However he was invited to dinner with his two constant quizzers, the fat doctor and the acute purser, just as we had made the east of Jamaica. I, it having been my forenoon watch, was consequently invited with the officer of it. We had lately been too much occupied to think of annoying each other; but those who unfortunately think that they have a prescriptive right to be disagreeable, and have a single talent that way (the most common of talents), seldom violate the advice of the Scripture, that warns us not to hide that one talent in a napkin. We found our sarcastic little skipper in the blandest and most urbane humour. He received me with a courtesy that almost made me feel affection for him. We found Mr Farmer, the first-lieutenant, with him, and had it not been for a sly twinkling of the eye of the captain, and very significant looks that now and then stole from Mr Farmer, as he caught the expression of his commander's countenance I should have thought that that day there was no "minching malicho," or anything like mischief meant. There were but five of us sat down to table, yet the dinner was superb. We had, or rather the captain supplied himself now, with all the luxuries of a tropical climate, and those of the temperate were, though he could boast of little temperance, far from exhausted. We had turtle dressed in different ways, though our flat friend made his first appearance in the guise of an appetising soup. We had stewed guanna, a large sort of delicious lizard, that most amply repairs the offence done to the eye by his unsightly appearance in conciliating in a wonderful manner all those minute yet important nerves that Providence has so bountifully and so numerously spread over the palate, the tongue, and the uvula. The very contemplation of this beneficent arrangement is enough to make a swearing boatswain pious.