“You were badly enough off, certainly, colonel,” said our wag, the second officer (with a sly wink at one of his confederates); “but I think I can mention a circumstance of the kind still more extraordinary. When I was last in the China seas, in the _John Tomkins_, she rolled so prodigiously after a tuffoon, that she actually wore off all the copper sheathing, and very nearly set the sea on fire by this same friction you speak of. It’s strange, but as true as what you have just mentioned, colonel.” “Sir,” said the colonel, bristling up, for he did not at all relish the drift of this story, “you are disposed to be pleasant, sir; facetious, sir; but let me beg in future that you will reserve your jokes for some one else, and not exhibit your humour at my expense, or it may be unpleasant to both of us.” All looked grave—the affair was becoming serious—the colonel was a known fire-eater, and Grinnerson, who saw he had overshot the mark, seemed a little disconcerted, but struggled to preserve his composure—it was a juncture well calculated to test all the powers of impudence and tact of that very forward gentleman; but, somehow or other, he did back cleverly out of the scrape, without any additional offence to the colonel’s dignity, or a farther compromise of his own, and before the cloth was removed, a magnanimous challenge to Mr. Grinnerson, “to take wine,” came from the colonel (who at bottom was a very worthy little man, though addicted, unfortunately, to the Ferdinand Mendez Pinto vein), and convinced us that happily no other sort of challenge was to be apprehended. And so ended my first day’s dinner in a high sea in the Bay of Biscay. Now had the moon, resplendent lamp of night, O’er heaven’s pure azure shed her sacred light.