“What next?” said he.
“The third night, leave the doors and windows open; go to bed as usual, and put nothing at all in the cabin.”
“What then?” he asked again, in a state of anxiety.
“Why, of course, when they come and find nothing to eat, and being in still greater numbers than the two previous nights, they will be all caught.”
“How,” said he, “will they be all caught?”
“Why, of course, finding nothing to eat, they will be all taken in.”
“That be d——d! I have made a nice fool of myself, standing here half naked to listen to such rubbish as that.”
Having said this, he ran into his cabin, and for a long while I heard him sneezing and muttering to himself. The word “fool” was all that I could catch; and soon after all was silent till daybreak.
On waking, I at first regretted having carried the joke so far, when all at once I heard the good captain burst out laughing and sneezing. The first visit I had in the morning, while shaving in my cabin, was from the captain. As it was then only six o’clock, I made sure he was coming to challenge me, and began to think of choosing my favourite weapons, which I had so successfully employed on a similar occasion in London, after a serious discussion with a red republican on the subject of monarchy.
One afternoon, at a French restaurant in the Haymarket, a rather animated discussion, apropos of the new republic of the year ‘48, took place between myself and a person whom I afterwards ascertained to be the duellist Cournet, an officer in the French navy, who has already been mentioned in the earlier pages of this work.