ghost; but as I saw that sight my knees fell a-trembling violently under me, and such a sickness came over me, that I was fain to sink down on the grass by a tree against which I leaned, and lost almost all consciousness for a minute or two: then I gathered myself up, and, advancing towards the couple on the walk, loosened the blade of the little silver-hilted hanger I always wore in its scabbard; for I was resolved to pass it through the bodies of the delinquents, and spit them like two pigeons. I don’t tell what feelings else besides those of rage were passing through my mind; what bitter blank disappointment, what mad wild despair, what a sensation as if the whole world was tumbling from under me; I make no doubt that my reader hath been jilted by the ladies many times, and so bid him recall his own sensations when the shock first fell upon him.     

       ‘No, Norelia,’ said the Captain (for it was the fashion of those times for lovers to call themselves by the most romantic names out of novels),       ‘except for you and four others, I vow before all the gods, my heart has never felt the soft flame!’      

       ‘Ah! you men, you men, Eugenio!’ said she (the beast’s name was John),       ‘your passion is not equal to ours. We are like—like some plant I’ve read of—we bear but one flower and then we die!’      

       ‘Do you mean you never felt an inclination for another?’ said Captain Quin.     

       ‘Never, my Eugenio, but for thee! How can you ask a blushing nymph such a question?’      

       ‘Darling Norelia!’ said he, raising her hand to his lips.     

       I had a knot of cherry-coloured ribands, which she had given me out of her breast, and which somehow I always wore upon me. I pulled these out of my bosom, and flung them in Captain Quin’s face, and rushed out with my little sword drawn, shrieking, ‘She’s a liar—she’s a liar, Captain Quin! Draw, sir, and defend yourself, if you are a man!’ and with these words I leapt at the monster, and collared him, while Nora made the air echo with her screams; at the sound of which the other captain and Mysie hastened up.     

       Although I sprang up like a weed in my illness, and was now nearly attained to my full growth of six feet, yet I was but a lath by the side of the enormous English captain, who had 

 Prev. P 29/293 next