. You shall find that I'm a tar for all weathers, and if you
were a hundred and fifty vampires all rolled into one, I'd tackle you
somehow."

The admiral walked to the door in high dudgeon; when he was near to it,
Varney said, in some of his most winning and gentle accents,--

"Will you not take some refreshment, sir before you go from my humble
house?"

"No!" roared the admiral.

"Something cooling?"

"No!"

"Very good, sir. A hospitable host can do no more than offer to
entertain his guests."

Admiral Bell turned at the door, and said, with some degree of intense
bitterness,

"You look rather poorly. I suppose, to-night, you will go and suck
somebody's blood, you shark--you confounded vampyre! You ought to be
made to swallow a red-hot brick, and then let dance about till it
digests."

Varney smiled as he rang the bell, and said to a servant,--

"Show my very excellent friend Admiral Bell out. He will not take any
refreshments."

The servant bowed, and preceded the admiral down the staircase; but, to
his great surprise, instead of a compliment in the shape of a shilling
or half-a-crown for his pains, he received a tremendous kick behind,
with a request to go and take it to his master, with his compliments.

The fume that the old admiral was in beggars all description. He walked
to Bannerworth Hall at such a rapid pace, that Jack Pringle had the
greatest difficulty in the world to keep up with him, so as to be at all
within speaking distance.

"Hilloa, Jack," cried the old man, when they were close to the Hall.
"Did you see me kick that fellow?"

"Ay, ay, sir."

"Well, that's some consolation, at any rate, if somebody saw it. It
ought to have been his master, that's all I can say to it, and I wish it
had."

"How have you settled it, sir?"

"Settled what?"

"The fight, sir."

"D--n me, Jack, I haven't settled it at all."

"That's bad, sir."

"I know it is; but it shall be settled for all that, I can tell him, let
him vapour as much as he may about pinking me, and one thing and
another."

"Pinking you, sir?"

"Yes. He wants to fight with cutlasses, or toasting-forks, d--n me, I
don't know exactly which, and then he must have a surgeon on the ground,
for fear when he pinks me I shouldn't slip my cable in a regular way,
and he should be blamed."

Jack gave a long whistle, as he replied,--

"Going to do it, sir?"

"I don't know now what I'm going to do. Mind, Jack, mum is the word."