"Well, I don't see that your geography is much better than your
history," said he. "You'd never get your certificate at this rate.
Can you do addition? Well, then, let us see if you can tot up my
prize-money."

He shot a mischievous glance at my mother as he spoke, and she laid
down her knitting on her lap and looked very earnestly at him.

"You never asked me about that, Mary," said he.

"The Mediterranean is not the station for it, Anson. I have heard
you say that it is the Atlantic for prize-money, and the
Mediterranean for honour."

"I had a share of both last cruise, which comes from changing a
line-of-battleship for a frigate. Now, Rodney, there are two pounds
in every hundred due to me when the prize-courts have done with
them. When we were watching Massena, off Genoa, we got a matter of
seventy schooners, brigs, and tartans, with wine, food, and powder.
Lord Keith will want his finger in the pie, but that's for the
Courts to settle. Put them at four pounds apiece to me, and what
will the seventy bring?"

"Two hundred and eighty pounds," I answered.

"Why, Anson, it is a fortune!" cried my mother, clapping her hands.

"Try you again, Roddy!" said he, shaking his pipe at me. "There was
the Xebec frigate out of Barcelona with twenty thousand Spanish
dollars aboard, which make four thousand of our pounds. Her hull