This was the signal for all of us to rise, and here we had a second edition of the comical blunders of poor Captain Hause. On his return from the supper-table to the drawingroom, he was waylaid by Flamingo, and having a sort of muzzy recollection of his previous mistake, he set himself with drunken gravity to take an observation, as he said, in order to work his position on the chart more correctly this time. But the champagne he had swilled had increased his conglomeration twofold, which Master Felix perceiving, he took an opportunity of treating him to several spinning turns round the inner room, until he lost himself and his latitude entirely. He then let the bewildered sailor go, and the first thing he did was _this time_ to mistake the _real_ door, now open into the dancingroom, for the _mirror_; thus reversing his former blunder; and although Twig, who was standing in the other room, good naturedly beckoned him to advance, he stood rooted to the spot, as if an invisible barrier prevented his ingress. And when the young lady he had been dancing with would have led him in, he drew back like a rabid dog at water--"Avast, miss, avast--too old a cruiser to be taken in twice that way--shan't walk through a looking-glass, even to oblige you, miss--no, no--Bill Hause knows better. Here--here--this way--that's the door on your starboard beam--and the mirror--bless you, that's the mirror right a-head," and so saying, he dragged the laughing girl away from the door up to the glass once more. "What a deuced handsome fellow that chap under bare poles is, miss."--This was himself, dressed in Mr Twig's small clothes and black silk stockings--"I should be sorry to trust _my_ lower spars out of trowsers, however, I know."