Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/99

 I am not going to relate how many kisses these lovely girls bestowed on this envied captain. If such are captains' perquisites, who would not be a captain? Suffice it to say, they released the whole of their countrymen, and returned on board in triumph. The story reached Halifax, where the good-humoured admiral only said he was sorry he was not a captain, and all the happy society made themselves very merry with it. The captain, who is as brave as he is good, was promoted soon after, entirely from his own intrinsic merit, but not for this action, in which candour and friendship must acknowledge he was defeated. The lord chancellor used to say, he always laughed at the settlement of pm-money, as ladies were generally either kicked out of it, or kissed out of it; but his lordship, in the whole course of his legal practice, never saw a captain of a man-of-war kissed out of forty men by two pretty Irish girls. After this, who would not shout "Erin go bragh!"