party
of passengers, _quorum parva pars fui_, a youngster just emerged from
college.

On the banks of Newfoundland we were becalmed, and the passengers amused
themselves by throwing overboard a bottle, and shooting at it with ball.
The guns used for this occasion, were the King's muskets, taken from the
arm-chest on the quarter-deck. The shooting was execrable. It was hard
to say which were worse marksmen, the officers of the ship, or the
passengers. Not a bottle was hit: many reasons were offered for this
failure, but the two principal ones were, that the muskets were bad, and
that it required great skill to overcome the difficulty occasioned by
both, the vessel and the bottle being in motion at the same time, and
that motion dissimilar.

I lost my patience. I had never practised shooting with ball; I had
frightened a few snipe, and wounded a few partridges, but that was
the extent of my experience. I knew, however, that I could not by any
possibility shoot worse than every body else had done, and might by
accident shoot better.

"Give me a gun, Captain," said I, "and I will shew you how to uncork
that bottle."

I took the musket, but its weight was beyond my strength of arm. I was
afraid that I could not hold it out steadily, even for a moment, it was
so very heavy--I threw it up with a desperate effort and fired. The neck
of the bottle flew up in the air a full yard, and then disappeared. I
was amazed myself at my success. Every body was surprised, but as every
body attributed it to long practice, they were not so much astonished as
I was, who knew it was wholly owing to chance. It was a lucky hit, and I
made the most of it; success made me arrogant, and boy-like, I became a
boaster.

"Ah," said I coolly, "you must be born with a rifle in your hand,
Captain, to shoot well. Every body shoots well in America. I do not call
myself a good shot. I have not had the requisite experience; but there
are those who can take out the eye of a squirrel at a hundred yards."

"Can you see the eye of a squirrel at that distance?" said the Captain,
with a knowing wink of his own little ferret eye.

That question, which raised a general laugh at my expense, was a
puzzler. The absurdity of the story, which I had heard a thousand times,
never struck me so forcibly. But I was not to be pat down so easily.

"See it!" said I, "why not? Try it and you will find your sight improve
with your shooting. Now, I can't boast of being a g