well-knit, and all-comprehensive assertion, without omission or
reservation. It was also asserted that, had Tophet itself been
raked with a fine-tooth comb, such another ineffable villain
could not by any possibility have been caught.



CHAPTER XLV.

PUBLISHING POETRY IN A MAN-OF-WAR.


A day or two after our arrival in Rio, a rather amusing incident
occurred to a particular acquaintance of mine, young Lemsford,
the gun-deck bard.


The great guns of an armed ship have blocks of wood, called
_tompions_, painted black, inserted in their muzzles, to keep out
the spray of the sea. These tompions slip in and out very
handily, like covers to butter firkins.

By advice of a friend, Lemsford, alarmed for the fate of his box
of poetry, had latterly made use of a particular gun on the main-
deck, in the tube of which he thrust his manuscripts, by simply
crawling partly out of the porthole, removing the tompion,
inserting his papers, tightly rolled, and making all snug again.

Breakfast over, he and I were reclining in the main-top--where,
by permission of my noble master, Jack Chase, I had invited him--