d not, laughed and
smoked.

Then a Spaniard (who was a shipwright) sang one of his national songs to
an accompaniment of thumb-snapping (to imitate castanets), at which he
was very expert. He had a fine baritone voice, and his song was full of
fire, being a famous bull-fighting ditty, in which El Toro came in for a
dashing chorus.

By and bye the fun became still faster and more furious, till old Ross,
of the timber-toe, took exception and would insist on order being kept.
Ross always constituted himself Master of the Ceremonies when anything
festive was on foot, and our men, as a matter of course, left everything
in his hands; but the men of St. Peter Port knew him not, and would have
no authority from him, and as a kind of good-natured revenge for his
interference, some of them played a practical joke upon him; but they
did not know their man, for no sooner had the joke been carried into
effect (gunpowder in his pipe) than Ross seized his stick and knocked
two of his tormentors down, the rest quickly fleeing out of doors. His
wooden leg greatly handicapped him, but he at length got one of the men
in a corner, who, on finding there was no means of escape, struck out
right and left at Ross's somewhat prominent nose, causing the claret to
flow like the cataract of Lodore. Now his Scotch blood was up, and he
certainly would have done his assailant an injury, as he was a very
powerful man, had not some of his comrades rescued him. But this did not
appease his fury, for he went at them all with a glass bottle in one
hand and a heavy stick in the other; but luckily his career was cut
short by a man who ran behind him, and with a well-directed blow with
an iron rod broke his leg clean in two just below the knee--the wooden
one, of course. Down came the hero, who in his rage tore up the earth
around him to fling at the circle of grinning faces. By this time my
father and the skipper came upon the scene, and after a time cooled down
the gallant Scot, and persuaded him to "gang awa" to bed, which he did,
going in state, borne at the _four_ corners by four of his shipmates.

This incident put a stop to the singing, but commenced fun in another
way. Some of the fellows cut up the remains of Ross's leg and stick and
set them on fire, the barrel which had done duty for a rostrum being
also broken up and added; other wooden articles were quickly flung on,
till at length quite a large bonfire was formed, round which these
excited m