CHAPTER 19: A Dangerous Expedition.
The details of the proposed expedition being thus arranged, the captain left the cabin with James, and the latter paced to and fro on the quarterdeck, while the captain sent for the boatswain and directed him to pick out four men who could swim well, and who were ready to volunteer for desperate service.
While the captain was so engaged, James saw a naval officer staring fixedly at him.

He recognized him instantly, though more than four years had elapsed since he had last seen him.

He at once stepped across the quarterdeck.
"How are you, Lieutenant Horton?
It is a long time since we last parted on the Potomac." Horton would have refused the proffered hand, but he had already injured himself very sorely, in the eyes of the squire, by his outburst of ill feeling against James, so he shook hands and said coldly: "Yes, your position has changed since then." "Yes," James said with a laugh, "but that was only a temporary eclipse.
That two months before the mast was a sort of interlude for which I am deeply thankful.

Had it not been for my getting into that smuggling scrape, I should have been, at the present moment, commencing practice as a doctor, instead of being a captain in his majesty's service." The words were not calculated to improve Horton's temper.

What a mistake he had made! Had he interfered on James Walsham's behalf--and a word from him, saying that James was the son of a medical man, and was assuredly mixed up in this smuggling affair only by accident--he would have been released.