proves no defence, like a battery taken in reverse, until your eyes are blinded, and your cheeks rouged and roasted, and your neb peeled, like an ill-scraped radish, leaving the under-skin so tender, that breaking on the wheel is comfort to blowing your nose. Cold cream-cold cream. Oh, for a pot of it, ye gods! I have before said, we were not, where we sat, much above four feet out of the water, and several flying fish had come on board that morning, and just as I was helping Dicky to a little water, to wash down the soaked biscuit that, through Lennox's kindness, he had been feeding on, dash-a flying. fish flew right against Dennis Donovan's cheek, and dropped walloping and floundering into his plate. Blazes, what is that?" "Oh, what a beautiful leetle fis!" said the child. But Dennis, honest man, did not recover his equanimity during the whole meal. Immediately after breakfast, he prepared to go on board of the Gazelle, and to part company regularly, when one of the men who was looking out astern, sung out in a low tone, as if afraid the fish should hear, "A shark, sir, close under the stern." We gently hauled the frigate's boat alongside to be out of the way, and, on looking over the tafferel, there was the monster, sure enough, about three feet below the surface of the clear green water, eyeing us with the greatest composure. As if in no ways daunted, but as determined to have a nearer and better view of us, he gradually floated up, until his dorsal fin was a foot out of the water, and his head but just covered by it. We instantly got a hook baited, and let down. The fish was about twelve feet long; and, as I leant over the low stern of the vessel, when she sank on the fall of the swell, I could have touched the monster's head with a handspike. There was something very exciting in being on terms of such intimacy with a creature who would have thought it capital sport to have nipped you in ter Brail; but if you would oblige me with one of your legs, now, or even an arm, I would vastly prefer it to the piece of rancid salt pork you offer me, on that rusty piece of crooked iron there." Here again he reconnoitred the bait, and then looked up, with a languishing eye, at little Dicky Phantom, that Lennox was now holding on the tafferel. "Ah," again said sharkee to himself, I make no question, "ah, that's the thing I want. What a morsel that would be!" and he made one or two rushes hither and thither, as one has seen a dog do, before settling down steadily on end, to look up at the morsel an urchin is tantalizing him with. At length, seeing I was so unaccommodating, so inexorable as not even to oblige him with a limb, and that Dicky Phantom was altogether forbidden fruit, he made an angry rush and vanished below the counter. "Poo, confound him, he can't be hungry," quoth Mr Weevil the purser, who had hold of the line, as he pulled it in, hand over hand, until the bait was close under foot, when, just as it was rising out of the water, the shark, finding that it must be either salt junk or no fare, made a sudden grab at the bait, gorged it, and dashed off with it, and, alack-adaisy, with the purser also; for, dreaming no harm, he had taken a turn round his left arm, as he hauled in the line, which, by the sudden jerk, ran; and if Lennox and old Drainings had not caught him by the heels, he would have been overboard. And there was the hideous fish, walloping, and floundering, and surging about, within a fathom of the purser, who was hanging over the stern, like a side of beef laid in, at sailing, for sea stock, his head dipping into the water every now and then, as the vessel rose and fell, while he struggled, and spluttered, and twisted, in a vain attempt to get his arm loose; while the shark backed and backed like a restive horse, and dragged and jerked about until I thought the pur ser's fin would absolutely have been torn from his shoulder. All this while, the crew were like to explode with laughter, while poor Weevil roared, "Haul me in, for Heaven's sake, or he will swallow Here his head would me-haul". old Twas cracking along on the starboard tack, with the Island of Malta broad on the lee bow, about ten miles distant, or thereabouts. She was going about nine knots, as near as could be, and the admiral was walking backwards and forwards with me on the weather-side of the quarterdeck. It happened that the captain's servant was an inveterate stutterer, although a steady good man, and we had not continued our perambulations above a quarter of an hour, when this functionary rushed up the ladder in great haste, and apparently in a great quandary, and thus addressed, or rather at tempted to address the admiral :"Sir-sir-sir-Jo-Jo-Jo.' "What does he mean?' said the admiral, startled by the energy of the man's gestures. "Your pi-pi-pig. Your wiwi-wig, over-over-over.' "Here the poor fellow got into convulsions, and walloped his arms about like the sails of a wind-mill, making signs that some body or thing was overboard. The captain came on deck and saw what was going on, Sing, you lubber, sing,' and straightway he of the impediment gave tongue in a clear and melodious pipe, as follows: “The admiral's pig is overboard, is over board, is overboard, His pig and his wig are overboard, "Man the fore-clew garnets,' sung out old Blowhard-' back the main topsail, Captain R, back the main-topsail-lower away the jollyboat. Quick, Captain R, quick.' "Here the old flag-officer's own servant came up to him, as he was straining his neck where he stood on the aftermost carronade, to see, over the hammock-cloths, what was becoming of the pig and the unfortunate scratch. ter's wig, Sir J, and the porker belongs to the ward-room.' "Fill the maintopsail again,' rapped out the knight. Poor pigpoor pig-can't be helped-can't be helped-pity the master should lose his scratch though, but it can't be helped, Captain R- can't be helped. So fill away the maintopsail again, Captain R——.' "Alas and alackaday, both the pig and the wig were drowned!" Mr Donovan being now well enough to resume his duty, remained that evening in the frigate, but I returned, towards nightfall, with my tiny topman, to the Midge, and great was the buzz of joy amongst the Midges, at getting back Dicky Phan tom. We were sitting at breakfast on deck under the awning, next morning, Donovan having returned for his traps, the frigate's boat was towing astern, when the carpenter having already got a little chair so contrived that when lashed to the leg of the table, he could not fall out of it,' Dicky Phantom was part and portion of our society. The frigate was about a mile to the northward of us, looming like a seventy-four, and glimmering through the hot blue haze that hung over the horizon, and circumscribed our view on all sides, for it was stark calm. The sun shone down with true tropical intensity; the heaving swell was like a sea of molten silver, and every now and then a dolphin would leap close to us, while as from the side of a watery hill a shower of flying-fish would spring out and shoot across a liquid valley, until they dropped like a discharge of grape into the next billow. Nothing nourishes one's grogdrinking propensities so much, or spoils one's beauty, as the reflection of the sun from the glass-like surface of the calm sea within the tropics. His direct rays are in some measure warded off by your hatbrim; but were you even to turn up your ugly phiz at him, and stare him in the face, they would have comparatively no effect, to the fierceness of their heat second-hand in this way. Oh, the sickening effect of the afternoon's glare, thus reflected and flashed up into your face, under the snout of your chapeau, which here proves no defence, like a battery taken in reverse, until your eyes are blinded, and your cheeks rouged and roasted, and your neb peeled, like an ill-scraped radish, leaving the under-skin so tender, that breaking on the wheel is comfort to blowing your nose. Cold cream-cold cream. Oh, for a pot of it, ye gods! I have before said, we were not, where we sat, much above four feet out of the water, and several flying fish had come on board that morning, and just as I was helping Dicky to a little water, to wash down the soaked biscuit that, through Lennox's kindness, he had been feeding on, dash-a flying-fish flew right against Dennis Donovan's cheek, and dropped walloping and floundering into his plate. "Blazes, what is that?" "Oh, what a beautiful leetle fis!" said the child. But Dennis, honest man, did not recover his equanimity during the whole meal. Immediately after breakfast, he prepared to go on board of the Gazelle, and to part company regularly, when one of the men who was looking out astern, sung out in a low tone, as if afraid the fish should hear, "A shark, sir, close under the stern." We gently hauled the frigate's boat alongside to be out of the way, and, on looking over the tafferel, there was the mon ster, sure enough, about three feet below the surface of the clear green water, eyeing us with the greatest composure. As if in no ways daunted, but as determined to have a nearer and better view of us, he gradually floated up, until his dorsal fin was a foot out of the water, and his head but just covered by it. We instantly got a hook baited, and let down. The fish was about twelve feet long; and, as I leant over the low stern of the vessel, when she sank on the fall of the swell, I could have touched the monster's head with a handspike. There was something very exciting in being on terms of such intimacy with a creature who would have thought it capital sport to have nipped you in two. He eyed the bait and the hook, and then drew back about a yard from it, and ogled me again, as much as to say, "Not to be had so clumsily, Mas ter Brail; but if you would oblige me with one of your legs, now, or even an arm, I would vastly prefer it to the piece of rancid salt pork you offer me, on that rusty piece of crooked iron there." Here again he reconnoitred the bait, and then looked up, with a languishing eye, at little Dicky Phantom, that Lennox was now holding on the tafferel. "Ah," again said sharkee to himself, I make no question, “ah, that's the thing I want. What a morsel that would be!" and he made one or two rushes hither and thither, as one has seen a dog do, before settling down steadily on end, to look up at the morsel an urchin is tantalizing him with. At length, seeing I was so unaccommodating, so inexorable as not even to oblige him with a limb, and that Dicky Phantom was altogether forbidden fruit, he made an angry rush and vanished below the counter. "Poo, confound him, he can't be hungry," quoth Mr Weevil the purser, who had hold of the line, as he pulled it in, hand over hand, until the bait was close under foot, when, just as it was rising out of the water, the shark, finding that it must be either salt junk or no fare, made a sudden grab at the bait, gorged it, and dashed off with it, and, alack-adaisy, with the purser also; for, dreaming no harm, he had taken a turn round his left arm, as he hauled in the line, which, by the sudden jerk, ran; and if Lennox and old Drainings had not caught him by the heels, he would have been overboard. And there was the hideous fish, walloping, and floundering, and surging about, within a fathom of the purser, who was hanging over the stern, like a side of beef laid in, at sailing, for sea stock, his head dipping into the water every now and then, as the vessel rose and fell, while he struggled, and spluttered, and twisted, in a vain attempt to get his arm loose; while the shark backed and backed like a restive horse, and dragged and jerked about until I thought the pur ser's fin would absolutely have been torn from his shoulder. All this while, the crew were like to explode with laughter, while poor Weevil roared, "Haul me in, for Heaven's sake, or he will swallow me-haul"- Here his head would sink into the water, and his sentence end in a great coughing and spluttering, until, just as he was on the point of being suffocated, out his nob would be dragged again by the pitching of the vessel, so as to enable him to renew his shouts for succour. At length the shark being a good deal exhausted, was brought close under the stern, when I sent two bullets, from my double-barrelled Manton, through his head, right between his eyes. "Ah," quoth old Drainings the cook," that has settled him, or the devil is in it; so lend a hand, Lennox," (the marine had hold of one of the purser's legs, and the artiste! the other,) "so lend a hand, Lennox, and, during the lull, let us bouse in Mr Weevil. Ho, yo, yo, yo, oh!" The wounded shark had borne the loss of his brains with great composure, but the instant he felt the renewed pull at the pork in his maw, as if he had been only stunned, he started off at a tangent as strong as ever, and, before you could say Jack Robinson, the purser's starboard leg was whipped out of Jack Lennox's clutches; but the one to port being in old Drainings' iron claws, was held fast by the cook, for he was a great ally of Weevil's. "Don't, for Heaven's sake, let me go, Mr Drainings," roared Weevil, "don't, "-splutter, splutter-ohcough, cough. The little vessel at this moment sended heavily, giving a strange sort of swinging lurch or wallop, and, as if shaking her sides with laughter, again dipped his head a foot under water. As the poor purser rose with a jerk to the surface, the shark, having had momentary scope to sink, kept his own so resolutely, that clip, as a climax to the fun, the old cook was torn from his hold, and away he went, still clinging to the purser's leg, and if his own had not been seized by Lennox and myself, he would have been overboard also. I was now like to die with laughter. I could scarcely keep my hold; as for speaking, it was out of the question, for the shark, and purser, and cook, like a string of Brobdingnag sausages, were floundering in the calm water, close under our counter, all linked together, not quite "ladies' chain," by the way, although, from the half-suffocated exclamations of two of the links, it might not inaptly have been called, "Chaine des Dames." Oh, fie! Benjie Brail. However, the matter was now getting serious. "Mr Peake, that boathook there, quick, bring the boathook."Little Joe was no admirer of Weevil's, and, as he made believe to hook him by the waistband of the breeches, as he struggled in the water, he contrived to dig the sharp point of the instrument into his stern-frame more than once; and at length, when he did catch him, it was by nothing that would hold, but by one of the pockets of his coat, which instantly gave, and out flew into the water, his snuff box, pockethandkerchief, and a nondescript pouch of seal-skin, rolled up. "Lord save us, dinna drown the spleuchan," exclaimed Lennox, as it dropped into the sea. "Hook him again," shouted I. "Oh Lord, captain, haul me in, haul me in, or I must let go Mr Weevil's leg," sung out cookey. Don't, for Heaven's sake, do that thing, my dear Mr Drainings," roared the purser. Here Joey caught him again with the boathook, by the cape of his coat; and, with the assistance of two men, he had got him a foot or two out of the water, when, screed,―the cloth, which was of no kindred to that which composed Bailie Jarvie's skirts,-gave way, and down he plumped again souse, and the splashing and struggling, and cursing and coughing, and blowing of fish and men, were renewed with twofold extravagance, until by a fortunate dig the iron hook was finally passed through the head-band of his nether garment, and the canvass fortunately holding, we hauled him in, with Drainings still sticking to him like grim Death, or a big sucker-fish; then, by slipping down a bowling knot over the shark's head, and under his gills, we hoisted him in on deck, which he soon had all to himself entirely; I really expected he would have stove it in with the lashing of his tail. We hammered him on the head until we had crushed it to mummy, but, like many other strange fish, he appeared to get on as well without brains, as with. In fine, he would have taken the ship from us out and out, had old Shavings not watched his opportunity, and nicked him on the tail with his hatchet, thereby severing his spine, when a complete paralysis instantly took place, and he lay still; but even an hour after he was disembowelled, he writhed about the deck like an eel. Speaking of sharks, I must taigle you here with a story, which, how ever lee-like, did actually occur, as the records of the Jamaica Admiralty Court fully prove. But let Dennis Donovan tell it in his own words. "We were cruising off Cape Tiburoon, to take our chance of any of the French outward-bound that might have preferred to make the passage to Port-au-Prince by the southward of St Domingo. It might have been five in the afternoon,I was a little middy then, and had dined with the captain that day; a fine breezy forenoon we had had of it, -but the devil a thing was there in sight, not even a small white speck of a sail slipping along shore, apparently sailing in the white surf, and standing off full and boldly, as the painters say, from the dark background of bushes on the beach." "But why take the pains to describe so well what was not there, Dennis?" "Never you mind, but let me get along; you can pocket the description, Benjie, and keep it for your own use. "I had just swallowed what I had sense enough to know was cousidered as my last glass of wine, and had come on deck, when looking out to leeward where the setting sun was casting a blinding wake on the blue waters that blazed up in our faces, roasting our skin into the colour of scarlet, I thought I saw a dark object on the very verge of the horizon. From the afternoon having come on thick, this had not been noticed before; but just as I had made the discovery, the look-out man at the masthead hailed, strange sail, abeam of us to leeward.' "Thank you for nothing,' responded the crusty lieutenant; 'you blind beetle you, is it now you see it ? Why, we can see under her topsails from the deck here.' "May be, sir,' answered the man, but the weather has been thick as buttermilk down to leeward until this moment.' "All hands make sail,' instantly followed, and in five minutes we ran off the wind, with every rag set that we could spread. A stern chase is proverbially a long chase, and although our friend a-head set nothing as we neared him that he had not abroad before, the next morning broke, and we were still three miles astern of him, Jamaica being in sight to leeward. As the sun rose, the breeze freshened, and before noon we had to hand the royals, and stand by the studding-sail haulyards. The fiery sea-breeze that struck us, presently quelled the courage of the chase, for he had to take in his kites also, with the loss of his foretopmast-studding-sail, and as we carried the breeze along with us, we were presently alongside, and I was sent on board in the boat. "I touched my hat to the master, What brig, if you please?' "The Stormy Peterel, of, and from St John's, New Brunswick.' "Whither bound ?' "To Kingston, Jamaica, with a cargo of flour and notions, and consigned to Macaa, Walker, and Co.' "All very pat, thought I-no hesitation here. I will look at your papers, if you please,' and I unceremoniously stepped down the companion ladder, and entered the cabin. The master of the brig followed me, and entering with a good deal of swagger in his bearing, slammed himself down on the locker with his hat on. I was a little nettled at this, and again took a steady look at my gentleman; but to make evident the cause why my suspicions were excited, be it known, that at the time I write of, the good old navigation laws were in full operation, and no American, or other foreign vessel, was allowed to trade with our colonies; every thing imported having to be carried in British bottoms, so that numberless tricks were frequently, when the colonial markets were favourable, put in practice by neutrals to cloak the real character of their vessels, amongst others, that of simulating English papers was very frequent. To return, I looked at our friend |