"Vive la France!" exhibiting in his cups the real cosmopolitan feelings which inspired him--the feelings of most old soldiers of fortune. They start probably with some vague notions of seeking honour and glory, but, finding the objects at which they aim thoroughly unsatisfying, they in most cases become intensely selfish, and think only how they can make themselves most comfortable under any circumstances in which they are placed, or how they can secure the largest amount of plunder. This was the last time I saw Colonel Pinchard, but I heard that he married the Creole widow, foreswore France, and settled in Jamaica. We were all glad to get to sea again, as we had little pleasure from being in harbour, for, though the West Indies has many charms, and at some seasons no fault can be found with the climate, yet Yellow Jack is an unpleasant customer, whose visits we were happy to avoid. I have not named any of my messmates for some time. Poor McAllister was the only one much changed; the climate certainly affected him, but he got a great deal of badgering from the officers of his own standing in the service, and especially from the mates of other ships, for having been outwitted by the Frenchman, and for losing his prize. He took his bantering ill in public, and brooded over the subject in private, till he began to believe that his courage was doubted, and that he must do some very daring deed to retrieve it. But I must do old Perigal the credit to say that he never bantered him, though Spellman did whenever he thought he could give a sly hit with impunity. I did what I could to comfort him, and the liking for me, which he had always entertained, evidently increased. I was in his watch, and, as we walked the deck together, he would talk to me by the hour of Scotland, and the estate of his ancestors, which he hoped one day to recover. Suddenly he would break off, and in a tone of deep melancholy, exclaim, "Ah, but those are dreams--all dreams--never to be realised. I am never to see bonnie Scotland again; her heathery hills, and blue, blue lochs, and my own Mary; but I've never told you of her. She's been the pole-star to me since I came to sea. She was but a young girl then, but when I had returned from my first voyage, she'd grown into the fairest maiden for many a mile round, and soon she promised to be mine, when I should get my promotion. I won't talk more of her, though; but you'll undertake, Merry, when you go home, should I lose the number of my mess, to go and find out the poor girl, and tell her all about me." And so he ran on. Of course I promised to do all he wished. Midshipmen always do promise each other all sorts of things of a similar nature, and intend to fulfil their promises faithfully, though I am not prepared to assert that they always do so.