Cringle's Log" is a veritable masterpiece. Humour and pathos
and gorgeous descriptions are woven into a thrilling
narrative. Scott wrote many other things beside "Tom Cringle,"
but only one story, "The Cruise of the Midge" (1836), is in
any way comparable with his first and most famous romance.


_I.--The Quenching of the Torch_


The evening was closing in dark and rainy, with every appearance of a
gale from the westward, and the red and level rays of the setting sun
flashed on the black hull and tall spars of his Britannic Majesty's
sloop Torch. At the distance of a mile or more lay a long,
warlike-looking craft, rolling heavily and silently in the trough of the
sea.

A flash was seen; the shot fell short, but close to us, evidently thrown
from a heavy cannon.

Mr. Splinter, the first lieutenant, jumped from the gun he stood on, and
dived into the cabin to make his report.

Captain Deadeye was a staid, wall-eyed veteran, with his coat of a
regular Rodney cut, broad skirts, long waist, and stand-up collar, over
which dangled either a queue, or marlinspike with a tuft of oakum at the
end of it--it would have puzzled old Nick to say which. His lower spars
were cased in tight unmentionables of what had once been white
kerseymere, and long boots, the coal-scuttle tops of which served as
scuppers to carry off the drainings from his coat-flaps in bad weather;