rse can
turn grey. Permit me to take you by the nose; the true handle of the
face, sir: it gives the man, as it were, a sort of a command, sir, of
the whole head; he can box the compass with it. Happy indeed you are,
sir, and much to be envied. There was one of the captain's turtles
killed yesterday--Jumbo is a cook, a most excellent cook--a spoonful of
the soup to-day will be worth a king's ransom--a peck of March dust!
pooh!--I wouldn't give a spoonful of that soup for a hundred bushels of
it. Take my advice, sir, and have soup twice, sir. As it was carried
along the main-deck, I'm dishonest, if the young gentlemen didn't follow
it, with the water running down in streams from the corners of their
mouths, and their tongues entreatingly lolling out, like a parcel of
hungry dogs in Cripplegate, following the catsmeat-man's barrow. One
more rasp over your upper lip, and you are as smooth as the new-born
babe--talking of lips, as the first spoonful of that turtle-soup glides
over them--the devil! I'll take God to witness, it was an accident--the
roll of the ship!"

Joshua Daunton was on his knees before Mr Pigtop, who was in an agony
of pain, holding on his upper lip, which was nearly severed from his
face, whilst the blood was streaming through his fingers.

Doctor Thompson with diachylon and black sticking-plaster was soon on
the spot to the assistance of the almost dislipped master's-mate. After
the best was done for it, the poor fellow cut but a sorry appearance;
still his extreme hunger, made almost furious by the vision of the
turtle-soup, so artfully conjured up by the malicious Joshua, got the
better of his sense of pain; and with a great band of black plaster
reaching transversely from the right nostril to the left corner of his
mouth, the grim-looking Mr Pigtop made haste to don the new uniform.

In the meantime, the protestations and tears of Joshua had convinced
everybody that the horrible gash was merely the effect of accident, for
the ship was rolling a great deal at the moment. What the captain and
his guests were doing in the cabin above with the turtle-soup, it is
needless for me to state, for that same soup was never fated to gladden
the wounded lip of Mr Pigtop.

The hasty and famishing gentleman, in his very first attempt to draw on
his new trousers, to the astonishment of all his messmates, who had now
gathered round him, found them separated in the middle of each of his
legs. He might as