"Here!" answered a gruff voice; and Clifford, passing on, came to a small
parlour adjoining the tap. There, seated by a round oak table, he found
mine host,--a red, fierce, weather-beaten, but bloated-looking personage,
like Dick Hatteraick in a dropsy.

"How now, Captain!" cried he, in a gutteral accent, and interlarding his
discourse with certain Dutch graces, which with our reader's leave we
will omit, as being unable to spell them; "how now!--not gone yet!"

"No! I start for the coast to-morrow; business keeps me to-day. I came
to ask if Mellon may be fully depended on?"

"Ay, honest to the back-bone."

"And you are sure that in spite of my late delays he will not have left
the village?"

"Sure! What else can I be? Don't I know Jack Mellon these twenty years!
He would lie like a log in a calm for ten months together, without moving
a hair's-breadth, if he was under orders."

"And his vessel is swift and well manned, in case of an officer's chase?"

"The 'Black Molly' swift? Ask your grandmother. The 'Black Molly' would
outstrip a shark."

"Then good-by, Janseen; there is something to keep your pipe alight. We
shall not meet within the three seas again, I think. England is as much
too hot for me as Holland for you!"