That they do not happen every day, I can admit; but I have a proof that they do come about sometimes." "Very probably, Willis." "It is my opinion that Providence often leads us about by the hands, just as little children are taken to school, lest they should be tempted to play truant by the way." "Not unlikely, Willis; but the miracle!" "I was going along quietly, not thinking I was being led anywhere in particular, when, all at once, I was hove up by--If a bullet had hit me right in the breast, I could not have been more staggered." "Whatever hove you up then, Willis ?" "I was hove up by the sloop." "What sloop ?" "The _Nelson_." "Was it taking a walk, Willis ?" inquired Jack.
"Have you been to sea since we saw you last ?" asked Fritz.
"If I had fallen in with the craft at sea, Master Fritz, I should not have been half so much astonished.

The sea is the natural element of ships; we do not find gudgeons in corn fields, nor shoot hares on the ocean.

But it was on land that I hailed the _Nelson_." "Was it going round the corner of a street that you stumbled upon it, Willis ?" inquired Jack.
"Not exactly; but to make a long story short--" "When you talk of cutting anything short, we are in for a yarn," said Jack.
"And you are sure to interrupt him in the middle of it," said Fritz.
"Well, in two words," said Willis, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "I was cruising about the shipyards, looking if there was a condemned craft likely to suit us--some of them had gun-shot wounds in their timbers, others had been slewed up by a shoal--and, to cut the matter short--" "Another yarn," suggested Jack.
"I luffed up beside the hull of a cutter-looking craft that had been completely gutted.

But, changed and dilapidated as that hull is, I recognized it at once to be that of the _Nelson_.

Now do you believe in miracles ?" "But are you sure, Willis ?" "Suppose you met Ernest or Frank in the street to-morrow, pale, meagre, and in rags, would you recognize them ?" "Most assuredly." "Well, by the same token, sailors can always recognize a ship they have sailed in.