Newton Forster by Frederick Marryat

"Their only labour is to kill the time; And labour dire it is, and weary woe. They sit -- they lounge -- turn o'er some idle rhyme: Then rising sudden -- to the glass they go, Or saunter forth with loitering step and slow. " _Castle of Indolence_.

Captain Oughton, who commanded the _Windsor Castle_, was an original. His figure was short and thick-set, his face broad, and deeply pitted with the small-pox; his nose, an apology for a nose, being a small tubercle arising midway between his eyes and mouth, the former of which were small, the latter wide, and displaying a magnificent row of white teeth. On the whole, it was impossible to look in his face without being immediately struck with his likeness to a bull-dog. His temperament and his pursuits were also analogous; he was a great pugilist, knew the merits of every man in the ring, and the precise date and circumstances attending every battle which had been fought for the previous thirty years. His conversation was at all times interlarded with the slang terms appropriated to the science to which he was so devoted.