After having formally made her an offer of marriage, I asked after the landlord.

She told me he was engaged with some customers, but offered to take a message to him.
"'Then,' said I, 'just tell him that a friend of One-eyed Dick's would like to have a parley with him.'" "And who was One-eyed Dick ?" inquired Fritz.
"One of the crew of a piratical craft captured by one of our cruisers a few months before, and who at that time was safely lodged in Portsmouth jail.
"The girl soon returned.

She told me to walk with her, and led me through some narrow passages into what appeared to be another house.
She knocked at a door that was strongly barred and fastened inside.

A slight glance at these precautions made me aware that there was no chance of making a capture here without creating a great disturbance.
So, after reflecting an instant, I decided upon adopting some other course.
"When the door was opened I could see nothing distinctly; there was a turf-fire throwing a red glare out of the chimney, a dim oil-lamp hung from the roof, but everything was hidden in a dense cloud of tobacco smoke, through which the light was not sufficiently powerful to penetrate." "The atmosphere must have been stifling," observed Fritz.
"Yes, it puts me in mind of your remark about the air, which, you said, consists of--let me see--" "Oxygen and hydrogen." "Just so; but the air a sailor breathes when he is at home consists almost entirely of tobacco smoke.

At last, I could make out twenty or thirty rough-looking fellows seated on each side of a long deal table covered with bottles, glasses, and pipes.