This affront Trunnion could by no means digest: he advised with the
lieutenant upon the subject; and the result of their consultation
was a defiance which the old commander sent to Pickle, demanding
that he would meet him at such a place on horseback with a brace
of pistols, and give satisfaction for the slight he had put upon
him. Nothing could have afforded more pleasure to Jack than the
acceptance of this challenge, which he delivered verbally to Mr.
Gamaliel, who was called out from the club at Tunley's for that
purpose. The nature of this message had an instantaneous effect
upon the constitution of the pacific Pickle, whose bowels yearned
with apprehension, and underwent such violent agitation on the
spot, that one would have thought the operation proceeded from some
severe joke of the apothecary which he had swallowed in his beer.
The messenger, despairing of a satisfactory answer, left him
in this woeful condition; and being loath to lose any opportunity
of raising the laugh against the commodore, went immediately and
communicated the whole affair to the young gentlemen, entreating
them, for the love of God, to concert some means of bringing old
Hannibal into the field.
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