"Oh, isn't it?" retorted Gascoigne, another midshipman, who had just come below in time to hear the tail-end of my remark and Maxwell's reply to it.  "It is evident that you have not been on deck within the last hour, or you wouldn't say that.  Why, man alive, if you would just pull yourself together enough to become conscious of the antics of the hooker you would understand that she is being driven as no ship ought to be driven without good and sufficient cause.  There,"--as the frigate plunged dizzily, rolling at the same moment almost over on her beam-ends and quivering violently throughout her whole fabric at the shock of the sea that had struck her, while plates, pannikins, cups and saucers, knives and forks, books, candles, and a heterogeneous assortment of sundries flew from the racks and shelves with a clattering crash, and constituted a very pretty "general average" on the deck--"what d'ye think of that, my noble knight of the sextant?"