I noticed that my cup had evidently sustained a compound comminuted fracture, and been patched up with putty (which came off in my tea)--that the bread was scant--the butter powerful--the tea, "on the contrary, quite the reverse,"--however, although matters looked somewhat discouraging--"hoping against hope"--we retired to our respective rooms. Horror of horror!! O! most horrible!!! I was besieged--had I been Sebastopol itself I could not have been attacked with more vigor, or by more determined and bloodthirsty enemies. For two hours I maintained a sanguinary combat with an odoriferous band of determined cannibal insects--armed only with a fire-shovel, I gallantly kept up the unequal conflict--but the treacherous implement broke at the critical moment; I thought I should be compelled to yield--despair filled all my senses--my heart failed me--my brain grew dizzy with horror--hurried thoughts of enemies unpardoned--of duties neglected--and of errors committed, rushed across my mind--a last thought of cherished home and absent friends was in my heart, and with a hasty prayer for mercy and forgiveness, was at the point of yielding, when my frantic eye caught sight of my cast-iron boot-jack. With an exclamation of pious gratitude to heaven, (Bull Dogge says it did not sound so to him), I seized it, and with the desperate strength of a dying man I renewed the battle, and eventually came off victorious and triumphant. Weary with slaughter, I fell exhausted on the bed, and slept till morning; Bull Dogge, who had been engaged in the same delightful occupation, appeared at the breakfast table with one eye black, and his face spotted like a he-tiger. We held a council of war, and resolved instantly to quit the premises of the Emerald Islander, who had agreed to "lodge and eat" us (the she-Cyclops), and who had so nearly fulfilled the latter clause by proxy. Another search and another home. Here for a week things went on tolerably well; the steak was sometimes capable of mastication, the coffee wasn't _always_ weak, nor the butter always strong; but one day there appeared at breakfast a dish of beef, (Bull Dogge asserts that it was the fossil remains of an omnibus horse)--it was not molested; at dinner it made its appearance again, still it was not disturbed; at tea fragments of it were visible, but it yet remained untouched; in the morning a tempting looking stew made its appearance, but, alas! it was only a weak invention of the enemy to conceal the ubiquitous beef; at dinner a meat-pie enshrined a portion of the aforesaid beef; it went away unharmed. For a week, every day, at every meal, in every subtle form, in some ingenious disguise, still was forced upon our notice this omnipresent beef; it went through more changes than Harlequin in the Pantomime, and like that nimble individual came always out uninjured.