"
"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.
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