correct. Some also trumpeted over much, knowing that there
was not the probability that there is at present of their being found
out.

This statement of mine increased, as I thought it would, the respect all
were inclined to pay us. Dinner was just going on the table, and when
we had satisfied our hunger, all our tongues were busily employed in our
peculiar styles in recounting our adventures. The butler and footmen
often stopped to listen, and not a little forgot their proper duties.

One placed an empty dish before my mother, into which the cook had
forgot to put the poultry; the butler filled my father's glass with fish
soy, and two of the men bolted tilt against each other and capsized the
remains of a sirloin of beef over the carpet with which one of them was
hurrying off after waiting to listen to the fag end of one of my
narratives.

Toby Bluff was as busily employed in the servants' hall, and from the
broad grins on the countenances of the footmen as they returned to the
dining-room, I have no doubt that his narratives were of a facetious
character.

I never have spent so jolly a time as I did during that visit home. Our
wounds did not incommode us; we had everything our own way, and all my
family and friends made a vast deal of us.

At length a newspaper arrived, giving an account of the capture of the
Aigle, and confirming all I had said, and when, two nights after, we
appeared at a country ball, and as we entered the room the band struck
up "See the conquering hero comes," we were higher in feather than ever.

Grey and Spellman had, however, to go and see their own friends, and
they enjoyed the rather doubtful advantage of again undergoing the same
treatment they had received at our house. When they were gone, and the
nine days of wonder were over, I found myself sinking into a rather more
ordinary personage. In those good old days, however, midshipmen who had
been in an engagement and got wounded were somebodies--at all events, if
their fathers had fine country seats and saw a number of guests.

Time sped on. I do not think my family were tired of me, but when the
Doris was reported ready for sea, they calmly acquiesced in the
necessity of my rejoining her without delay, and so Toby and I found
ourselves packed off in a yellow chaise, and directed to find our way
back to Plymouth as fast as we could.

We made the journey without any adventure, and on our arrival on board
found that Mr Lukyn