"What a capital sailor old Nero makes, Harry."
"Splendid."
"He only wants to know how to chew."
"And take grog like old Mole."
"True, and then he'd be an out-and-out sailor."
These words were part of a conversation which our two young comrades were indulging in one afternoon towards sun-down as they walked to and fro on deck.
They had rigged Nero out in full nautical costume, and taught him several sailor tricks of manner.
He hitched up his inexpressibles with a jerk that the late T. P. Cooke might have made studies from.
And his bow and scrape, although more like a stage sailor than the real thing itself, were ticked off so admirably, that you expected him to start off into a rattling hornpipe.
But perhaps the greatest treat of all was to see him pretending to take observations through a telescope.