This little domestic drama had hardly been played out, when a more serious one--almost a tragedy--was enacted on the forecastle. It originated in the misconduct of the red man, who, seized with a desire to catch porgies, went a short way to work for tackle, by snatching away the line of a peaceable, but stout Frenchman, who was paralyzed for a moment by the novelty of the thing, but, immediately recovering himself, expressed his dissent by smashing an earthen-ware dish, containing a great mess of raw clams for bait, upon the head of the red man, as he stooped over the railing to fish. This led to a general fight, in which blood flowed freely, and the roughs were getting rather the upper-hand. Knives were drawn by some of the Germans and others in self-defence, and great consternation reigned in the afterpart of the boat and the neighborhood of the ladies' cabin. Then the slim captain of the boat--the one in the black dress-coat--hurriedly whispered something to Lobster Bob, who rushed away aft, where the fight was now agglomerating, headed by the red man and Flashy Joe, both covered with blood, and looking like demons, as they wrestled and bit through the Crowd. Just as they hustled past a large chest intended for the stowage of life-preservers, Lobster Bob kicked the lid of it open with a bang, and, seizing up the red man, neck and crop, with his huge, tattooed hands, dropped him into it and shut down the lid, which was promptly sat upon by the large, stout, smiling man already favorably spoken of in these pages, who suddenly made his appearance from nowhere in particular. The picture of contentment, he sat there like one who knew how, caressing slowly his large knees with his short, plump hands, until the cries from the chest began to wax feeble, when he slowly arose, vanished, and I never saw him again. The red rowdy was then dragged, half-suffocated, from his imprisonment, and as much life as he ought ever to be intrusted with restored to him by the stout old skipper, who was at hand with a couple of buckets full of cold salt-water, with which he drenched him liberally, as he slunk away. A diversion thus effected, the disturbance was quelled. All was quiet in a short time, and the word was passed to heave the anchor and 'bout ship for home.