The admiral walked to the door in high dudgeon; when he was near to it, Varney said, in some of his most winning and gentle accents,—­

“Will you not take some refreshment, sir before you go from my humble house?”

“No!” roared the admiral.

“Something cooling?”

“No!”

“Very good, sir.  A hospitable host can do no more than offer to entertain his guests.”

Admiral Bell turned at the door, and said, with some degree of intense bitterness,

“You look rather poorly.  I suppose, to-night, you will go and suck somebody’s blood, you shark—­you confounded vampyre!  You ought to be made to swallow a red-hot brick, and then let dance about till it digests.”

Varney smiled as he rang the bell, and said to a servant,—­

“Show my very excellent friend Admiral Bell out.  He will not take any refreshments.”

The servant bowed, and preceded the admiral down the staircase; but, to his great surprise, instead of a compliment in the shape of a shilling or half-a-crown for his pains, he received a tremendous kick behind, with a request to go and take it to his master, with his compliments.

The fume that the old admiral was in beggars all description.  He walked to Bannerworth Hall at such a rapid pace, that Jack Pringle had the greatest difficulty in the world to keep up with him, so as to be at all within speaking distance.

“Hilloa, Jack,” cried the old man, when they were close to the Hall.  “Did you see me kick that fellow?”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“Well, that’s some consolation, at any rate, if somebody saw it.  It ought to have been his master, that’s all I can say to it, and I wish it had.”

“How have you settled it, sir?”

“Settled what?”

“The fight, sir.”

“D—­n me, Jack, I haven’t settled it at all.”

“That’s bad, sir.”

“I know it is; but it shall be settled for all that, I can tell him, let him vapour as much as he may about pinking me, and one thing and another.”

“Pinking you, sir?”

“Yes.  He wants to fight with cutlasses, or toasting-forks, d—­n me, I don’t know exactly which, and then he must have a surgeon on the ground, for fear when he pinks me I shouldn’t slip my cable in a regular way, and he should be blamed.”

Jack gave a long whistle, as he replied,—­

“Going to do it, sir?”

“I don’t know now what I’m going to do.  Mind, Jack, mum is the word.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“I’ll turn the matter over in my mind, and then decide upon what had best be done.  If he pinks me, I’ll take d——­d good care he don’t pink Charles.”

“No, sir, don’t let him do that.  A wamphigher, sir, ain’t no good opponent to anybody.  I never seed one afore, but it strikes me as the best way to settle him, would be to shut him up in some little bit of a cabin, and then smoke him with brimstone, sir.”