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With only seven hundred men General Ross and Admiral Cockburn were in the capital of a republic numbering eight millions of inhabitants, and proud of having in arms the inconsiderable number of eight hundred thousand men, to do with it as Commodore Chantey and General Dearborn had done to York, the capital of a territory containing ninety-five thousand inhabitants, man, woman, and child! half an hour afterwards, or pay a ransom.

She accosted a man who approached her through the narrow alley, but he had cruised from the charted course in search of adventure and was not minded to go in quest of doormen; rather, he chose to sing a chantey, to the bibulous measures of which he invited her to dance with him, so she slipped away till he had teetered past.

For Old Jerry had been a sailor, and had followed the sea till middle life, haunted always by the words of the ringing chantey. Then one day he had sung the song in earnest, in an Asiatic port, swinging and thrilling round the capstan-circle with twenty others. And at San Francisco he turned his back upon his ship and upon the sea, and went to behold with his own eyes the banks of the Sacramento.

Long before the worn travelers and their escort reached the village, Jessie could hear the gay lilt of the chantey that heralded their coming: "Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre, Mironton-ton-ton, mirontaine." The girl hummed it herself, heart athrob with excitement. She found herself joining in the cheer of welcome that rose joyously when the cavalcade drew into sight.

They, too, had welcomed the New Year, and their gait was as at sea when the ship rises and falls on the huge waves. They wheeled in a barrow a mate whose mispoise made self-locomotion impossible. The trio danced on the wharf, sang a chantey about "whisky being the life of man," and declared they would stay all their lives in Tahiti; that the "bloody hooker could bleedin' well" go without them.

Then, far and faint, were heard a crew of Chinese sailors, on the nearest junk, singing a curious, falsetto chantey as they hauled on a bamboo-braced sail.... "A feller wot never travelled wouldn't bloody well believe they was such queer people in the world," further observed the philosophic coal-heaver.

"And it's blow, ye winds, heigh-ho, For Cal-i-for-ni-o; For there's plenty of gold so I've been told, On the banks of the Sacramento!" It was only a little boy, singing in a shrill treble the sea chantey which seamen sing the wide world over when they man the capstan bars and break the anchors out for "Frisco" port.

Presently Phil was able to recognize the familiar words of an old voyageur chantey, a paddling song of the French-Canadian rivermen: "En roulant, ma boulé, roulant; En roulant, ma bo-u-lé." With paddles swinging in unison to the rhythm came four men in a large Indian canoe, speeding with the current down the centre of Indian creek.

The water of the harbor was unstirred except for the swirls at the oar blades of an incoming quarter boat and the warp paying out at her stern. The voice of the mate, the chantey of the crew heaving at the capstan bars, came to Rhoda subdued: "The times are hard and wages low, Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her. I guess it's time for us to go, Oh, leave her, Johnny, leave her.

His voice like his look told of excitement repressed. "It's early," retorted Kendric, "and talk will keep. A night like this was meant for other things than for two old fools like you and me to sit in a corner with long faces. Strike up the chantey." "You're busted," said Barlow sharply; "You've had your fling and you've shot your wad. Come along with me. You know what shore I'm headin' to.