The snuffbox which the Lieutenant had regarded with such prodigious pride as the one emblem of his otherwise dubious virtue was gone.

III

THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF QUALITY

The Honorable Frederick Dunburne, second son of the Earl of Clandennie, having won some six hundred pounds at ecarte at a single sitting at Pintzennelli’s, embarked with his two friends, Captain Blessington and Lord George Fitzhope, to conclude the night with a round of final dissipation in the more remote parts of London.  Accordingly they embarked at York Stairs for the Three Cranes, ripe for any mischief.  Upon the water the three young gentlemen amused themselves by shouting and singing, pausing only now and then to discharge a broadside of raillery at the occupants of some other and passing boat.

All went very well for a while, some of those in the passing boats laughing and railing in return, others shouting out angry replies.  At last they fell in with a broad-beamed, flat-nosed, Dutch-appearing yawl-boat, pulling heavily up against the stream, and loaded with a crew of half-drunken sailors just come into port.  In reply to the challenge of our young gentlemen, a man in the stern of the other boat, who appeared to be the captain of the crew—­a fellow, as Dunburne could indefinitely perceive by the dim light of the lanthorn and the faint illumination of the misty half-moon, possessing a great, coarse red face and a bullet head surmounted by a mildewed and mangy fur cap—­ bawled out, in reply, that if they would only put their boat near enough for a minute or two he would give them a bellyful of something that would make them quiet for the rest of the night.  He added that he would ask for nothing better than to have the opportunity of beating Dunburne’s head to a pudding, and that he would give a crown to have the three of them within arm’s-reach for a minute.

Upon this Captain Blessington swore that he should be immediately accommodated, and therewith delivered an order to that effect to the watermen.  These obeyed so promptly that almost before Dunburne was aware of what had happened the two boats were side by side, with hardly a foot of space between the gunwales.  Dunburne beheld one of the watermen of his own boat knock down one of the crew of the other with the blade of an oar, and then he himself was clutched by the collar in the grasp of the man with the fur cap.  Him Dunburne struck twice in the face, and in the moonlight he saw that he had started the blood to running down from his assailant’s nose.  But his blows produced no other effect than to call forth a volley of the most horrible oaths that ever greeted his ears.  Thereupon the boats drifted so far apart that our young gentleman was haled over the gunwale and soused in the cold water of the river.  The next moment some one struck him upon the head with a belaying-pin or a billet of wood, a blow so crushing