To touch you more near--you yourself have been known to get fou and pugnacious on great occasions--the visit of royalty, for instance--it is on record. A mountain foreigner from Rossshire engages you, for some unknown insult, in single combat, and, leagued with John Barleycorn, (let us imagine an impossibility,) floors you by a peg on the gnomon--the wound is in the front--your snout is broken, but your honour is whole. Would it be so, were the Gael to allege, that “her mainsell had coupit you by a pig kick on her preach?” By all the gods, he of the laconic garment, the “thousand hill man,” would have been careering on a cloud after his “freen” Ossian, with the moon shining through him, within that very hour. Still I would not have bothered you; but I know his Most Gracious Majesty King William, God bless him! (who can forget poor Burns’s “Tarry Breeks?”) either has noticed it, or will notice it, the instant he comes to that part of the Log. Now this, without explanation, is inconvenient, trowsers being likely to come as high up in these days as pantaloons, and I have some claim on him, seeing that my uncle, Job Cringle, some five-and-forty years ago, at Jamaica, in the town of Port Royal, had his headrails smashed, the neb of his nose (stem) bitten off by a bungo, and the end of his spine (stern-post), that mysterious point, where man ends, and monkey begins, grievously shaken in a spree at Kitty Finnans, in Prince William Henry’s company. “Poo, nonsense.” Indeed!--Why, the very devil himself, the author of the evil, shall be convinced that there is much peril in the transposition of ends. I will ask him--“What is a sternutation?” (words being his weapons) “What is a sternutation?” He shall answer learnedly by the card--“A sneeze,” the nose or stem being the organ. Then he shall ask Jem Sparkle “What is a sternutation?”--You laugh, old gentleman; but your devil’s “mistack” looks every inch as queer to a sailor as our topman’s answer would sound to you. Yours with all cordiality, notwithstanding, “THOMAS CRINGLE.” CHAPTER IV.--Scenes on the Costa Firme. “Here lies a sheer hulk, poor Tom Bowline.” Charles Dibdin, “Tom Bowling,” Line 1. I was awakened by the low growling, and short bark of the dog. The night was far spent; the tiny sparks of the fire-flies that were glancing in the doorway began to grow pale; the chirping of the crickets and lizards, and the snore of the tree-toad, waxed fainter, and the wild cry of the tiger-cat was no longer heard. The terral, or land-wind, which is usually strongest towards morning, moaned loudly on the hillside, and came rushing past with a melancholy sough, through the brushwood that surrounded the hut, shaking off the heavy dew from the palm and cocoa-nut trees, like large drops of rain.