Trunnion was thunderstruck at this piece of intelligence: the mug dropped front his hand, and shivered into a thousand pieces; his eye glistened like that of a rattle-snake; and some minutes elapsed before he could pronounce, “Avast! overhaul that article again!” It was no sooner read the second time, than, smiting the table with his fist, he started up, and, with the most violent emphasis of rage and indignation, exclaimed, “D-- my heart and liver! 'tis a land lie, d'ye see; and I will maintain it to be a lie, from the sprit-sail yard to the mizen-top-sail haulyards! Blood and thunder! Will. Bower a peer of this realm! a fellow of yesterday, that scarce knows a mast from a manger! a snotty-nose boy, whom I myself have ordered to the gun, for stealing eggs out of the hen-coops! and I, Hawser Trunnion, who commanded a ship before he could keep a reckoning, am laid aside, d'ye see, and forgotten! If so be as this be the case, there is a rotten plank in our constitution, which ought to be hove down and repaired, d-- my eyes! For my own part, d'ye see, I was none of your Guinea pigs: I did not rise in the service by parlamenteering interest, or a handsome b-- of a wife. I was not over the bellies of better men, nor strutted athwart the quarter-deck in a laced doublet, and thingumbobs at the wrists. D-- my limbs! I have been a hard-working man, and served all offices on board from cook's shifter to the command of a vessel. Here, you Tunley, there's the hand of a seaman, you dog.” So saying, he laid hold on the landlord's fist, and honoured him with such a squeeze, as compelled him to roar with great vociferation, to the infinite satisfaction of the commodore, whose features were a little unblended by this acknowledgment of his vigour; and he thus proceeded, in a less outrageous strain: “They make a d--d noise about this engagement with the French: but, egad! it was no more than a bumboat battle, in comparison with some that I have seen. There was old Rook and Jennings, and another whom I'll be d--d before I name, that knew what fighting was. As for my own share, d'ye see, I am none of those that hallo in their own commendation: but if so be that I were minded to stand my own trumpeter, some of those little fellows that hold their heads so high would be taken all aback, as the saying is: they would be ashamed to show their colours, d-- my eyes! I once lay eight glasses alongside of the Flour de Louse, a French man-of-war, though her mettle was heavier, and her complement larger by a hundred hands than mine. You, Jack Hatchway, d-- ye, what d'ye grin at! D'ye think I tell a story, because you never heard it before?”