ad Yorkshire, and
his conversational capacity interminable. The representative of No. 10
Deal Yard undertook to stop his flow of rhetoric by calling out,
"Stop it, old baggy breeches! Give other people a chance!" But he paid
no heed, and did not even break the thread of his talk until the
captain of the steamer began to walk towards the companion-way, when
he stopped short and said, "Well, I suppose I'm to book you for No.
6?" and then there was a clamour. The whole of the runners wished to
get their word in before the captain definitely promised, but they
were too late. No. 6 had got it; but instead of accepting his success
modestly, he was so elated at having taken away an order from another
yard, that he stood up in his boat and congratulated himself on being
an Englishman.

"No use you fellows coming off here when I'm awake; and, you bet, I'm
always awake when there's any Muscovite backstairs gentlemen about."

As the boats were being rowed into the Mole again, some one asked who
had got the ship. The Russian competitor, who was angry at the work
being taken from his master, called out, "Bags has got her, the
drunken old sneak!"

Bags lost no time in letting fly an oar at him, the yoke and rudder
quickly following. His vengeance was let loose, and he poured forth a
stream of quarter-deck language at the top of his voice. His phrases
were dazzling in ingenuity, and amid much laughter and applause he
urged his hearers to keep at a distance from the fellow who had dared
to insult an English shipmaster.

"Or you will get some passengers that will keep you busy.
They--_he_--calls them _peoches_, but we English call them _lice_!"

This sally caused immense amusement, not so much for what was said as
for his dramatic style of saying it. His antagonist retorted that he
had been turned out of England for bad language and bad behaviour, and
he would have him turned out of Russia also. This nearly choked the
old mariner with rage. He roared out--

"Did I, an English shipmaster, ever think that I would come to this,
to be insulted by a Russian serf? I will let the Government know that
an Englishman has been insulted. I will lay the iniquities of this
Russian system of rascality before Benjamin Disraeli. I knows him; and
if he is the man I takes him for, he won't stand any nonsense when it
comes to insulting English subjects. He has brought the Indian troops
from India for that purpose, and when the honour of England is a