ddy lair, half-blinded by the last blow,
which had fallen on his head, ran full butt at the lieutenant, and
precipitated his senior officer and commander headlong down the
fore-hatchway.

Vanslyperken fell with great force, was stunned, and lay without motion
at the foot of the ladder, while the corporal, whose wrath was always
excessive when his blood was up, but whose phlegmatic blood could not be
raised without some such decided stimulus as a handspike, now turned
round and round the forecastle, like a bull looking for his assailants;
but the corporal had the forecastle all to himself, and, as he
gradually cooled down, he saw lying close to him the speaking-trumpet of
his senior officer.

"Tousand tyfels," murmured Corporal Van Spitter, "but it must have been
the skipper. Got for damn, dis is hanging matter!" Corporal Van Spitter
was as cool as a cucumber as soon as he observed what a mistake he had
made; in fact, he quivered and trembled in his fat. "But then," thought
he, "perhaps he did not know me--no, he could not, or he never would
have handspiked _me_." So Corporal Van Spitter walked down the hatchway,
where he ascertained that his commandant lay insensible. "Dat is good,"
thought he, and he went aft, lighted his lanthorn, and, as a _ruse_,
knocked at the cabin-door. Receiving no answer but the growl of
Snarleyyow, he went in, and then ascended to the quarter-deck, looked
round him, and inquired of the man at the wheel where Mr Vanslyperken
might be. The man replied that he had gone forward a few minutes before,
and thither the corporal proceeded. Of course, not finding him, he
returned, telling the man that the skipper was not in the cabin or the
forecastle, and wondering where he could be. He then descended to the
next officer in command, Dick Short, and called him.

"Well," said Short.

"Can't find Mr Vanslyperken anywhere," said the corporal.

"Look," replied Dick, turning round in his hammock.

"Mein Got, I have looked de forecastle, de quarter-deck, and de
cabin,--he not anywhere."

"Overboard," replied Dick.

"I come to you, sir, to make inquiry," said the corporal.

"Turn out," said Dick, suiting the action to the words, and lighting
with his feet on the deck in his shirt.

While Short was dressing himself, the corporal summoned up all his
marines; and the noise occasioned by this turn out, and the conversation
overheard by those who were awake, soon gave the crew of the cutter to
understa