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By nine o’clock they made out the Eddystone on their starboard bow; and a little after—the morning being bright and clear, with a nice steady breeze–they saw a sail right ahead of them, making in for Plymouth Sound. And who should it be but the old Bean Pheasant, deep as a log! Cap’n Dick cracked along after her, and a picture she was as he drew up close! Six of her guns had gone; her men were baling in two gangs, and still she was down a bit by the head, and her stern yawing like a terrier’s tail when his head’s in a rabbit-hole. And there at the tiller stood Cap’n Jacka, his bald head shining like a statue of fun, and his one eye twinkling with blessed satisfaction as he cocked it every now and then for a glance over his right shoulder.

“Hullo! What’s amiss?” sang out Cap’n Dick, as the Unity fetched within hail.

“Aw, nothin’, nothin’. ‘Tho’ troubles assail an’ dangers’–Stiddy there, you old angletwitch!–She’s a bit too fond o’ smelling the wind, that’s all.”

As a matter of fact she’d taken more water than Jacka cared to think about, now that the danger was over.

“But what brings ‘ee here? An’ what cheer wi’ you?” he asked.

This was Cap’n Dick’s chance. “I’ve had a run between two French frigates,” he boasted, “in broad day, an’ given the slip to both!”

“Dear, now!” said Cap’n Jacka. “So have I–in broad day, too. They must ha’ been the very same. What did ‘ee take out of ’em?”

“Take! They were two war frigates, I tell ‘ee!”

“Iss, iss; don’t lose your temper. All I managed to take was this young French orcifer here; but I thought, maybe, that you–having a handier craft–“

Jacka chuckled a bit; but he wasn’t one to keep a joke going for spite.

“Look-y-here, Cap’n,” he said; “I’ll hear your tale when we get into dock, and you shall hear mine. What I want ‘ee to do just now is to take this here lugger again and sail along in to Plymouth with her as your prize. I wants, if possible, to spare the feelin’s of this young gentleman, an’ make it look that he was brought in by force. For so he was, though not in the common way. An’ I likes the fellow, too, though he do kick terrible hard.”

* * * * *

They do say that two days later, when Cap’n Jacka walked up to his own door, he carried the cinder-sifter under his arm; and that, before ever he kissed his wife, he stepped fore and hitched it on a nail right in the middle of the wall over the chimney-piece, between John Wesley and the weather-glass.