more or less covered with gravy and wine dregs.  However, after a good laugh, we gathered ourselves up, and at length we were ushered on the scene.  Mine host, after stifling his laughter the best way he could, again sat down at the head of his table, sparkling with crystal and wax-lights, while a superb lamp hung overhead.  The company was composed chiefly of naval and military men, but there was also a sprinkling of civilians, or muftees, to use a West India expression.  Most of them rose as we entered, and after they had taken a glass of wine, and had their laugh at our mishap, our landlord retired to one side with Mr. Treenail, while I, poor little middy as I was, remained standing at the end of the room, close to the head of the stairs.  The gentleman who sat at the foot of the table had his back towards me, and was not at first aware of my presence.  But the guest at his right hand, a happy-looking, red-faced, well-dressed man, soon drew his attention towards me.  The party to whom I was thus indebted seemed a very jovial-looking personage, and appeared to be well known to all hands, and indeed the life of the party, for, like Falstaff, he was not only witty in himself, but the cause of wit in others.

The gentleman to whom he had pointed me out immediately rose, made his bow, ordered a chair, and made room for me beside himself, where, the moment it was known that we were direct from home, such a volley of questions was fired off at me that I did not know which to answer first.  At length, after Treenail had taken a glass or two of wine, the agent started him off to the admiral’s pen in his own gig, and I was desired to stay where I was until he returned.

The whole party seemed very happy, my boon ally was fun itself, and I was much entertained with the mess he made when any of the foreigners at table addressed him in French or Spanish.  I was particularly struck with a small, thin, dark Spaniard, who told very feelingly how the night before, on returning home from a party to his own lodgings, on passing through the piazza, he stumbled against something heavy that lay in his grass-hammock, which usually hung there.  He called for a light, when, to his horror, he found the body of his old and faithful valet lying in it, dead and cold, with a knife sticking under his fifth rib—­no doubt intended for his master.  The speaker was Bolivar.  About midnight, Mr. Treenail returned, we shook hands with Mr. ------, and once more shoved off; and, guided by the lights shown on board the Torch we were safe home again by three in the morning, when we immediately made sail, and nothing particular happened until we arrived within a day’s sail of New Providence.  It seemed that, about a week before, a large American brig, bound from Havana to Boston had been captured in this very channel by one of our men-of-war schooners, and carried into Nassau; out of which port, for their own security, the authorities