urteous way of saluting you, if it were only to borrow your
knife. Jack had read all the verses of Byron, and all the romances of
Scott. He talked of Rob Roy, Don Juan, and Pelham; Macbeth and Ulysses;
but, above all things, was an ardent admirer of Camoens. Parts of the
Lusiad, he could recite in the original. Where he had obtained his
wonderful accomplishments, it is not for me, his humble subordinate, to
say. Enough, that those accomplishments were so various; the languages
he could converse in, so numerous; that he more than furnished an
example of that saying of Charles the Fifth--_ he who speaks five
languages is as good as five men_. But Jack, he was better than a
hundred common mortals; Jack was a whole phalanx, an entire army; Jack
was a thousand strong; Jack would have done honour to the Queen of
England's drawing-room; Jack must have been a by-blow of some British
Admiral of the Blue. A finer specimen of the island race of Englishmen
could not have been picked out of Westminster Abbey of a coronation day.

His whole demeanor was in strong contrast to that of one of the
Captains of the fore-top. This man, though a good seaman, furnished an
example of those insufferable Britons, who, while preferring other
countries to their own as places of residence; still, overflow with all
the pompousness of national and individual vanity combined. "When I was
on board the Audacious"--for a long time, was almost the invariable
exordium to the fore-top Captain's most cursory remarks. It is often
the custom of men-of-war's-men, when they deem anything to be going on
wrong aboard ship to refer to _last cruise_ when of course everything
was done _ship-shape and Bristol fashion_. And by referring to the
_Audacious_--an expressive name by the way--the fore-top Captain meant
a ship in the English navy, in which he had had the honour of serving.
So continual were his allusions to this craft with the amiable name,
that at last, the _Audacious_ was voted a bore by his shipmates. And
one hot afternoon, during a calm, when the fore-top Captain like many
others, was standing still and yawning on the spar-deck; Jack Chase,
his own countryman, came up to him, and pointing at his open mouth,
politely inquired, whether that was the way they caught _flies_ in Her
Britannic Majesty's ship, the _Audacious?_ After that, we heard no more
of the craft.

Now, the tops of a frigate are quite spacious and cosy. They are railed
in behind so as to fo