be gone! Come,
Clinker, take a bite with us!"

Leaving this pleasant party to sip their claret and water, and nibble
their midday food, while they rambled back to the past or schemed into
the future, we will return to the frigate.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE COMMANDER OF THE "ROSALIE."

"The handsomest fellow, Heaven bless him!
Setting the girls all wild to possess him,
With his dark mustache and his hazel eyes,
And cigars in those pretty lips--"

"That girl who fain would choose a mate,
Should ne'er in fondness fail her,
May thank her lucky stars if Fate
Should splice her to a sailor."

"The 'Rosalie's' gig coming alongside, sir," reported the quarter-master
to the officer of the watch.

"Very well. A boatswain's mate and two side-boys. Mr. Rat, have the
barge manned, and send her on shore for the commodore. Mr. Martin, tell
the boatswain to call all hands to furl awnings."

While these orders were being executed, the whistles ringing through the
ship, the sailors lining the white hammocks, stowed in a double line,
fore and aft, around the nettings of the frigate, in readiness to cast
off the stops and lacings and let fall the awnings, the officer on deck
stood near the gangway. At the same time there tripped up the
accommodation-ladder, lightly touching the snowy man-ropes, a young
fellow of about one-and-twenty, dressed in undress frock-coat, one
epaulet, smooth white trowsers, and shoes. Catching up his sword in his
left hand as he reached the upper grating of the ladder, he took off his
blue, gold-banded cap, and half bounded, with a springy step, on to the
frigate's deck.

Observe him well, young ladies, as he stands there; for of all the
scarlet or blue jackets on whose arm you have leaned and looked up at
with your soft violet, blue, or dark eyes, you never saw a young fellow
that you would sooner give those eyes, or those warm hearts too,
throbbing under your bodices, or who would drive you wilder to possess
him, than that gallant young sailor standing on the "Monongahela's"
deck. Ay, observe him well, that tall, graceful youth, with a waist you
might span with one of your short plump arms; those slim patrician feet,
that might wear your own little satin slippers; then that swelling chest
and those elegantly turned shoulders, which will take both of your arms,
one of these days, to entwine and clasp around them! Ah! but the round
throat and chin, the smiling mo