Page:The Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Music & Romance 1832.pdf/50

Rh monkey, sitting out there on the sprit-sail yard, which played such a trick with my best jacket t'other day, was only a roast goose, well stuffed with potatoes and onions, he and I would soon be on better terms than we are at present."

"Why, Tackle, in case such a metamorphose should befall the poor monkey, I myself would not object to join your mess, as I don't relish pea-soup, and made but a slight dinner on it. But I think I heard you give the girls at P.- a touch of sentiment when we lay there."

"Ay, ay, one's forced to that now and then. Why, they expect it, as a matter of course; and after a cruise in the Tropics, if one could not tell them of spicy breezes, and orange groves, they'd set him down for a greenhorn. Now, for my part, though I spun them a yarn, as long as a main-top bowline, about orange groves, full of lovely nymphs, and such balderdash, I never saw but one grove of the kind, during all my cruising in the West Indies; and the fair damsel it contained was none other than a nigger, baking cassaba bread on an old rusty griddle. She, too, was such a fright, that the first luff's dog, which I had along with me, barked himself into a fit of the croup, at the mere sight of her. I have always thought, however, that the little blue-eyed girl we both admired so much, was quizzing me; for when I found myself hove short, and so tailed on a quotation, she set up a giggle at it."

"What was it, pray?"

"Why," said I, " as the poet says of the arrival of Columbus in the New World,

"The deuce you did ! How could the groves and trees blow over the seas?"

"So thought I, unless it might be in a hurricane; so I corrected myself, and said, " I mean the leaves from the trees, of course, Miss;" but she smiled at that, too ; and as there was nought else to give her but the roots, I stopped at that, and hauled up for the supper table.”

"My dear fellow, the words are:—

"Well, well, 'land wind,' or sea breeze,' if you ever catch me prating sentiment or poetry to a girl again, slacken up all my lanyards in a gale of wind, and clap a rocky lee shore close