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The youth stayed in the berth while I ate and drank, and I asked him some questions.

“Where is Captain Greaves?”

“On deck, master. We have been chased, but aint we dropping her nicely, though! Ah! She’s that size on the sea now,” said he, holding up his hand, “and at two o’clock we could count her guns.”

“This is a fast brig then?”

“She’s all legs, master.”

“What are you?”

“I’m the capt’n’s servant and cabin boy.”

“What’s the name of your mate?”

“Yawcob Van Laar.”

“A Dutchman?” said I; and then I remembered having read in the paper that this brig had been purchased or chartered by a Dutch merchant of Amsterdam, so that it was likely enough she would carry some Dutch folk among her crew. “Are you all Dutch?”

“No, master. There be Wirtz, Galen, Hals, and Bol; them four, they be Dutch. And there be Friend, Street, Meehan, Travers, Teach, Call, and me; Irish and English, master.”

I was struck by the fellow’s memory. His face made no promise of that faculty.

“Eleven men,” said I aloud, but thinking rather than talking; “and a mate and a captain, thirteen; and the ship’s burden, if I recollect aright, falls short by a trifle of three hundred tons. Her Dutch owner appears to have manned her frugally for such times as these. Most assuredly,” said I, still thinking aloud, gazing at the flat face of the youth who was looking up at me with a slightly gaping mouth, “the Black Watch is no privateer. Where are you bound to?”