In the mean time, I continued rapidly to improve, and three days after this I found myself well enough to go on board the Midge, and visit my friends there. It was the day on which Lennox was to leave her; and as the men's dinner-time approached, I saw one of the boat sails rigged as an awning forward, and certain demonstrations making, and a degree of bustle in the galley that _prog_nosticated, as Listado would have said, a treat to his messmates. However, Lanyard and I returned on shore, after the former had given Drainings, the cook, and old Dogvane the quartermaster, leave for that afternoon to go on shore with the marine. About sunset the same evening, as I was returning from an airing into the country in Mr Duquesné's volante, who should I overtake but the trio above alluded to, two of them in a very comfortable situation as it appeared. First came Dogvane and Lennox, with little Pablo Carnero, the Spanish ham merchant and pig butcher before mentioned, who was a crony of the marine, between them, all very respectably drunk, and old Drainings bringing up the rear, not many degrees better. The quartermaster was in his usual dress, but the little Spanish dealer in pork hams was figged out in nankeen tights, and a flowing bright-coloured gingham coat, that fluttered in the wind behind him, and around him, as if it would have borne up his tiny corpus into the air, like a bat or a Brobdingnag butterfly; or possibly a flying-squirrel would be the better simile, as he reeled to and fro under the tyranny of the rosy god, making drunken rushes from Lennox to Dogvane, and back again; tackling to them alternately, like the nondescript spoken of in his leaps from tree to tree. As for our friend the corporal, he had changed the complexion of his outward man in a most unexampled manner;--where he had got the clothes furbished up for the nonce, heaven knows, unless, indeed, which is not unlikely, they had all along formed part of his kit on board; but there he was, dressed in a respectable suit of black broad cloth, a decent black beaver, and a white neckcloth; his chin well shaven, and in the grave expression of his countenance, I had no difficulty in discerning that idiotically serious kind of look that a man puts on who is conscious of having drunk a little more than he should have done, but who struggles to conceal it. Dogvane, in the ramble, had killed a black snake about three feet long, which, by the writhing of its tail, still showed signs of life, and this he kept swinging backwards and forwards in one of his hands, occasionally giving the little butcher a lash with it, who answered the blow by shouts of laughter; while a small green paroquet, that he had bought, was perched on one of his broad shoulders, fastened by a string, or lanyard, round its leg to the black ribbon he wore about his hat.