CHAPTER II.

ADVERSE winds detained the ship for some days in the Channel; after which they coasted leisurely westward, the captain having to communicate with the Admiral at Cove. Every thing in the shape of delay was agreeable to Alick, who found in the sea an element so delightful, and in the sprightly young middies associates so congenial to him, than an order to circumnavigate the globe in that company would have been welcome. Mr. Cohen, who suffered greatly from sickness, had not even made his appearance at the captain's table; but Alick, a general favourite, had already experienced the hospitality of all the messes; among which he certainly preferred the gunroom, where, at a slip of table thirty feet long, assembled the gallant array of midshipmen, varying in years from fourteen to more than twice that age, a schoolmaster, two assistant surgeons, and very frequently a warrant-officer as guest. The early dinnerhour of noon allowed Alick to accept the almost daily invitations as to a lunch, though the abundance of choice viands served up usually tempted him to make it a full meal; and his keen perception of character ensured him endless amusement among such society.

Alick Cohen had never loved study, so far as books were concerned; but he was naturally of an inquiring

turn, and impressed not only vividly but deeply with whatever was presented to him through the medium of common occurrence or conversation. Far from being deficient either in sense or talent, his mind had remained comparatively inert, more for lack of any suitable stimulant to force it into action than from indolence. At home he had known no wish that could not be gratified by touching a bell-rope; and at school a well-filled purse wrought its wonted effects. The society wherein he had moved was of that polish which wears away, from the surface at least, all irregularities of character; and thus he had been becalmed on the smooth waters of a rich citizen's life, long enough to render the present contrast enchanting.

Some of his young friends in the gun-room were highly bred; a title, more than one Honourable, and several of his own class, ranked among them; but though some affected the fine gentleman, and strove against the infection of their comrades' blunt hilarity, they could not succeed in chilling the genial atmosphere around them; more particularly as such attempts were pointedly put down by the captain and first lieutenant, two disciplinarians of the old school, and still more effectually checked by an individual of subordinate rank; but who, perhaps, possessed more real influence among the middies than any other man on board.

This was the gunner, a fine old seaman, who had risen by sterling merit to that important post, and whose thorough knowledge of his profession, peculiar aptitude for communicating it, and unbounded kindness in affording valuable information, had rendered

him an oracle among the inexperienced officers. He was rough and unceremonious, but never harsh or rude. His broad, honest face beamed with intelligence, benevolence, and manly decision, while his quick eye seemed formed at once to detect and to reprove anything reprehensible. Alick took great note of him, seldom losing a remark that he uttered; for in his heart he had already resolved by some means to enter the service; and the information that any attentive listener might derive from Gordon's general discourse on nautical subjects was likely to prove of material use. The grand feature, however, in the gunner's character he did not comprehend, for Gordon was spiritually-minded; a true, firm, and consistent believer.

The senior midshipman, a disappointed and discontented man, openly broached infidel principles, in which he was covertly supported by one of the assistant surgeons, who prudently refrained from committing himself directly on that point. The school-master, well read in Paley's Evidences, and armed with such Christianity as man may learn from man, constantly met and repelled all serious assaults on revealed religion; but allowed the sneer, the laugh, the banter, to pass unheeded. Gordon, whose constant care it was to uphold the relative authority of each officer in the ship, refrained from interposing when the schoolmaster came forward; but many a rebuke did he administer on occasions when, but for him, the ground would have been undefended. Sharpe, the infidel, was much disliked by his comrades, who relished seeing him wincing under Gordon's lash; and

what between well-merited love, and salutary dread, of the old gunner, the latter enjoyed an exemption from those petty persecutions which too often are the lot of a Christian in his situation.

Alick's Hebrew origin had not been surmised. In the little billets occasionally handed to him he was usually addressed as Coane,' and he himself be stowed no thought on the matter. It happened as they were beating off the Cove of Cork that he strolled into the gun-room with one of his young friends, just as the debate was running high between Mr. Sharpe and the schoolmaster. The former, it seemed, had denounced the whole Bible as a tissue of falsehood and folly; while the latter was, with more earnestness than usual, upholding its divine authority. A group of middies surrounded the combatants, of whom one was drawing a caricature sketch, while Gordon was delighting a mere child, just entered as a midshipman, by superintending the carving of a ship's hull with his penknife. Alick took his station in the midst of the listeners.

'All that you have said is vastly fine, Mr. Cowper,' said Sharpe,' but it amounts to just this; certain predictions appear in the Old Testament, and their fulfilment is recorded in the New; so you make the two parcels of the Bible reciprocally prove each other; whereas I take leave to regard them both as parts of one great forgery, framed so to support one another's pretences.'

'Setting the New Testament aside altogether,' replied the other, 'I refer you to the fulfilment of prophecy in the nations around us.

'Of which a great deal took place before the prophecies were written,' said Sharpe contemptuously, ' and the rest would have come to pass in the natural course of events, even had they not been so shrewdly guessed at, and, as you called it, foretold.'

'Impossible!' said Cowper, no human sagacity could have foreseen the occurrences that have fallen out, exactly as foreshewn in the pages of inspiration. But leaving all others, I will take up one point alone; what think you, sir, of that universal problem, the outcast, miserable, degraded Jews?'

'Why, I think them a pack of very great vagabonds,' answered Mr. Sharpe.

'Undoubtedly they are; the very offscourings of the world, a by-word, a hissing, a scorn, and a reproach; but was not this foretold?'

'Yes, and in the same way I could sit down and write a prophecy that Poland should be dismembered by the Russians.'

6 Well, sir, but supposing the Bible to be ever so modern a book as you fancy it, only a few centuries old, still I maintain that the lapse of those few centuries was sufficient, nay certain, in the common course of events, to have obliterated all natural trace of such an outcast race, amalgamating them with the various people of the earth, or exterminating them altogether by the many and severe persecutions that they have undergone. Instead of which, you find no country under heaven without the Jew, bearing the brand of his crime, the curse of God, and the universal contempt of his fellow-creatures.'

Look at Sharpe, how he is posed and caught,