The voice ceased: and a pair of ponderous sea-soles, with tramp audible as the marble foot of the Spectre in Giovanni, went hurrying down our main-hatchway. Certain misgivings of a discrepancy between the imputed drenching and the weather, an appeal askance of the rum cask, joined with a curiosity perchance, to inspect the ship-fragments--our flottsom and jettsom, led me soon afterwards below, and there, in the mess-room, sate mine officer, high and dry, with a huge tankard in his starboard hand. I made an obvious remark on it, and had an answer--for Michael Spiller was no adept in the Chesterfieldian refinements--from the interior of the drinking-vessel-- “Your Honour’s right, and I ax your Honour’s pardon. I warn’t wet! but I was _very_ dry!” A BLOW UP. “Here we go up, up, up.”--THE LAY OF THE FIRST MINSTREL. Near Battle, Mr. Peter Baker Was Powder-maker, Not Alderman Flower’s flour,--the white that puffs And primes and loads heads bald, or gray, or chowder, Figgins and Higgins, Fippins, Filby,--Crowder, Not vile apothecary’s pounded stuffs, But something blacker, bloodier, and louder, Gun-powder! This stuff, as people know, is _semper Eadem_; very hasty in its temper-- Like Honour that resents the gentlest taps, Mere semblances of blows, however slight; So powder fires, although you only p’rhaps Strike light. To make it therefore, is a ticklish business And sometimes gives both head and heart a dizziness, For as all human flash and fancy minders, Frequenting fights and Powder-works well know, There seldom is a mill without a blow Sometimes upon the grinders. But then--the melancholy phrase to soften, Mr. B.’s mill _transpir’d_ so very often! And advertised--than all Price Currents louder, “Fragments look up--there is a rise in Powder.” So frequently, it caused the neighbours’ wonder,-- And certain people had the inhumanity To lay it all to Mr. Baker’s vanity, That he might have to say--“That was _my_ thunder!” One day--so goes the tale, Whether, with iron hoof, Not sparkle-proof, Some ninny-hammer struck upon a nail,-- Whether some glow-worm of the Guy Faux stamp, Crept in the building, with Unsafety Lamp-- One day this mill that had by water ground, Became a sort of windmill and blew round. With bounce that went in sound as far as Dover, it Sent half the workmen sprawling to the sky; Besides some visitors who gained thereby, What they had asked--permission “to go over it!” Of course it was a very hard and high blow, And somewhat differed from what’s called a fly-blow. At Cowes’ Regatta as I once observed, A pistol-shot made twenty vessels start; If such a sound could terrify oak’s heart, Think how this crash the human nerve unnerved In fact, it was a very awful thing,--