on my part, and very imprudent; for I must
confess that he had before beaten me in a regular fistic encounter. But
it was really a great relief to me. I longed for some vent to my angry
and exasperated feelings. We were soon out in the steerage. Oh! the
wolfishness of human nature! That low and brutal fight was a great
luxury to me. Positively, at the time I did not feel his blows. At
every murderous lunge that I made at him, I shouted, "Take that
Daunton;" or, "Was that well planted, brother?"

Had we fought either with sword or pistol, the enjoyment would have been
infinitely less to me. There was a stern rapture in pounding him
beneath me--in dashing my hands in his blood--in disfiguring his face
piecemeal. In our evil passions we are sad brutes. Pigtop had the
pluck natural to Englishmen--he would rather not have fought just then;
but, having once begun, he seemed resolved to see it out manfully. The
consequence was--to use a common and expressive phrase--I beat him to
within an inch of his life, and then cried with vexation, because he
could no longer stand up to be beaten out of the little that my fury had
left him.

When the fray was over, my sturdy opponent had no reason to be envious
of my smooth face.

Rather inflamed than satiated with the result of my encounter, whilst my
opponent turned into his hammock, and there lay moaning, I, with both my
eyes dreadfully blackened, and my countenance puffed up, threw myself
upon the lockers, and there sleeplessly passed the whole night,
devouring my own heart. If, for a moment, I happened to doze, I was
tearing, in my imagination, Joshua Daunton piecemeal, hurling him down
precipices, or crushing him beneath the jagged fragments of stupendous
rocks. It was a night of agony.

CHAPTER SIXTY.

SOFT TACK, ONE OF THE BEST TACKS, AFTER ALL--THAT LEGS OF MUTTON
SOMETIMES PRODUCE FRIENDSHIPS OF LONG STANDING COMPLETELY PROVED, AS
WELL AS THE VALUE OF GOOD GRAIN BEST ASCERTAINED AFTER IT HAS BEEN WELL
THRASHED.

The next day we anchored in the Downs. Weak, stiff, and ill, I surveyed
myself in my dressing-glass. My battered features presented a hideous
spectacle. But I cared not. I was a prisoner--I should have no
occasion to emerge from the gloom of the steerage. This was truly a
happy return to my native shores.

But I was not altogether left without commiseration--not altogether
without sympathy. Both Dr Thompson and the purser looked in to see