Great Britain. Only two other circumstances in that jovial night made
much separate impression on me. One was this. A man in our draft of
marines, named Tom Packer, a wild unsteady young fellow, but the son of a
respectable shipwright in Portsmouth Yard, and a good scholar who had
been well brought up, comes to me after a spell of dancing, and takes me
aside by the elbow, and says, swearing angrily:

"Gill Davis, I hope I may not be the death of Sergeant Drooce one day!"

Now, I knew Drooce had always borne particularly hard on this man, and I
knew this man to be of a very hot temper: so, I said:

"Tut, nonsense! don't talk so to me! If there's a man in the corps who
scorns the name of an assassin, that man and Tom Packer are one."

Tom wipes his head, being in a mortal sweat, and says he:

"I hope so, but I can't answer for myself when he lords it over me, as he
has just now done, before a woman. I tell you what, Gill! Mark my
words! It will go hard with Sergeant Drooce, if ever we are in an
engagement together, and he has to look to me to save him. Let him say a
prayer then, if he knows one, for it's all over with him, and he is on
his Death-bed. Mark my words!"

I did mark his words, and very soon afterwards, too, as will shortly be
taken down.

The other circumstance that I noticed at that ball, was, the gaiety and
attachment of Christian George King. The innocent spirits that Sambo
Pilot was in, and the impossibility he found himself under of showing all