As for your 'osts and breeches, and hurling aloft, d'ye see-- your caves and caverns, whistling tuods and serpents, burning brimstone and foaming billows, we must take our hap--I value 'em not a rotten ratline; but as for sailing in the wind's eye, brother, you must give me leave--no offence, I hope--I pretend to be a thoroughbred seaman, d'ye see--and I'll be d--ned if you, or e'er an arrant that broke biscuit, ever sailed in a three-mast vessel within five points of the wind, allowing for variation and lee-way.

No, no, brother, none of your tricks upon travellers--I an't now to learn my compass." "Tricks!" cried the knight, starting up, and laying his hand on the pummel of his sword, "what! suspect my honour ?" Crowe, supposing him to be really incensed, interrupted him with great earnestness, saying, "Nay, don't--what apize!--adds-buntlines!--I didn't go to give you the lie, brother, smite my limbs; I only said as how to sail in the wind's eye was impossible." "And I say unto thee," resumed the knight, "nothing is impossible to a true knight-errant, inspired and animated by love." "And I say unto thee," hallooed Crowe, "if so be as how love pretends to turn his hawse-holes to the wind, he's no seaman, d'ye see, but a snotty-nosed lubberly boy, that knows not a cat from a capstan--a don't." "He that does not believe that love is an infallible pilot, must not embark upon the voyage of chivalry; for, next to the protection of Heaven, it is from love that the knight derives all his prowess and glory.

The bare name of his mistress invigorates his arm; the remembrance of her beauty infuses into his breast the most heroic sentiments of courage, while the idea of her chastity hedges him round like a charm, and renders him invulnerable to the sword of his antagonist.

A knight without a mistress is a mere nonentity, or, at least, a monster in nature--a pilot without a compass, a ship without rudder, and must be driven to and fro upon the waves of discomfiture and disgrace." "An that be all," replied the sailor, "I told you before as how I've got a sweetheart, as true a hearted girl as ever swung in canvas.

What thof she may have started a hoop in rolling, that signifies nothing; I'll warrant her tight as a nut-shell." "She must, in your opinion, be a paragon either of beauty or virtue.
Now, as you have given up the last, you must uphold her charms unequalled, and her person without a parallel." "I do, I do uphold she will sail upon a parallel as well as e'er a frigate that was rigged to the northward of fifty." "At that rate, she must rival the attractions of her whom I adore; but that I say is impossible.