This declaration, though not strictly true, was extremely agreeable
to Mr. Trunnion, who, with an air of triumph, observed, "Aha! Jack,
I thought I should bring you up, with your gibes and your jokes:
but suppose you had heard it before, is that any reason why it
shouldn't be told to another person? There's the stranger, belike he
has heard it five hundred times too; han't you, brother? addressing
himself to Mr. Pickle; who replying, with a look expressing
curiosity, "No, never;" he thus went on: "Well, you seem to be an
honest, quiet sort of a man; and therefore you must know, as I said
before, I fell in with a French man-of-war, Cape Finistere bearing
about six leagues on the weather bow, and the chase three leagues
to leeward, going before the wind: whereupon I set my studding sails;
and coming up with her, hoisted my jack and ensign, and poured in
a broadside, before you could count three rattlins in the mizen
shrouds; for I always keep a good look-out, and love to have the
first fire."

"That I'll be sworn," said Hatchway: "for the day we made the
Triumph you ordered the men to fire when she was hull-to, by the
same token we below pointed the guns at a flight of gulls; and I
won a can of punch from the gunner by killing the first bird."

Exasperated at this sarcasm, he replied, with great vehemence, "You
lie, lubber! D-- your bones! what business have you to come always
athwart my hawse in this manner? You, Pipes, was upon deck, and can
bear witness whether or not I fired too soon. Speak, you blood of
a ----, and that upon the word of a seaman: how did the chase bear
of us when I gave orders to fire?"

Pipes, who had hitherto sat silent, being thus called upon to give