They went singing through the streets at midnight, wringing off door-knockers, shinning up water-spouts, and frightening the Oldest Inhabitant nearly to death by popping their heads into his second-story window, and shouting "Fire!" One morning a blue-jacket was discovered in a perilous plight, half-way up the steeple of the South Church, clinging to the lightning-rod.

How he got there nobody could tell, not even blue-jacket himself.

All he knew was, that the leg of his trousers had caught on a nail, and there he stuck, unable to move either way.

It cost the town twenty dollars to get him down again.

He directed the workmen how to splice the ladders brought to his assistance, and called his rescuers "butter-fingered land-lubbers" with delicious coolness.
But those were man-of-war's men: The sedate-looking craft now lying off Fishcrate Island wasn't likely to carry any such cargo.