y; fat--_very_ fat--fair,
and twenty, with the big blue eyes like signal-lamps on a locomotive.
She twisted me round just as if I'd been a fathom of pump-water,
shouting and laughing all the time in my face, like a sou'-west gale,
and never looking a bit where she was going till she pitched
head-foremost into the union-jack, carrying it and me along with her off
the quarter-deck and half-way down the companion. It's a blessing she
fell undermost, else I should have been spread all over the deck like a
capsized pail of slops."

"Hallo!" exclaimed the doctor; "what's wrong with the old lady over
there? She's making very uncommon faces."

"She's sea-sick, I do believe," cried the captain, rushing across the
deck towards her.

And, without doubt, the old lady in question was showing symptoms of
that terrible malady, although the bay was as smooth as a mill-pond, and
the _Prince Rupert_ reposed on its quiet bosom without the slightest
perceptible motion. With impressive nautical politeness the captain
handed her below, and in the sudden sympathy of his heart proposed as a
remedy a stiff glass of brandy and water.

"Or a pipe of cavendish," suggested the second mate, who met them on the
ladder as they descended, and could not refrain from a facetious remark,
even although he knew it would, as it did, call forth a thundering
command from his superior to go on deck and mind his own business.

"Isn't it jolly," said a young Stornowite, coming up to Wiseacre, with a
face blazing with glee--"isn't it jolly, Mr Wiseacre?"

"Oh, very!" replied Wiseacre, in a voice of such dismal melancholy that
the young Stornowite's countenance instantly went out, and he wheeled
suddenly round to light it again at the visage of some more sympathising
companion.

Just at this point of the revelry the fiddler's first string, which had
endured with a dogged tenacity that was wonderful even for catgut, gave
way with a loud bang, causing an abrupt termination to the uproar, and
producing a dead silence. A few minutes, however, soon rectified this
mischance. The discordant tones of the violin, as the new string was
tortured into tune, once more opened the safety-valve, and the ball
began _de novo_.

Great was the fun, and numerous were the ludicrous incidents that
happened during that eventful night; and loud were the noise and
merriment of the dancers as they went with vigorous energy through the
bewildering evolutions of country-dance an