the compliment, without, however, presuming to join
in the conversation, which suffered a considerable pause. During this
interruption, Mr. Hatchway's wit displayed itself in several practical
jokes upon the commodore, with whom he knew it was dangerous to tamper
in any other way. Being without the sphere of his vision, he securely
pilfered his tobacco, drank his rumbo, made wry faces, and, to use the
vulgar phrase, cocked his eye at him, to the no small entertainment of
the spectators, Mr. Pickle himself not excepted, who gave evident tokens
of uncommon satisfaction at the dexterity of this marine p pantomime.

Meanwhile, the captain's choler gradually subsided, and he was pleased
to desire Hatchway, by the familiar and friendly diminutive of Jack,
to read a newspaper that lay on the table before him. This task was
accordingly undertaken by the lame lieutenant, who, among paragraphs,
read that which follows, with an elevation of voice which seemed to
prognosticate something extraordinary: "We are informed, that Admiral
Bower will very soon be created a British peer, for his eminent services
during the war, particularly in his late engagement with the French
fleet."

Trunnion was thunderstruck at this piece of intelligence: the ring
dropped front his hand, and shivered into a thousand pieces; his eye
glistened like that of a rattle-snake; and some minutes elapsed before
he could pronounce, "Avast! overhaul that article again!"

It was no sooner read the second time, than, smiting the table with his
fist, he started up, and, with the most violent emphasis of rage and
indignation, exclaimed, "D-- my heart and liver! 'tis a land lie, d'ye
see; and I will maintain it to be a lie, from the sprit-sail yard to the
mizen-top-sail haulyards! Blood and thunder! Will. Bower a peer of this
realm! a fellow of yesterday, that scarce knows a mast from a manger!
a snotty-nose boy, whom I myself have ordered to the gun, for stealing
eggs out of the hen-coops! and I, Hawser Trunnion, who commanded a
ship before he could keep a reckoning, am laid aside, d'ye see, and
forgotten! If so be as this be the case, there is a rotten plank in our
constitution, which ought to be hove down and repaired, d-- my eyes! For
my own part, d'ye see, I was none of your Guinea pigs: I did not rise in
the service by parlamenteering interest, or a handsome b-- of a wife.
I was not over the bellies of better men, nor strutted athwart the
quarter-deck in a la