generous that it promised to combine with the
enforced laziness of my life under hatches to make me fat; so that I am
of opinion had we waited for the ice to release us, I should have become
so corpulent as to prove a burden to myself.

I mention this here that you may find an excuse in it for the only act
of folly in the way of drinking that I can lay to my account whilst I
was in this pirate; for I must tell you that, on returning to the
furnace, we, to refresh us after our labour, made a bowl of punch, of
which I drank so plentifully that I began to feel myself very merry. I
forgot all about the matches and my resolution to test them that night.
The Frenchman, enjoying my condition, continued to pledge me till his
little eyes danced in his head. Luckily for me, being at bottom of a
very jolly disposition, drink never served me worse than to develop
that quality in me. No man could ever say that I was quarrelsome in my
cups. My progress was marked by stupid smiles, terminating in unmeaning
laughter. The Frenchman sang a ballad about love and Picardy, and the
like, and I gave him "Hearts of Oak," the sentiments of which song kept
him shrugging his shoulders and drunkenly looking contempt.

We continued singing alternately for some time, until he fell to setting
up his throat when I was at work, and this confused and stopped me. He
then favoured me with what he called the Pirate's Dance, a very wild,
grotesque movement, with no elegance whatever to be hurt by his being in
liquor; and I think I see him now, whipping off his coat, and sprawling
and flapping about in high boots and a red waistcoat, flourishing his
arms, snapping his fingers, and now and again bursting into a stave to
keep step to. When he was done, I took the floor with the hornpipe,
whistling the air, and double-shuffling, toe-and-heeling, and quivering
from one leg to another very briskly. He lay back against the bulkhead
grasping a can half full of punch, roaring loudly at my antics; and when
I sank down, breathless, would have had me go on, hiccuping that though
he had known scores of English sailors, he had never seen that dance
better performed.

By this time I was extremely excited and extraordinarily merry, and
losing hold of my judgment, began to indulge in sundry pleasantries
concerning his nation and countrymen, asking with many explosions of
laughter, how it was that they continued at the trouble of building
ships for us to use against them,