I soon noticed that the effects of our soaking were giving great entertainment to the company, for the heat of the apartments forced clouds of vapour from our wet coats, as we kept cruising about like so many smoking haycocks carried away by a flood. We could have been traced from room to room by the clouds we sent up, and the oily steam of the wool.
About the time supper was announced, which was tastefully laid out in the piazza, and just before the guzzle began, I was drawn towards the inner hall, along with my fair partner, by a general titter, as if something amusing had been going on. Just as we approached, however, the door connecting the two apartments was shut, in consequence of some preparation for supper, so that the hall where the company were now collected was rather awkwardly entered by a side-door from a sort of second drawingroom communicating with the principal saloon—to the left, and directly opposite to the side entrance, there was a large mirror reaching to the floor. The shutting of the door before mentioned, had thus the effect of altering the geography of the interior apartment very materially, to one who had been the whole evening passing and repassing, straight as an arrow, through it from the dancingroom to the piazza.
The change was especially unfortunate for poor Hause, the master of the brig, who was by this time pretty well slewed; for, as he entered by the side-door, with the recollection of another that should have been right a-head facing him, and opening into the piazza, he made directly for the large mirror that now fronted him, and beyond all question he would have walked right through it, just as we entered, had it not been guarded by brass rods, or fenders, having, according to the old jest, mistaken it for the doorway. After the fenders brought him up, still he was not undeceived, but for a minute showed his breeding by dancing from one side to another, and bowing and scraping in a vain attempt to get past his own shadow. At length he found out his mistake; but no way abashed, his laugh was the loudest in the throng, exclaiming, "Why, we must have the channel buoyed, Mr Brail. I thought the landmarks had been changed by witchcraft, and no wonder, seeing we are surrounded by enchantresses;" and here he made the most laughable wallop imaginable, intended for a bow, but more like the gambol of a porpoise. "However, Miss ——, you see there are moorings laid down for us there in the piazza, so let us bear up and run for them through the other channel, before those lubberly fellows haul them on board;" and so saying, he hove ahead, with a fair scion of the aforesaid House of Lancaster in tow, until they came to where our friend Quacco was the busiest of the busy, having literally bustled the other blackies out of all countenance, and whom, as we entered, he was roundly abusing in Spanish for lazy "pendejos" and "picarons," as if he had been the master of the house, or major domo at the least—enforcing his commands with a crack over the skull every now and then, from a silver ladle that he carried in his hand as a symbol of authority.
At length the vagaries of our friend, as he waxed drunk, became too noticeable, and the master of the house asked the gentleman who was nearest him, whose servant he was, the party I could see indicated me, and I was about apologizing, when some thing or other diverted the attention of our landlord from the subject, and the black Serjeant escaped farther notice. I had before this observed a very handsome, tall, well-made man in the party, whose face somehow or other I fancied I had seen before, with an air peculiarly distingué, who, so far as I could judge, was a stranger to most of the visitors. He had been introduced by the landlord to one or two of the ladies, and for some time seemed to devote himself entirely to his partners, and certainly he was making himself abundantly agreeable, to judge from appearances. At length he took occasion to steal away from the side of the table he was on, and crossed in rather a marked manner to the other, where poor Hause, now three sheets in the wind, was sitting, doing the agreeable as genteely as a Norwegian bear, or a walrus, and planting himself beside him, he seemed to be endeavouring to draw him into conversation; but the skipper was too devoted an admirer of the ladies to be bothered with males, at that time at least, so the stranger appeared to fail in his attempts to engage his attention. However, he persisted, and as I passed near them I could hear him ask, "if his sails were unbent, and whether he was anchored by a chain or a hempen cable?"
"And pray," hiccuped Hause, whose heart wine had opened, "don't you know I only got in last night, so how the deuce could I have unbent any thing—and my chain cable is left to be repaired at Havanna, since you must know; but do you think it's coming on to blow, friend, that you seem so anxious to know about my ground tackle? or should I keep my sails bent, to be ready to slip, eh?"
"In 'vino veritas,'" thought I; "but why so communicative, Master Hause?" I could not hear the stranger's reply, but I noticed that he rose at this, and dispersed among the congregating dancers in the other room.
"Pray, Mr Jones," at this juncture, said our landlord to the gentleman already mentioned, as sitting nearest him, "what is the gentleman's name that Turner brought with him?"
"Wilson, I think, he called him," said the party addressed. "He arrived yesterday morning at Falmouth, in some vessel consigned to Turner from the coast of Cuba, and I believe is bound to Kingston."
"He is a very handsome, well-bred fellow, whoever he may be, and I should like to know more of him," rejoined our host. "But, come, gentlemen, the ladies are glancing over their shoulders; they seem to think we are wasting time here, so what say you?"
This was the signal for all of us to rise, and here we had a second edition of the comical blunders of poor Captain Hause. On his return from the supper-table to the drawingroom, he was waylaid by Flamingo, and having a sort of muzzy recollection of his previous mistake, he set himself with drunken gravity to take an observation, as he said, in order to work his position on the chart more correctly this time. But the champagne he had swilled had increased his conglomeration twofold, which Master Felix perceiving, he took an opportunity of treating him to several spinning turns round the inner room, until he lost himself and his latitude entirely. He then let the bewildered sailor go, and the first thing he did was this time to mistake the real door, now open into the dancingroom, for the mirror; thus reversing his former blunder; and although Twig, who was standing in the other room, good naturedly beckoned him to advance, he stood rooted to the spot, as if an invisible barrier prevented his ingress. And when the young lady he had been dancing with would have led him in, he drew back like a rabid dog at water—"Avast, miss, avast—too old a cruiser to be taken in twice that way—shan't walk through a looking-glass, even to oblige you, miss—no, no—Bill Hause knows better. Here—here—this way—that's the door on your starboard beam—and the mirror—bless you, that's the mirror right a-head," and so saying, he dragged the laughing girl away from the door up to the glass once more.