d, interrupted him with great
earnestness, saying, "Nay, don't--what apize!--adds-buntlines!--I didn't
go to give you the lie, brother, smite my limbs; I only said as how to
sail in the wind's eye was impossible." "And I say unto thee," resumed
the knight, "nothing is impossible to a true knight-errant, inspired and
animated by love." "And I say unto thee," hallooed Crowe, "if so be as
how love pretends to turn his hawse-holes to the wind, he's no seaman,
d'ye see, but a snotty-nosed lubberly boy, that knows not a cat from a
capstan--a don't."

"He that does not believe that love is an infallible pilot, must not
embark upon the voyage of chivalry; for, next to the protection of
Heaven, it is from love that the knight derives all his prowess and
glory. The bare name of his mistress invigorates his arm; the
remembrance of her beauty infuses into his breast the most heroic
sentiments of courage, while the idea of her chastity hedges him round
like a charm, and renders him invulnerable to the sword of his
antagonist. A knight without a mistress is a mere nonentity, or, at
least, a monster in nature--a pilot without a compass, a ship without
rudder, and must be driven to and fro upon the waves of discomfiture and
disgrace."

"An that be all," replied the sailor, "I told you before as how I've got
a sweetheart, as true a hearted girl as ever swung in canvas. What thof
she may have started a hoop in rolling, that signifies nothing; I'll
warrant her tight as a nut-shell."

"She must, in your opinion, be a paragon either of beauty or virtue.
Now, as you have given up the last, you must uphold her charms
unequalled, and her person without a parallel." "I do, I do uphold she
will sail upon a parallel as well as e'er a frigate that was rigged to
the northward of fifty."

"At that rate, she must rival the attractions of her whom I adore; but
that I say is impossible. The perfections of my Aurelia are altogether
supernatural; and as two suns cannot shine together in the same sphere
with equal splendour, so I affirm, and will prove with my body, that your
mistress, in comparison with mine, is as a glow-worm to the meridian sun,
a rushlight to the full moon, or a stale mackerel's eye to a pearl of
orient." "Harkee, brother, you might give good words, however. An we
once fall a-jawing, d'ye see, I can heave out as much bilgewater as
another; and since you besmear my sweetheart, Besselia, I can as well
bedaub your mistress