desty, "that I am
not yet quite perfect."

"Well, then, Mr Jolliffe will teach you; he is the most competent in
this ship: the sooner you ask him the better, and if you learn it as
fast as you have Spanish, it will not give you much trouble."

Jack thought the advice good: the next day he was very busy with his
friend Jolliffe, and made the important discovery that two parallel
lines continued to infinity would never meet.

It must not be supposed that Captain Wilson and Mr Sawbridge received
their promotion instanter. Promotion is always attended with delay, as
there is a certain routine in the service which must not be departed
from. Captain Wilson had orders to return to Malta after his cruise.
He therefore carried his own despatches away from England--from Malta
the despatches had to be forwarded to Toulon to the admiral, and then
the admiral had to send to England to the Admiralty, whose reply had to
come out again. All this, with the delays arising from vessels not
sailing immediately, occupied an interval of between five and six
months--during which time there was no alteration in the officers and
crew of his Majesty's sloop _Harpy_.

There had, however, been one alteration; the gunner, Mr Minus, who had
charge of the first cutter in the night action in which our hero was
separated from his ship, carelessly loading his musket, had found
himself minus his right hand, which, upon the musket going off as he
rammed down, had gone off too. He was invalided and sent home during
Jack's absence, and another had been appointed, whose name was Tallboys.
Mr Tallboys was a stout dumpy man, with red face, and still redder
hands; he had red hair and red whiskers, and he had read a good deal--
for Mr Tallboys considered that the gunner was the most important
personage in the ship. He had once been a captain's clerk, and having
distinguished himself very much in cutting-out service, had applied for
and received his warrant as a gunner. He had studied the _Art of
Gunnery_, a part of which he understood, but the remainder was above his
comprehension: he continued, however, to read it as before, thinking
that by constant reading he should understand it at last. He had gone
through the work from the title-page to the finis at least forty times,
and had just commenced it over again. He never came on deck without the
gunner's vade-mecum in his pocket, with his hand always upon it to refer
to it in a moment.

But Mr Tallb