I looked at my watch: it only wanted ten minutes to seven, and the storm rising every moment. If Catsbach plays me false, I shall rescue my mother, I thought, and fight my way into the street. I looked at my sword; it was of silver-gilt tin, and couldn't have committed manslaughter on the body of Tom Thumb. A universal cheer proclaimed an arrival; and I declare the first scrape of the fiddle was the sweetest music I ever heard. It gave quite a new turn to the behaviour of the sailors. They ordered "God save the Queen" and "Rule Britannia," and then roared lustily for a hornpipe. Catsbach gratified them in whatever they asked. At last they called for a gangway to be placed from the orchestra on to the stage, and proposed commencing the dramatic proceedings of the evening by a miscellaneous country dance. This, however, was not accorded--the little bell rang--and the serious overture began. At this moment Mr Wormwood, out of breath, and enraptured apparently with my approaching triumph, caught me by the hand. "Let me introduce you," he said, "to the three greatest critics in Europe. We have hurried from London to see your _debût_. I have the highest opinion of your genius, and feel sure you will be most unanimously and ignominiously cat-called--as _we_ were." The three gentlemen bowed, and retired into the stage-box beside my mother, to write a description of my reception. I was too indignant to speak, and suddenly the curtain rose, and the play began. The ghost was received with the most vociferous applause, and seemed to strike the naval mind as the liveliest personage in the play. His silence was considered a remarkably comic piece of character, and evidently assumed to cover his forgetfulness of the words. Many exhortations were offered to him to take another spell at the book, or spin them a yarn out of his own head. Allusions were also made to his obesity, which evidently did not accord with the forecastle's idea of a ghost; and when, in spite of all the advice and suggestion that had been offered him, he maintained an imperturbable silence, they got into a violent state of indignation at having been defrauded of the speeches; for they could not believe it possible for a personage to stalk across the stage and look so very solemn without having anything to say. Whereupon Count Osric went forward and soothed them by a solemn promise that in some of the succeeding scenes the ghost would be as talkative as they chose. Satisfied with this, they received the opening scene of the court of Denmark with several rounds of applause, which were duly responded to by each of the performers on the stage.