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“A hundred pounds! Oh, go to blazes with your hundred pounds! When I tell you the Prince Regent himself had five hundred on it. . . . Oh! prop ’em up, somebody! and let the fools see what they’ve done to poor Jem, that I’d a-trained to a hair. And the money of half the fancy depending on his condition. . . .”

“Prop ’em up, some of you!” echoed Captain Suckling. “Eh? God bless my soul–“

He paused, staring from the yellow faces of the pugilists to the battered and contused features of his own seamen.

“God bless my soul!” repeated Captain Suckling. “Mr. Fraser!”

“Sir!” The second lieutenant stepped forward.

“You mean to tell me that–that these two men–inflicted–er–all this?”

“They did, sir. If I might explain the unfortunate mistake–“

“You describe it accurately, sir. I could say to you, as Sir Isaac Newton said to his dog Diamond, ‘Oh, Mr. Fraser, Mr. Fraser, you little know what you have done!'”

“Indeed, sir, I fear we acted hastily. The fact is we found the two new midshipmen, Rodd and Hartnoll, in something of a scrape with these people. . . .” The second lieutenant told how he had found me battering at the door, and how he had effected an entrance: but the Captain listened inattentively.

“Your Excellency,” he said, interrupting the narrative and turning on the Governor, “I really think these men will give us little sport here.”

“They are going to be extremely ill,” said His Excellency, “and that presently.”

“I had better send them ashore.”

“Decidedly; and before they recover. Also, if I might advise, I would not be too hasty in knocking off their handcuffs.”

“We are short-handed,” mused Captain Suckling; “but really the situation will be a delicate one unless we weigh anchor at once.”

“You will be the laughing-stock of all the ships inside the Wight, and the object of some indignation ashore.”

“There is nothing to detain us, for doubtless I can pick up a few recruits at Falmouth. . . . But what to do with these men?”

“May I suggest that I have not yet dismissed my shore-boat?”

“The very thing!” Captain Suckling gazed overside, and then southward towards the Wight, whence a light sea-fog was drifting up again to envelop us.

“I never thought,” he murmured, “to be thankful for thick weather to weigh anchor in!”

He turned and stared pensively at the line of prisoners who had staggered one by one to the bulwarks, and leaned there limply, their resentment lost for the time in the convulsions of nature.

“It seems like taking advantage of their weakness,” said he pensively.

“It does,” agreed His Excellency; “but I strongly advise it.”

A moment, and a moment only, Captain Suckling hesitated before giving the order. . . . Then in miserable procession the strong men were led past us to the ladder, each supported by two seamen. The gangway was crowded, and my inches did not allow me to look over the bulwarks: but I heard the boatswain knocking off their irons in the boat below, and the objurgating voice of the man in the pearl buttons.

“Give way!” shouted someone. I edged towards the gangway and stooped; and then, peering between the legs of my superior officers, I saw the boat glide away from the frigate’s side. Our friends lay piled on the bottom-boards and under the thwarts like a catch of fish. One or two lifted clenched fists: and the boatmen, eyeing them nervously, fell to their oars for dear life.

As the fog swallowed them, someone took me by the ear.

“Hullo, young gentlemen,” said His Excellency, pinching me and reaching out a hand for Hartnoll, who evaded him, “it seems to me you deserve a thrashing apiece for yesterday and a guinea apiece for to-day. Will you take both, or shall we call it quits?”

Well, we called it quits for the time. But twenty years later, happening upon me at Buckingham Palace at one of King William’s last levees, he shook hands and informed me that the balance sheet at the time had been wrongly struck: for I had provided him with a story which had served him faithfully through half his distinguished career. A week later a dray rumbled up to the door of my lodgings in Jermyn Street, and two stout men delivered from it a hogshead of the sherry you are now drinking. He had inquired for Hartnoll’s address, but Hartnoll, poor lad, had lain for fifteen years in the British burial-ground at Port Royal.