state of beastly intoxication, swayed himself up bodily into the schooner's taffrail, and sat with his arms folded, his long legs swinging over the stern, and his head trying to keep steady, as he scowled solemnly aloft over the frigate's mizen-royal-masthead; while the third lieutenant, Mr Hammond, and the master's mate he had aboard with him, could be heard laughing at his back, as if they had gone mad--Hammond being a wild sprig of an Irishman, who would go any length for a piece of fun. Just then the American's one eye lighted on the side of the frigate, till it settled lazily on the port of the captain's cabin: first he seemed to notice Lord Frederick Bury, and then myself, the first lieutenant having just recovered himself enough to rush toward the door to get on deck. Daniel himself surveyed me scornfully for a moment, then with a sort of doubtful frown, and a gravity that passes me to describe, unless by the look of an old cock a-drinking--evidently trying to recollect me. "Hallo, mister!" shouted he suddenly, "you haven't touched those _notions_ of mine, I hope." With that he made a spring off where he sat, as if to come towards us--no doubt thinking of the Seringapatam, and the valuables he had left aboard, without seeing the water between; and a pretty deep dive Mr Snout would have made of it, into an ebb-tide that would have swept him under the frigate's bottom, if Mr Hammond and the midshipman hadn't both sprung forward in time to catch him by the neck of the coat. There, accordingly, was the Yankee hanging like a spread eagle over the schooner's taffrail, yelling and turning round at the same time like a fowl on a spit--the third lieutenant's and the mate's faces, two pictures of dismay, as they held on, at finding for the first time where the schooner had shied them round to, with their two pairs of eyes fair in front of the captain's eyeglass,--while Mr Hall was singing out like thunder from the deck above us, "The schooner ahoy--d'ye see where you've got to, sir; haul ahead on that cable, d'ye hear, you lubbers, and keep clear of the ship!"