grudges his Healer a guinea, and his mouse a
stand up bite."

"Now, who have been a telling you lies?"
inquired Maxley, severely. "My missus, for a
farthing. I'm not a thousand pound man; I'm
a nine hundred pound man: and it's all safe at
Hardie's:" here he went from his roar to his
whisper, "I don't hold with Lunnon banks;
they be like my missus's eggs: all one outside, and
the rotten ones only known by breaking. Well
(loud) I be pretty close, I don't deny it; but
(confidentially) my missus beats me. I look twice
at a penny; but she looks twice at both sides of
a halfpenny before she will let him go: and it's
her being so close have raised all this here
bobbery; and so I told her; says I, 'Missus.—
If you would but leave an end of a dip, or a
paring of cheese, about your cupboard, she
would bide at home; but you hungers her so,
you drives her afield right on atop o' my roots.'
'Oh,' says my missus, 'if / was to be as wasteful
as you be, where should we be, come Christmas
day? Every tub on its own bottom,' says she;
'man and wife did ought to keep theirselves to
theirselves, she to the house, and I to the
garden;' 'so be it,' says I, and by the same
toaken, don't let me catch them "Ns" in
my garden again, or I'll spoil their clucking
and scratching,' says I, 'for I'll twist their dalled
necks: ye've got a yard,' says I, 'and a roost,
and likewise a turnpike, you and your poultry:
so bide at home the lot; and don't come a
scratching o' me!' and with that we had a
ripput; and she took one of her pangs; and
then I behoved to knock under; and that is
allus the way if ye quarrel with women folk;
they are sworn to get the better of ye by hook
or by crook, now dooee give me a bit of that ere,
to quiet this here, as eats me up by the roots and
sets my missus and me by the ears."

"Justum ac tenacem propositi virum,"
whispered Alfred to Edward.

Sampson told him angrily to go to a certain
great personage.

"Not afore my betters," whispered Mr. Maxley,
smit with a sudden respect for etiquette.

"Won't ye now?"

"I'll see ye hanged first, ye miserly old
assassin."

"Then I have nothing to thank you for," roared
Maxley, and made his adieux, ignoring with
marked contempt the false physician who
declined to doctor the foe of his domestic peace and
crocuses.

"Quite a passage of arms," said Edward.

"Yes," said Mrs. Dodd, "and of bludgeons
and things, rather than the polished rapier. What
expressions to fall from two highly educated
gentlemen! Slope—Potato-trap—Sawbones—
Catlap—je n'en finirais pas."

She then let them know that she meditated a
"dictionary of jargon;" in hopes that its bulk
might strike terror into honest citizens, and
excite an anti-jargon league to save the English
language, now on the verge of dissolution.

Sampson was pleased with this threat. "Now,
that is odd," said he. "Why I am compilin a
vocablary myself. I call 't th' ass-ass-ins' dickshinary;
showing how, by the use of mealy mouthed
an d'exotic phrases, knaves can lead fools by th'
ear t' a vilent dith. F'r instance; if one was to say
to John Bull, 'Now I'll cut a great gash in your
arm and let your blood run till ye drop down senseless,'
he'd take fright, and say, 'Call another
time!' So the profissional ass-ass-in words it
thus; 'I'll bleed you from a large orifice till th'
occurrence of syncope.' All right, sis John:
he's bled from a lar j'orifice and dies three days
after of th' assassin's knife hid in a sheath o'
goose grease. But I'll blow the gaff with my
dickshinary."

"Meantime there is another contribution to
mine," said Mrs. Dodd.

And they agreed in the gaiety of their hearts to
compare their rival Lexicons.

CHAPTER XV.

THEY got to the wounded captain, and raised
him: he revived a little: and, the moment he
caught sight of Mr. Sharpe, he clutched him,
and cried, "Stunsels!"

"Oh, captain," said Sharpe, "let the ship go,
it is you we are anxious for now."

At this Dodd lifted up his hands and beat the
air impatiently, and cried again in the thin,
querrulous, voice of a wounded man, but eagerly,
"STUNSELS! STUNSELS!"

On this, Sharpe gave the command. "Set
to-gallant stunsels! All hands set stunsels 'low
and aloft!"

While the unwounded hands swarmed into the
rigging, the surgeon came aft in all haste; but
Dodd declined him till all his men should have
been looked to: meantime he had himself carried
to the poop, and laid on a mattress, his bleeding
head bound tight with a wet cambric handkerchief,
and his pale face turned towards the hostile
schooner astern. She had hove to, and was
picking up the survivors of her blotted out
consort. The group on the Agra's quarter deck
watched her to see what she would do next;
flushed with immediate success the younger
officers crowed their fears she would not be
game to attack them again; Dodd's fears ran the
other way: he said, in the weak voice to which
he was now reduced, "they are taking a wet
blanket aboard; that crew of blackguards we
swamped won't want any more of us: it all
depends on the Pirate Captain; if he is not
drowned, then blow wind, rise sea: or there's
trouble ahead for us."

As soon as the schooner had picked up the
last swimmer, she hoisted foresail, mainsail, and
jib, with admirable rapidity, and bore down in
chase.

The Agra had, meantime, got a start of more
than a mile, and was now running before a stiff
breeze with studding sails alow and aloft.

In an hour the vessels ran nearly twelve miles,
and the pirate had gained half a mile.