"'Please you, Sir J----,' chimed in the functionary, 'it is a false alarm. That stuttering blockhead has made a mistake; it is the master's wig, Sir J----, and the porker belongs to the ward-room.' "'Fill the maintopsail again,' rapped out the knight. 'Poor pig--poor pig--can't be helped--can't be helped--pity the master should lose his scratch though, _but it can't_ be helped, Captain R----, can't be helped. So fill away the maintopsail again, Captain R----.' "Alas and alackaday, _both the pig and the wig were drowned_!" Mr Donovan being now well enough to resume his duty, remained that evening in the frigate, but Lanyard and I returned, towards nightfall, with my tiny topman, to the felucca, and great was the buzz of joy amongst the Midges at getting back Dicky Phantom. We were sitting at breakfast on deck under the awning, next morning, Donovan having returned for his traps, and the frigate's boat was towing astern--Dicky Phantom was part and portion of our society--the carpenter having already got a little chair so contrived, that when lashed to the leg of the table, he could not fall out of it. The frigate was about a mile to the northward of us, looming like a seventy-four, as she glimmered through the hot blue haze that hung over the horizon, and circumscribed our view on all sides, for it was stark calm. The sun shone down with true tropical intensity; the heaving swell was like a sea of molten silver, and every now and then a dolphin would leap close to us, while, as from the side of a watery hill, a shower of flying-fish would spring out and shoot across a liquid valley, until they dropped like a discharge of grape into the next billow. Nothing nourishes one's grog-drinking propensities, or spoils one's beauty so much, as the reflection of the sun from the glass-like surface of the calm sea within the tropics. His direct rays are in some measure warded off by your hat-brim; but were you even to turn up your ugly phiz at him, and stare him in the face, they would have comparatively no effect, to the fierceness of their heat second-hand in this way. Oh, the sickening effect of the afternoon's glare, thus reflected, and flashed up into your face, under the snout of your chapeau, which here, like a battery taken in reverse, proves no defence, until your eyes are blinded, and your cheeks routed and roasted, and your neb peeled, like an ill-scraped radish, leaving the underskin so tender, that breaking on the wheel is comfort to blowing your nose. Cold cream--cold cream! Oh, for a pot of it, ye gods! I have before said, we were not, where we sat, much above four feet out of the water, and several flying-fish had come on board that morning; so just as I was helping Dicky to a little water, to wash down the soaked biscuit that, through Lennox's kindness, he had been feeding on, dash--a very large one flew right againt Dennis Donovan's cheek, and dropped walloping and floundering into his plate. "Blazes, what is that?"