all do that, you know, Mr. Mulford, when we are young and ambitious, and my turn came as well as another’s.”

“Capt.  Budd must have been a good deal older than his wife, sir, if you sailed with him when a boy,” Mulford observed a little drily.

“Yes; I own to forty-eight, though no one would think me more than five or six-and-thirty, to look at me.  There was a great difference between old Dick Budd and his wife, as you say, he being about fifty, when he married, and she less than twenty.  Fifty is a good age for matrimony, in a man, Mulford; as is twenty in a young woman.”