“Now, a'n't ye a couple of old horse-marines!” again interrupted the young sailor; “don't you see that Congress wants us to cut up Johnny Bull's coasters, and that old Blow-Hard has found the days too short for his business, and so he has landed a party to get hold of night. Here we have him! and when we get off to the ship, we shall put him under hatches, and then you'll see the face of the sun again! Come, my lilies! let these two gentlemen look into your cabin windows--what? you won't! Then I must squeeze your woolen nightcaps for ye!” The negroes, who had been submitting to his humors with the abject humility of slavery, now gave certain low intimations that they were suffering pain, under the rough manipulation of their tormentor. “What's that!” cried a stern voice, whose boyish tones seemed to mock the air of authority that was assumed by the speaker--“who's that, I say, raising that cry among ye?” The willful young man slowly removed his two hands from the woolly polls of the slaves, but as he suffered them to fall reluctantly along their sable temples, he gave the ear of one of the blacks a tweak that caused him to give vent to another cry, that was uttered with a much greater confidence of sympathy than before. “Do ye hear there!” repeated Merry--“who's skylarking with those negroes?” “'Tis no one, sir,” the sailor answered with affected gravity; “one of the palefaces has hit his shin against a cobweb, and it has made his earache!” “Harkye, you Mr. Jack Joker! how came you in the midst of the prisoners?--Did not I order you to handle your pike, sir, and to keep in the outer line?” “Ay, ay, sir, you did; and I obeyed orders as long as I could; but these niggers have made the night so dark that I lost my way!” A low laugh passed through the confused crowd of seamen; and even the midshipman might have been indulging himself in a similar manner at this specimen of quaint humor from the fellow, who was one of those licensed men that are to be found in every ship. At length: “Well, sir,” he said, “you have found out your false reckoning now; so get you back to the place where I bid you stay.” “Ay, ay, sir, I'm going. By all the blunders in the purser's book, Mr. Merry, but that cobweb has made one of these niggers shed tears! Do let me stay to catch a little ink, sir, to write a letter with to my poor old mother-devil the line has she had from me since we sailed from the Chesapeake!” “If ye don't mind me at once, Mr. Jack Joker, I'll lay my cutlass over your head,” returned Merry, his voice now betraying a much greater sympathy in the sufferings of that abject race, who are still in some measure, but who formerly were much more, the butts of the unthinking and licentious among our low countrymen; “then ye can write your letter in red ink if ye will!”