each about the size of a man's head, now twisted and struggled, and stopped, and finally slid up to the main royal-mast-head. The instant the uppermost reached the truck, as if it had touched a spring—bang—a gun was fired, and at the same moment the round balls blew out steadily in so many flags.
"What signal now, Mr. Marline?"
"The signal to weigh and stand out, sir."
"Why, we can't; it is impossible: although the wind is fair, the swell on the bar puts it out of our power."
"Very true," said old Pumpbolt; "and you had better say so, Lanyard. I, for one, won't undertake to carry you over until there is less broken water at the river's mouth, I know."
The lieutenant commanding the felucca telegraphed to this effect; the frigate acknowledged it, and answered, that she would remain in the offing all night in expectation of our getting over at high water, when possibly there would be less sea on the bar.
Having made this signal, she run her jib up, set topgallant-sails, and let fall the foresail: the ponderous mainyard slowly swung round, and as the noble frigate fetched way again, she gradually fell off before the wind; her long low hull fore-shortened into a mere tub of a vessel to look at, and finally presenting her stern to us, she lay over, inclining herself gracefully to the breeze, as if she was bidding us farewell, and glided cheerily away; indicating by the increasing whiteness of her wake, the accelerated speed with which she clove the heaving billows.
"There goes the dear old beauty," said Davie; "there's a retiring curtsy for you that beats the stateliest of my lady patronesses at Almacks."
Having gained an offing of about three miles, she again shortened sail, and hove to in her station to await our joining, when the bar became passable in the night.
"Weary work, master Benjie—weary work," said Davie Doublepipe; "so here we must lie, roasting another whole day, while there is plenty of water on the bar, if that confounded swell would only fall."
By this it was drawing near the men's dinner-time; and while the lieutenant and I were pacing the deck, rather disconsolately, trying to steer clear of the smoke of the galley, that streamed aft as we rode head to wind, we noticed that our sable visitor, Serjeant Quacco, had, with the true spirit of resignation, declined into cook's mate (indeed, if there be a Negro on board when this birth becomes vacant, he invariably slides into it, as naturally as a snail into his shell), and was busy in assisting the maimed seaman who was watching the coppers. The fire seemed to burn very indifferently from the greenness of the wood, which gave out more smoke than flame.
"Drainings, my man," said Lanyard to cookey, "don't choke us, if you please. Do get some dry chips from Shavings, will you?"
"Ay, ay, sir," said the man.
"Here, Quacco, mind the fire," continued Drainings, "till I get some splinters from forward there.—Stay—Lennox, my dear boy, do get me a handful of dry chips from old Shavings, will ye?"
The Scotch corporal civilly complied; and after a little, we saw him split up a block of wood where the carpenter had been at work in the bows of the felucca, and presently he returned with a bundle of them, which Serjeant Quacco busily employed himself in poking into the fire, blowing lustily with his blubber lips all the while. When Lennox turned away, I could not help noticing, that he stuck his tongue in his cheek, and winked to one of the crew as he went below.
Presently Lanyard desired the boatswain to pipe to dinner. In place of bundling down below, according to the etiquette of the service in larger vessels, he winked, I saw, at the poor fellows breaking away forward into messes, which they contrived to screen from the view of the quarterdeck, by slewing the long yard nearly athwart ships, and loosing the sail as if to dry.
Notwithstanding all this, we could easily see what was going on forward. Close to, sat the old cook himself, with Shavings the carpenter, and Wadding the gunner, warrant officers in a small way, with a little snipe of a boy waiting on them.
About a fathom from them, there was another group squatted on the deck, consisting of Corporal Lennox, old Clinker the master at arms, Dogvane the quartermaster, and no smaller a personage than Serjeant Quacco.
The food was peas-soup, and salt junk and biscuit. The hands, as we turned and returned, seemed exceedingly comfortable and happy; when all at once, the old cook pressed his hands on the pit of his stomach, and began to make a variety of rather odd grimaces. Dogvane looked in his face, and instantly seemed to catch the infection; so he next began to screw himself up into a variety of indescribable contortions. Serjeant Quacco looked first at one, and then at another, as they groaned in any thing but a melodious concert, until he too, through sympathy, or in reality from pain, began also to twist himself about, and to make such hideous faces, that to have trusted him near a respectable pig in the family way, would have been as much as the nine farrow were worth.
At length the contagion became general apparently, and Corporal Lennox began to groan and wince, as he ejaculated, "Oh dear, what can this be! what an awful pain in my stomach! Why, Mr. Drainings, what have you clapt into that peas-soup? Something bye common you must have put into it, for we are all dying here with"——
"My eye!" said old Drainings, speaking slowly and deliberately, as if the paroxysm had subsided, and some strange light had suddenly flashed on him, "you are quite right, Lennox. That same peas-soup is none of the right sort—that is clear now. I have just been telling Mr. Wadding that a wery-most-remarkable circumstance took place in the boiling on't."
Here the old fellow, who had just finished his peas-soup, very solemnly looked upwards, and wiped his muzzle with what hovered between a pocket-handkerchief and a dishclout, of any colour but that of unsunned snow.
"Why," continued the cook, "just when it began to simmer about the edges of the boiler——Ah—ah—oh—there it is again—there it is again," and once more he began to tumble about on the deck, giving friend Quacco several miscellaneous kicks and punches during his make-believe involuntary convulsions. This fit seemed also to pass over.
"Why," said he, "just when the soup began to simmer about the edges of the copper, and thin streaks of white froth began to shoot inwards towards the middle, where the hot soup was whirling round in a bubbling eddy, and poppling up for all the world like the sea on the bar there, I saw—I saw"——Here he looked unutterable things with his one eye, turning it up like a duck in thunder.
"What did you see?" said old Clinker, staring in his face with sham earnestness.
"I saw—so sure as I see Mr. Weevil the purser's d—d ugly mug aft on the quarterdeck there—a small devil rise out of the boiling peas-soup in the very middle of the copper, and fly up and away over the truck like a shot—whipping the vane at the mast-head off its spindle with the bight of his tail.
"No! did you though?" said several voices.
"To be sure I did," rejoined Drainings, "as distinctly as I now see my thumb—none of the cleanest, by the way."
"The devil?" said Lennox, starting up; "what was it like, Mr. Drainings?"
"Why, as like the little heathen god brought on board by Quacco there, as you can fancy any thing."
"Oh—oh—oh," again resounded from all hands.
"But it could not be he," at length struck in the black serjeant. "It could not be he, seeing he is safe stow below de heel of de bowsprit dere."
"Heaven
