"there's nothing for it but to fore-reach upon you, or else you'll be 'Green-Handing' me aft as well as forward; so I must just make the best of it, and take the _winch_ in my own fashion at once!" "Ay, ay, sir--ay, ay, your honour!" said Old Jack demurely, and concealing his gratification as he turned off into the pantry, with the idea of for the first time hearing the captain relate the incidents in question. "My old shipmate," said the latter, "is so fond of having trained his future captain, that it is his utmost delight to spin out everything we ever met with together into one endless yarn, which would go on from our first acquaintance to the present day, although no ship's company ever heard the last of it. Without falling knowingly to leeward of the truth, he makes out every lucky coincidence almost to have been a feat of mine, and puts in little fancies of his own, so as to give the whole thing more and more of a marvellous air the farther it goes. The most amusing thing is, that he almost always begins each time, I believe, at the very beginning, like a capstan without a paul--sticking in one thing he had forgot before, and forgetting another; sometimes dwelling longer on one part--a good deal like a ship making the same voyages over again. I knew, now, this evening, when I heard the men laughing, and saw Old Jack on the forecastle, what must be in the wind. However, we have shared so many chances, and I respect the old man so much, not to speak of his having dandled my little girls on his knee, and being butler, steward, and flower-gardener at home, that I can't really be angry at him, in spite of the sort of every man's rope he makes of me!" "How very amusing a character he is!" said one young lady. "A thought too tarry, perhaps?" suggested the surgeon. "So very original and like a--a seaman!" remarked Miss Alicia, quietly, but as if some other word that crossed her mind had been rejected, as descriptive of a different variety, probably higher. "_Original_, by Jove!" exclaimed the colonel; "if my _Khansa-man_, or my _Abdar_,[3] were to make such a dancing dervish and _tumasha_[4] of me behind back, by the holy Vishnu, sir, I'd rattan him myself within an inch of his life!" [2] _Flush_--_i.e._ level. [3] Steward and butler. [4] Sport. "Not an unlikely thing, colonel," put in the planter; "I've caught the scoundrels at that trick before now." "What did you do?" inquired the colonel, speculatively. "Couldn't help laughing, for my soul, sir; the _puckree-bund_[5] rascals did it so well, and so funnily!" The irascible East-Indian almost started up in his imaginative fury, to call for his palkee, and chastise his whole verandah, when the doctor reminded him that it was a long way there. "Glorious East!" exclaimed the medico, looking out astern, "where we may cane our footmen, and whence, meanwhile, we can derive such Sanscrit-sounding adjurations, with such fine moonlight!" [5] Turban-wearing.