They had been attracted by sounds of revelry in a splendid mansion in the next street, which we could see was lit up with great brilliancy, and had at this time shot about fifty yards ahead of us, working to windward, tack and tack, like Commodore Trunnion.
“Ah, I see,” said Transom; “let us heave ahead, Tom—now, do ye hear?— stand you with your white trowsers against the next pillar.” The ranges supporting the piazza were at distances of about twenty feet from each other.—“Ah, stand there now—I see it.”—So he weighted from the one he had tackled to, and making a staggering bolt of it, ran up to the pillar against which I stood, its position being marked by my white vestments, where he again hooked on for a second or two, until I had taken up a new position.
“There, my boy, that’s the way to lay out a warp—right in the wind’s eye, Tom—we shall fairly beat those lubbers who are tacking in the stream—nothing like warping in the dead water near the shore—mark that down, Tom—never beat in a tideway when you can warp up along shore in the dead water—Damn the judge’s ice” (hiccup) “he has poisoned me with that piece he plopped in my last whitewash of Madeira. He a judge! He may be a good crim—criminal judge, but no judge of wine—Why don’t you laugh, Tom, eh?—and then his saw—the rasp of a saw I hate—wish it, and a whole nest more, had been in his legal stomach—full of old saws Shakespeare—he, he—why don’t you laugh, Tom?—Poisoned by the judge, by Jupiter—Now, here we are fairly abreast of them—Hillo! Fyall, what are you after?”
“Hush, hush,” said Fyall, with drunken gravity.
“And hush, hush,” said Aaron Bang.
“Come here, Tom, come here,” said Whiffle, in a whisper. We were now directly under the piazza of the fine house, in the first floor of which some gay scene was enacting. “Here, Tom, here—now stand there—hold by that pillar there. I say, Transom, give me a lift.”
“Can’t, Whiffle, can’t, for the soul of me, Peregrine, my dear—but I see, I see.”
With that the gallant captain got down on all fours; Whiffle, a small light man, got on his back, and, with the aid of Bang and Fyall, managed to scramble up on my shoulders, where he stood, holding by the window sill above, with a foot on each side of my head. His little red face was thus raised flush with the window sill, so that he could see into the dark piazza on the first floor, and right through into the magnificent and sparkling drawing room beyond.
“Now tell us what’s to be seen,” said Aaron.
“Stop, stop,” rejoined Whiffle—“My eye, what a lot of splendid women no men—a regular lady party—Hush! a song.” A harp was struck, and a symphony of Beethoven’s played with great taste—A song, low and melancholy, from two females followed.