essels, there was found, as the French
prize-master, and now of course our prisoner, a mercurial little fellow
of the name of Messurier. He was very proud of the glory of his nation,
and still prouder of his own. As France possessed many historians, and
Monsieur Adolphe Sigismund Messurier but one, and that one himself, of
course, he had the duty of, at least, three hundred savants thrown upon
his own shoulders: he performed it nobly, and with an infinite relish.
Now, when a person who is given to much talking is also given to much
drinking, it generally happens, injurious as is the vice of the
grog-bottle, that the vice of the voluble tongue is still worse. When
in his cups, he told of the scores that he had slain, counting them off
by threes and fives upon his fingers, his thumbs indicating captains,
his forefingers first-lieutenants, and so on with the various grades in
our service, until the _aspirants_, or middies, were merely honoured by
his little finger as their representative, we only laughed; and asked
him, if he had been so destructive to the officers, how many men had
fallen by the puissance of his arm. It seemed that these latter were
too numerous and too ignoble to be counted; for that question was always
answered with a _bah_! and a rapidly passing over the extended palm of
his left hand with his open right one.

But when, one evening, he mentioned that he could pilot a frigate into
the inland waters from whence swarmed the crowd of schooner privateers
that infested the islands, and by their swift sailing to windward,
eluded our fastest ships, we laughed still, and I did something more; I
reported this boast to Captain Reud.

"Then," exclaimed my valorous little creole, "by all the virtues of a
long eighteen, he shall take in His Majesty's frigate, _Eos_."

Whenever he protested by a long eighteen, in the efficacy of whose
powers he had the most implicit reliance, we might look upon the matter
as performed.

The next morning, whilst Monsieur Messurier was solacing his aching head
with his hands, oblivious of the events of the preceding evening, he was
feelingly reminded of his consummate skill in pilotage. He then became
most unnaturally modest, and denied all pretensions to the honour. Now
Captain Reud had no idea that even an enemy should wrap up his talent in
a napkin, so he merely said to him, "You must take my ship in." When
the captain had made up his mind, the deed generally trod upon the