Nothing, I must fairly own, could be more treacherous than the means devised to lower the honour and glory of the poor tailor. He was formally invited to dinner with us; and, being well plied with grog, mixed according to the formidable rule for making what is called a North-wester, which prescribes that one half of each glass shall consist of rum, and the other half of rum and water, our poor guest was soon brought under the table. Being then quite incapable of moving, he was lifted in noisy triumph out of the birth, and placed in the tier, across the bends of the small bower cable, where, after many a grunt and groan at the rugged nature of his couch, he at length fell asleep. His beautiful tail, the pride of his life! was presently glued by means of a lump of pitch to the strands of the cable; and such was the tenacity of the substance, that in the morning, when, on the daylight gun being fired directly over his head, poor snip awoke, he could no more detach himself from the spot on which he lay, than could Lemuel Gulliver in like circumstances. His noddle was still so confused, that he knew not where he lay, nor what held him down. After tugging at his hair for a minute or two, he roared out lustily for help. One of the mids, seized with the brilliant idea of making the tailor the finisher of his own fate, hurried to his assistance, and, handing him a knife, roared out, “by all means to make haste, as the devil had got hold of him by the tail!” The poor tradesman, terrified out of his wits, and in great horror at his mysterious situation, instantly did as he was desired, and cut away lustily, little dreaming that his own rash hand was shearing the highest and most cherished honours of his house! On turning round, he beheld with dismay the ravished locks, which, for half a century and more, had been the joint delight of himself and his tender partner Rebecca. As the thought of returning tail-less to his home crossed his half-bewildered brain, he exclaimed, in agony of spirit, to his malicious tormentors—“Oh Lord! oh Lord! I am a lost man to my Becky!” The revenge of the malicious middies was now complete; and this expression of being a ‘lost man to one’s Becky’ became a byword in the ship, for many years afterwards, to denote the predicament of any one who got into a scrape, and came out of it with loss. CHAPTER IV. BERMUDA IN THE PEACE.