One lovely night that the ship clove the dark sea into a blaze of phosphorescence, and her wake streamed like a comet’s tail, a waggish middy got a bucketful hoisted on deck, and asked the doctor to analyze that.  He did not much like it, but yielded to the general request; and by dividing it into smaller vessels, and dropping in various chemicals, made rainbows and silvery flames and what not.  But he declined to repeat the experiment:  “No, no; once is philosophy; twice is cruelty.  I’ve slain more than Samson already.”

As for Tadcaster, science had no charms for him; but fiction had; and he got it galore; for he cruised about the forecastle, and there the quartermasters and old seamen spun him yarns that held him breathless.

But one day my lord had a fit on the quarter-deck, and a bad one; and Staines found him smelling strong of rum.  He represented this to Captain Hamilton.  The captain caused strict inquiries to be made, and it came out that my lord had gone among the men, with money in both pockets, and bought a little of one man’s grog, and a little of another, and had been sipping the furtive but transient joys of solitary intoxication.

Captain Hamilton talked to him seriously; told him it was suicide.

“Never mind, old boy,” said the young monkey; “a short life and a merry one.”

Then Hamilton represented that it was very ungentleman-like to go and tempt poor Jack with his money, to offend discipline, and get flogged.  “How will you feel, Tadcaster, when you see their backs bleeding under the cat?”

“Oh, d—­n it all, George, don’t do that,” says the young gentleman, all in a hurry.

Then the commander saw he had touched the right chord.  So he played on it, till he got Lord Tadcaster to pledge his honor not to do it again.

The little fellow gave the pledge, but relieved his mind as follows:  “But it is a cursed tyrannical hole, this tiresome old ship.  You can’t do what you like in it.”

“Well, but no more you can in the grave:  and that is the agreeable residence you were hurrying to but for this tiresome old ship.”

“Lord! no more you can,” said Tadcaster, with sudden candor.  “I forgot that.”

The airs were very light; the ship hardly moved.  It was beginning to get dull, when one day a sail was sighted on the weather-bow, standing to the eastward:  on nearing her, she was seen, by the cut of her sails, to be a man-of-war, evidently homeward bound:  so Captain Hamilton ordered the main-royal to be lowered (to render signal more visible) and the “demand” hoisted.  No notice being taken of this, a gun was fired to draw her attention to the signal.  This had the desired effect; down went her main-royal, up went her “number.”  On referring to the signal book, she proved to be the Vindictive from the Pacific Station.