Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/40

 made an excellent dinner, drinking success to his majesty's arms by land and sea.

Whether I had been intemperate in food or libation I know not, but I was attacked with the Walcheren fever, and was sent home in a line-of-battle ship: and, perhaps, as Pangloss says, it was all for the best; for I knew I could not have left off my inveterate habits, and it would have been very inconvenient to me, and distressing to my friends, to have ended my brilliant career, "and stopped these memoirs, at the beginning of the second and most interesting volume, by hanging the Author up, like a scarecrow, under the superintendance of the rascally provost-martial, merely for catering on the land of a Walcheren farmer. Moreover, the Dutch were unworthy of liberty, as their actions proved, to begrudge a few fowls, or a fillet of veal, to the very men who came to rescue them from bondage;—and then their water, too, who ever drank such stuff? for my part, I never tasted it when I could get anything better. As to their