t? We shall have the youngsters
mast-heading us next, if we don't exactly please them, eh?"

Captain Sourcrout, unable to speak from indignation, could only shake
his head and frown terribly, at which the midshipmen, as he was not
their captain, laughed the more heartily. The Admiral had heard, too,
of the trick Jack and his messmates had played with Quirk, the monkey,
on Lieutenant Spry, of the marines, and while he told the story as he
had received it from Jack, with a few amplifications of his own, the
tears ran down his eyes, till Captain Sourcrout, boiling over with
indignation, exclaimed:

"The navy has indeed come to a pretty pass when such things are allowed.
Instead of being mast-headed, the three midshipmen should have been
brought to a court-martial, and dismissed the service."

"But, my dear Captain Sourcrout, the affair happened a good many years
ago, remember," interrupted the Admiral, wishing to tranquillise him,
"and had not leniency been shown to the culprits, the service would have
lost three promising young officers likely to prove ornaments to it.
However, I would advise other youngsters not to imitate them. Such
tricks don't bear repetition, I'll allow. By-the-bye, Captain
Sourcrout, are you acquainted with my old shipmate, Jerry Hazledine? He
served under me as a youngster, and I have kept an eye on him ever
since. He hailed from Ireland, and as all his ways and doings savoured
strongly of the Emerald Isle, he was known as Paddy throughout the
service."

The Admiral went on, without wailing to hear whether Captain Sourcrout
was or was not personally acquainted with the officer in question.

"Paddy Hazledine was possessed of prodigious strength, though he seldom
put it forth, except in what he considered the side of right and
justice. His notions, to be sure, on these points, were occasionally
like himself, somewhat eccentric; ha! ha! ha! I remember it as if it
were yesterday. Coming up High Street one night, I saw a crowd
collected round a lamp-post, not one of your modern iron affairs, but a
stout, honest one of timber, with a cross-bar at the top as long as a
sloop's cross-jack-yard. Seated with his legs over it was Paddy
Hazledine in full rig, cocked hat and sword--he was a lieutenant then as
composed as possible, smoking a cigar, which, it appeared, he had got up
there for the purpose of lighting at the huge glass lamp, as big as a
seventy-four's poop-lantern. While he held on w