“It is the boatswain of the slaver in the outer harbour, squire,” the worthy disciple of Bacchus concluded; “a man who has followed the water many a day, and who has seen sights and prodigies enough to fill a smart volume.  Old Bor’us the people call him, though his lawful name is Jack Nightingale.  Is the toddy to the squire’s relish?”

The stranger assented to the latter query, by smacking his lips, and bowing, as he put down the nearly untouched draught.  He then turned his head, to examine the individual who might, by the manner in which he declaimed, have been termed, in the language of the country, the second “orator of the day.”

A stature which greatly exceeded six feet; enormous whiskers, that quite concealed a moiety of his grim countenance; a scar, which was the memorial of a badly healed gash, that had once threatened to divide that moiety in quarters; limbs in proportion; the whole rendered striking by the dress of a sea man; a long, tarnished silver chain, and a little whistle of the same metal, served to render the individual in question sufficiently remarkable.  Without appearing to be in the smallest decree aware of the entrance of one altogether so superior to the class of his usual auditors, this son of the Ocean continued his narrative as follows, and in a voice that seemed given to him by nature as if in very mockery of his musical name; indeed, so very near did his tones approach to the low murmurings of a bull, that some little practice was necessary to accustom the ear to the strangely uttered words.

“Well!” he continued, thrusting his brawny arm forth, with the fist clenched, indicating the necessary point of the compass by the thumb; “the coast of Guinea might have lain hereaway, and the wind you see, was dead off shore, blowing in squalls, as a cat spits, all the same as if the old fellow, who keeps it bagged for the use of us seamen, sometimes let the stopper slip through his fingers, and was sometimes fetching it up again with a double turn round the end of his sack.—­You know what a sack is, brother?”

This abrupt question was put to the gaping bumpkin, already known to the reader, who, with the nether garment just received from the tailor under his arm, had lingered, to add the incidents of the present legend to the stock of lore that he had already obtained for the ears of his kinsfolk in the country.  A general laugh, at the expense of the admiring Pardon succeeded.  Nightingale bestowed a knowing wink on one or two of his familiars, and, profiting by the occasion, “to freshen his nip,” as he quaintly styled swallowing a pint of rum and water, he continued his narrative by saying, in a sort of admonitory tone,—­