ver. High words arose regarding
the dispute. After returning from Granchester, when the boats pulled
back to Christchurch meadows, the disturbance between the Townsmen and
the University youths--their invariable opponents--grew louder and more
violent, until it broke out in open battle. Sparring and skirmishing
took place along the pleasant fields that lead from the University gate
down to the broad and shining waters of the Cam, and under the walls of
Balliol and Sidney Sussex. The Duke of Bellamont (then a dashing young
sizar at Exeter) had a couple of rounds with Billy Butt, the bow-oar
of the Bargee boat. Vavasour of Brazenose was engaged with a powerful
butcher, a well-known champion of the Town party, when, the great
University bells ringing to dinner, truce was called between the
combatants, and they retired to their several colleges for refection.

During the boat-race, a gentleman pulling in a canoe, and smoking a
narghilly, had attracted no ordinary attention. He rowed about a hundred
yards ahead of the boats in the race, so that he could have a good view
of that curious pastime. If the eight-oars neared him, with a few rapid
strokes of his flashing paddles his boat shot a furlong ahead; then he
would wait, surveying the race, and sending up volumes of odor from his
cool narghilly.

"Who is he?" asked the crowds who panted along the shore, encouraging,
according to Cambridge wont, the efforts of the oarsmen in the race.
Town and Gown alike asked who it was, who, with an ease so provoking,
in a barque so singular, with a form seemingly so slight, but a skill so
prodigious, beat their best men. No answer could be given to the query,
save that a gentleman in a dark travelling-chariot, preceded by six
fourgons and a courier, had arrived the day before at the "Hoop Inn,"
opposite Brazenose, and that the stranger of the canoe seemed to be the
individual in question.

No wonder the boat, that all admired so, could compete with any
that ever was wrought by Cambridge artificer or Putney workman. That
boat--slim, shining, and shooting through the water like a pike after
a small fish--was a caique from Tophana; it had distanced the Sultan's
oarsmen and the best crews of the Capitan Pasha in the Bosphorus; it
was the workmanship of Togrul-Beg, Caikjee Bashee of his Highness. The
Bashee had refused fifty thousand tomauns from Count Boutenieff, the
Russian Ambassador, for that little marvel. When his head was taken off,