The good ship Firefly tossed and tumbled on the mountainous waves of the stormy sea, like a cork in a gutter; and when she could not stem the waves, politically tried a little tergiversation, and went stern foremost!  The boatswain piped all hands, and poor Peter Simple piped his eye; for the cry of the whole crew was, that they were all going to Davy Jones’s locker.  The waves struck her so repeatedly, that at last she appeared as ungovernable as a scold in a rage; and as she found she could not, by any means, strike the storm in the wind, and so silence it, she gave vent to her fury by striking upon a rock!

It was a hard alternative truly; but what could she do?  The long boat was soon alongside, and was not long before it was filled with tars and salt-water.  Alas! she was speedily swamped, and the crew were compelled to swim for their lives.  Peter, however, could not swim, but the sea gave him a lift in his dilemma, and washed him clean ashore, where he lay for some time like a veritable lump of salt-Peter!  When the storm had abated he came to himself, and of course found himself in no agreeable company!

Sticking his cocked-hat on his head, and grasping his dirk in his hand, he tottered to a rock, when, seating himself, he philosophically rocked to and fro.  “Oh! vy vos I a midshipman,” cried he, “to be wrecked on this desolate island?  I vish I vos at home at Bloomsbury!  Oh! that I had but to turn and embrace my kind, good, benevolent, and much respected grandmother.”  As he uttered this pathetic plaint, he heard a chatter—­of which, at first considering that it proceeded from his own teeth, he took no notice—­but the sounds being repeated, he turned his head, and beheld a huge baboon with a dog-face and flowing hair, grinning with admiration at his cocked hat.

One look was sufficient! he leaped from his seat, and rushed wildly forward, threading a wood in his way, and turning in and out—­in and out —­with the sharpness and facility of a needle in the heel of a worsted stocking—­he never stayed his flight, ’till he fell plump into the centre of a group of Indians, who received him with a yell!—­loud enough to split the drums of a whole drawing-room full of ears polite.

He would have fallen headlong with fear and exhaustion upon the turf, had not a gentle female caught the slender youth in her arms, and embraced him with all the energetic affection of a boa-constrictor.

Peter trembled like a little inoffensive mouse in the claws of a tabby!

At the same time one of the Indians stepped forward, brandishing his scalping knife.

He was the very prototype of an animated bronze Hercules; and, seizing the poor middy’s lank locks, with a peculiar twist, in his iron grasp—­Peter fainted!

Peter SIMPLE’S foreign Adventure.  No.  II.

“O! what a lost mutton am I!”—­Inkle and Yarico.