arm, our fortunes might have been reversed.”

He looked me up and down. “You are kind, sir,” he said thickly. “‘To-day to thee, to-morrow to me.’ I give you joy of your petty victory.”

He turned squarely from me, and stood with his face downstream. I was speaking to Rolfe and to the few — not even all of that side for which I had won — who pressed around me, when he wheeled.

“Your Honor,” he cried to the Governor, who had paused beside Mistress Percy, “is not the Due Return high-pooped? Doth she not carry a blue pennant, and hath she not a gilt siren for figurehead?”

“Ay,” answered the Governor, lifting his head from the hand he had kissed with ponderous gallantry.