"Read 'em out, then, can't ye?" cried another.

"I say, Bill Blunt, I think this consarns _you_," cried Tom: "isn't
your sweetheart's name Susan Croft?"

"That's a fact," said Bill, looking up from his paper, "and who has got
a word to say agin the prettiest lass in all Liverpool?"

"Nobody's got a word to say against her," replied Tom; "but she's
married, that's all."

Bill Blunt leaped up as if he had been shot, and the blood rushed to
his face, as he seized the paper, and tried to find the place.

"Where is it, Tom? let me see it with my own two eyes. Oh, here it is!"

The poor man's face grew paler and paler as he read the following
words:--

"Married at Liverpool, on the 5th inst., by the Rev. Charles Manson,
Edward Gordon, Esq., to Susan, youngest daughter of Admiral Croft----"

A perfect roar of laughter drowned the remainder of the sentence.

"Well done, Bill Blunt--Mister Blunt, we'll have to call him
hereafter," said Tom, with a grim smile; "I had no notion you thought
so much o' yourself as to aim at an admiral's daughter."

"All right, my hearties, chaff away!" said Bill, fetching a deep sigh
of relief, while a broad grin played on his weather-beaten visage.
"There's _two_ Susan Crofts, that's all; but I wouldn't give _my_ Susan
for all the admirals' daughters that ever walked in shoe-leather."

"Hallo! here come the Yankees," cried the captain, coming on deck at
that moment.

Our newspapers were thrown down at once, and we prepared to receive our
guests, who, we could see, had just put off from their ship in two
boats. But before they had come within a mile of us, their attention,
as well as ours, was riveted on a most extraordinary sight.

Not more than a hundred yards ahead of our ship, a whale came suddenly
to the surface of the water, seeming, by its wild motions, to be in a
state of terror. It continued for some time to struggle, and lash the
whole sea around it into a white foam.

At once the boats were lowered from both ships, and we went after this
fish, but his motions were so violent, that we found it utterly
impossible to get near enough to throw a harpoon. When we had
approached somewhat closely, we discovered that it had been attacked by
a killer fish, which was fully twenty feet long, and stuck to it like a
leech. The monster's struggles were made in trying to shake itself
free of this tremendous enemy, but it could not accomplish this. The
killer held him by the unde