A NIGHT OF TERROR.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1077, 15 December 1882, Page 4

A NIGHT OF TERROR.

Speaking of Winship, recalls his famous duel with the Frenchman at Marseilles Dick was then second lieutenant of our Scorpion, stationed there at the time, and as usual kept the whole fleet and half the town on nettles through Iris endless practical jokes. The slang expression for Frenchmen in those days was “ frogeaters,” and the wife of a French captain of militia having presented her lord with twins, Dick had the “ nerve ” to tender the happy father, at a public banquet, a stuffed group, consisting of a big frog holding on its knees a couple of smaller ones. Of course there wasachallange, and when the captain’s seconds appeared, Winship, as the challenged party, gravely insisted on the duel being fought iu the dark, with pistols, one shot only being allowed to each man. This new addition to the code made a terrible stir; but as Dick held firm, the Frenchman was finally forced to submit. On the appointed day, alter dinner, the principals were placed blindfolded, and pistol in hand, iu a room at a hotel from which every particle of light had been excluded. At a gi;en signal on the closed door, the antagonists removed their bandages to find themselves in absolute darkness, listening to the beating of their own hearts, and each af.aid to fire first, for fear of thus exposing his location to the other Dick quietly took off his shoes, and feeling for the chimney iu front of which he had taken care to be placed —he ciept up the flue, descended through a trap-door in the roof, slipped into a carriage, and rejoined Iris dinner party, which at oi.ce devoted itsdf to making a night of it in the highest glee possible. The next morning they returned to the hotel and opened the room, which had been as silent as the grave all night. Kneeling in his corner, every muscle quivering with the unbearable suspense, was the militia captain, his auburn hair turned as white as snow by the horrors of that interminable night