dren as ever was seen. "Give way, men," the
oars dipped as clean as so many knives, without a sparkle, the gallant
fellows stretched out, and away shot the Dragon-fly, like an arrow, the
green water foaming into white smoke at the bows, and hissing away in
her wake.

She disappeared in a twinkling round a reach of the canal where we were
anchored, and we, that is the gunroom-officers, all except the second
lieutenant, who had the watch, and the master, now got into our own gig
also, rowed by ourselves, and away we all went in a covey; the purser
and doctor, and three of the middies forward, Thomas Cringle, gent.,
pulling the stroke oar, with old Moses Yerk as coxswain;--and as
the Dragon-flies were all red, so we were all sea-green, boat,
oars, trousers, shirts, and night-caps. The strain was between the
_Devil's Darning Needle_ and our boat, the _Watersprite_, which was
making capital play, for although we had not the _bottom_ of the
_top_men, yet we had more blood, so to speak, and we had already
beaten them, in their last gig, all to sticks. But the Dragon-fly was
a new boat, and now in the water for the first time. * * *

We were both of us so intent on our own match, that we lost sight of
the Spaniard altogether, and the captain and the first lieutenant were
bobbing in the sternsheets of their respective gigs like a couple of
_souple Tams_, as intent on the game as if all our lives had
depended on it, when in an instant the long, black, dirty prow of the
canoe was thrust in between us, the old Don singing out, "_Dexa mi
lugar, paysanos, dexa mi lugar, mis hijos._"[12] We kept away right
and left, to look at the miracle; and there lay the canoe, rumbling and
splashing, with her crew walloping about, and grinning and yelling like
incarnate fiends, and as naked as the day they were born, and the old
Don himself, so staid and sedate, and drawley as he was a minute before,
now all alive, shouting, "_Tira, diablitos, tira_,"[13] flourishing
a small paddle, with which he steered, about his head like a wheel, and
dancing and jumping about in his seat, as if his bottom had been a
_haggis_ with quicksilver in it.

"Zounds," roared the skipper,--"why, topmen--why gentlemen, give way for
the honour of the ship--Gentlemen, stretch out--Men, pull like devils;
twenty pounds if you beat him."

It was now the evening, near night-fall. A splendid scene burst upon
our view, on rounding a precipitous rock, from the crevices of whi