"Toney is offe on leave. So the French boy was in oure watch. He
is not a French boy. His name is Doovarl."
In the midst of a great deal about the mess, and the fellows, and the
boys, and the others, and an inexplicable fuss there is about a
speculation the mess entered into with some illicit dealer for an
additional supply, not of liquor, but of sugar,--which I believe was
detected, and which covers pages of badly written and worse spelled
manuscript, not another distinct allusion to the French boy,--not near
so much as to Toney or Wimple or Scroop, or big Wallis or little Wallis.
Ingham had painfully toiled through it all, and I did after him. But in
another volume, written years after, at a time when the young officer
wrote a much more rapid, though scarcely more legible hand, he found a
long account of an examination appointed to pass midshipmen, and, to our
great delight, as it began, this exclamation:--
"When the Amphion's boat came up, who should step up but old Den, whom I
had not seen since we were in the Rainbow. We were together all
day,--and it was very good to see him."
And afterwards, in the detail of the examination, he is spoken of as
"Duval." The passage is a little significant.