"You hit me a bad skelp, and I am destroyed," said he. "Never mind, they all laughed, anny way."
It was about this period of my life, when, returning from a ball in London in the early morning, I came upon a person selling whelks. He invited me to sup--or breakfast--upon a plate of these delicacies.
"I'll give you sixpence for every plateful you eat yourself."
He finished two platefuls, and had begun a third, when he was overtaken by rebellion from within, swiftly followed by catastrophe.
"That's not fair," I said. "You can't count those two platefuls."
"O my Gawd," he said. "'Ave I got to begin again?"
To this time, too, belong my memories of a certain famous naval captain, who was extraordinarily particular both as to his own dress and the wearing of proper uniform by others. His regard for appearances, however, { 119} did not prevent his diving overboard in full and immaculate uniform, including white gloves, to save a seaman. Exceedingly precise in his speech, he owned the singular trait of becoming deprived of utterance when he was angry; and few things made him more angry than faulty attire in the Service.
He was driving with me in a cab towards Plymouth, when we met an old warrant officer, who was wearing a purple woollen waistcoat and green gloves. My friend, stopping the cab so suddenly that the horse slithered along on its haunches, leaped from the vehicle. The old warrant officer, his attention arrested, had halted and turned round. My friend went up to him. Then I perceived that he was stricken speechless with wrath; for, continuing to swallow nothing, as his habit was in these crises of emotion, he tapped the warrant officer's waistcoat and gloves. Glaring at him and still silently swallowing, he turned about and got into the cab. The old warrant officer stood staring with dropped jaw, like a man petrified.
It was my friend who, being asked at a court-martial what he would have done in certain difficult circumstances, replied deliberately:
"If I was where I was not I might have done something I did not do."
In after years, when he was commander-in-chief at the Nore, he was walking along the road to Sheerness, dressed in plain clothes, when a bluejacket, who was slightly intoxicated, lurched against him.