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 by me and fell on her knees beside it! I saw a trickle of blood ooze beneath the scarlet folds of the flag. It crawled along the plank, hesitated at a seam, and grew there to an oddly-shaped pool. I watched it. In shape I thought it remarkably like the map of Ireland. And I became aware that some one was speaking to me, and looked up to find a lean and lantern-jawed American come aboard and standing at my shoulder.

"Are you anywise hard of hearing, stranger? Or must I repeat to you that this licks cockfighting."

"I, at any rate, am not disputing it, sir."

"The Lady Nepean, too! Is that the Cap'n yonder? I thought as much. Dead, hey? Well, he'd better stay dead, though I'd have enjoyed the inside o' five minutes' talk just to find out what he did it for."

"Did what?"

"Why, brought the Lady Nepean into these waters, and Commodore Rodgers no further away than RholeRhode [sic] Island, by all accounts. He must have had a nerve. And what post might you be holding on this all-fired packet? Darn me, but you have females enough on board!" For indeed there were three poor creatures kneeling now and crooning over the dead captain. The men had surrendered—they had no arms to fling down—and were collected in the waist, under guard of a cordon of Yankees. One lay senseless on deck and two or three were bleeding from splinter wounds; for the enemy, her freeboard being lower by a foot or two than the wall sides of the Lady Nepean had done little execution on deck, whatever the wounds in our hull might be.

"I beg your pardon. Captain"

"Seccombe, sir, is my name. Alpheus Q. Seccombe, of the Manhattan, schooner."

"Well, then, Captain Seccombe, I am a passenger on