considered that he was treading upon their vested interests by so
doing.--"Shiver my timbers, if I knows what a _wamphigher_ is, unless
he's some distant relation to Davy Jones!"

"Hold your ignorant tongue," said the admiral; "nobody wants you to make
a remark, you great lubber!"

"Very good," said Jack, and he sat down the wine on the table, and then
retired to the other end of the room, remarking to himself that he was
not called a great lubber on a certain occasion, when bullets were
scuttling their nobs, and they were yard arm and yard arm with God knows
who.

"Now, mister lawyer," said Admiral Bell, who had about him a large share
of the habits of a rough sailor. "Now, mister lawyer, here is a glass
first to our better acquaintance, for d----e, if I don't like you!"

"You are very good, sir."

"Not at all. There was a time, when I'd just as soon have thought of
asking a young shark to supper with me in my own cabin as a lawyer, but
I begin to see that there may be such a thing as a decent, good sort of
a fellow seen in the law; so here's good luck to you, and you shall
never want a friend or a bottle while Admiral Bell has a shot in the
locker."

"Gammon," said Jack.

"D--n you, what do you mean by that?" roared the admiral, in a furious
tone.

"I wasn't speaking to you," shouted Jack, about two octaves higher.
"It's two boys in the street as is pretending they're a going to fight,
and I know d----d well they won't."

"Hold your noise."

"I'm going. I wasn't told to hold my noise, when our nobs were being
scuttled off Beyrout."

"Never mind him, mister lawyer," added the admiral. "He don't know what
he's talking about. Never mind him. You go on and tell me all you know
about the--the--"

"The vampyre!"

"Ah! I always forget the names of strange fish. I suppose, after all,
it's something of the mermaid order?"

"That I cannot say, sir; but certainly the story, in all its painful
particulars, has made a great sensation all over the country."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, sir. You shall hear how it occurred. It appears that one night
Miss Flora Bannersworth, a young lady of great beauty, and respected and
admired by all who knew her was visited by a strange being who came in
at the window."

"My eye," said Jack, "it waren't me, I wish it had a been."

"So petrified by fear was she, that she had only time to creep half out
of the bed, and to utter one cry of alarm, when the strange visitor
seized her in