Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/114

100 than twenty-five years old; and he greeted me with much smoothness of speech. He had served three years as third officer to the big steam-yacht owned by the noted Frenchman, the Marquis de Cluneville; and, as he was unmistakably a gentleman, and his discharges were in perfect order, I engaged him there and then for the post of second officer to the Celsis, and gave him orders to join her at Plymouth, where she lay, as soon as might be.

But had I known him then as I know him now, I would have paid a thousand pounds never to have seen him!