"You don't? Well, you ought to, for the gentleman put up here, and told me he'd be around when we got into port again. He was a deuced clever fellow, and you ought to have kept the reckoning of such a man," said the seaman.
"Ha, ha! we keep so many clever fellows," said he of the hotel, "that they are no novelties, sir."
"I wonder then," said the seaman, "you do not imitate some of them, for there's no danger of the world's getting crowded with a crew of good men."
"If you have any business with us we shall attend to it, sir, but we want none of your impertinence!"
"O, you don't? Well, Mister, I've business aboard of your craft; if you're the commodore, I'd like you to see that my friend Collins is piped up, or that this package be stowed away where he could come afoul of it. His name is Collins; here it is in black and white, on the parcel, and here's where I was to drop it."
One of the "understrappers" overhearing the dispute, whispered his dignified superior that Mr. Collins, an English gentleman, late from Bremen, was in the house, whereupon the dignified empressario, turning to the self-possessed man of the sea, said—
"Ah, well, leave the parcel, leave the parcel; we suppose it's correct."
"There it is," said the seaman; "commodore, you see that the gentleman gets it; and I say," says the sailor, pushing back his hat and giving his breeches a regular sailor twitch, "I wish you'd please to say to the gentleman, Mr. Collins, you know, that Mr. Brace, first officer of the Triton, would like to see him aboard, any time he's at leisure."
But in the multiplicity of greater affairs, the hotel gentleman hardly attempted to listen or attend to the sailor's message, and Mr. Brace, first officer of the Triton, bore away, muttering to himself—
"These land-crabs mighty apt to put on airs. I'd like to have that powder monkey in my watch about a week—I'd have him down by the lifts and braces!"