The day was fixed for our wedding,--it approached.

On the evening before the appointed day, Clara, her mother, her little sister, and myself, were walking by the port; and as we looked on the sea, I was telling them old gossip-tales of mermaids and sea-serpents, when a red-faced, bottle-nosed Frenchman clapped himself right before me, and, placing his spectacles very deliberately astride his proboscis, echoed out, 'Sacre, mille tonnerres! this is the damned pirate who boarded the "Niobe"!'" "'None of your jests,' said I, mildly.

'Ho, ho!' said he; 'I can't be mistaken; help there!' and he griped me by the collar.

I replied, as you may suppose, by laying him in the kennel; but it would not do.

The French captain had a French lieutenant at his back, whose memory was as good as his chief's.