"
One of the men affected to gaze at the money with longing eyes, while he
asked, as if weighing the terms of the engagement:
"Whether the Alacrity was called a good sea-boat, and was thought to
give a comfortable berth to her crew?"
"Comfortable!" echoed Borroughcliffe; "for that matter, she is called
the bravest cutter in the navy. You have seen much of the world, I dare
say; did you ever see such a place as the marine arsenal at Carthagena,
in old Spain?"
"Indeed I have, sir," returned the seaman, in a cool, collected tone.
"Ah! you have! well, did you ever meet with a house in Paris that they
call the Tuileries? because it's a dog-kennel to the Alacrity."
"I have even fallen in with the place you mention, sir," returned the
sailor; "and must own the berth quite good enough for such as I am, if
it tallies with your description."
"The deuce take these blue-jackets," muttered Borroughcliffe, addressing
himself unconsciously to Miss Plowden, near whom he happened to be at
the time; "they run their tarry countenances into all the corners of the
earth, and abridge a man most lamentably in his comparisons. Now, who
the devil would have thought that fellow had ever put his sea-green eyes
on the palace of King Louis?"
Katherine heeded not his speech, but sat eying the prisoners with a
confused and wavering expression of countenance, while Colonel Howard
renewed the discourse, by exclaiming:
"Come, come, Borroughcliffe, let us give the lads no tales for a
recruit, but good, plain, honest English--God bless the language, and
the land for which it was first made, too! There is no necessity to tell
these men, if they are, what they seem to be, practical seamen, that a
cutter of ten guns contains all the room and accommodation of a palace.
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