our, I really would inform the reader if I knew;
but I am afraid that that most curious story is never to be handed down
to posterity.

The next morning Mr. Tomkins, as usual, forgot to report the cook, the
jar of butter, and the kettle of salt water; and Mr. Appleboy's wrath
had long been appeased before he remembered them. At daylight, the
lieutenant came on deck, having only slept away half of the sixteen, and
a taste of the seventeenth salt-water glass of gin-toddy. He rubbed his
gray eyes, that he might peer through the gray of the morning; the fresh
breeze blew about his grizzly locks, and cooled his rubicund nose. The
revenue cutter, whose name was the _Active_, cast off from the buoy,
and, with a fresh breeze, steered her course for the Needles passage.

CHAPTER III

CUTTER THE THIRD

Reader! have you been to St. Maloes? If you have, you were glad enough
to leave the hole; and if you have not, take my advice, and do not give
yourself the trouble to go and see that or any other French port in the
Channel. There is not one worth looking at. They have made one or two
artificial ports, and they are no great things; there is no getting out
or getting in. In fact, they have no harbours in the Channel, while we
have the finest in the world; a peculiar dispensation of Providence,
because it knew that we should want them, and France would not. In
France, what are called ports are all alike--nasty, narrow holes, only
to be entered at certain times of tide and certain winds; made up of
basins and back-waters, custom-houses and cabarets; just fit for
smugglers to run into, and nothing more; and, therefore, they are used
for very little else.

Now, in the dog-hole called St. Maloes there is some pretty land,
although a great deficiency of marine scenery. But never mind that. Stay
at home, and don't go abroad to drink sour wine, because they call it
Bordeaux, and eat villainous trash, so disguised by cooking that you
cannot possibly tell which of the birds of the air, or beasts of the
field, or fishes of the sea, you are cramming down your throat. 'If all
is right, there is no occasion for disguise,' is an old saying; so
depend upon it that there is something wrong, and that you are eating
offal, under a grand French name. They eat everything in France, and
would serve you up the head of a monkey who has died of the smallpox, as
_singe au petite verole_--that is, if you did not understand French; if
you did, the