"Where's Charles?" bellowed Blewforth munching a devilled biscuit. "Where's that fellow Charles. Demme! He'll never catch us up at this rate and we shall have him sober as a post-captain when we are beginning to amuse ourselves." "What, you rogue," cried our hero entering just as the Lieutenant bellowed his inquiry. "I wager five guineas, I am two bottles ahead of any gentleman present." In order to clinch the bet he flung his purse in the direction of the table. The gauntlet snuffed in its course two of the candles and fell with a plump into a piping bowl of punch splashing Tom Chalkley as high as his stock and imparting to His Majesty's uniform an odour of hot squeezed lemons that lasted for quite a couple of weeks. "Charles! Charles!" bellowed the burly Lieutenant, "Huzza for Charles!" The latter lurched into the vacant chair next to his friend Tony without a word to the host. However, nobody observed this breach of good manners, because everybody was anxiously leaning over to fill every glass in reach of the newcomer as a preliminary to drinking his very good health a score of times, without a heeltap to any one of them. "Z--ds! Charles. Where have you been?" said Chalkley. "Drinking old Burgundy with a rogue of a bagman who looked like Ranelagh Garden en Fete, for his face was illuminated with every hue of crimson lamp and I stake my wig his nose was as large and round as the Rotunda." With the arrival of Charles, everybody woke up and there were calls for a song. The gallant Lieutenant was the first to respond with my Lord Dorset's _To you fair ladies now at Land_. Let me remind you of that fine old ballad: _To you fair ladies now at Land We men at Sea indite; But first would have you understand How hard it is to write_. "Not at all," cried Charles. _The Muses now, and Neptune too, We must implore to write to you;_ "and chorus, gentlemen, please," _With a Fa, la, la, la, la, la The Muses now, and Neptune too, We must implore to write to you_. and so on to the last _With a Fa, la, la, la, la Let us hear of no Inconstancy We have too much of that at Sea_. And a proper noise everybody made with the _Fa la-la-la-la_ accentuating every _Fa_ with a bottle and every _La_ with one of Mr. Jeremy Daish's handsome silver spoons. The song being a very lengthy one allowed everybody plenty of time to drink another quart of Burgundy before its rousing conclusion, and if the company cheered loudly at the beginning, by heavens, they cheered so loudly at the end that the noise was heard above the fiddlers in the new ballroom of Daish's famous Rooms and put everybody out of step in the last Cotillon notwithstanding the heroick efforts of the disreputable, but nimble-footed Captain Mann.