“Yes,” replied I, “I begin to like grog now.” The now, however, might be comprehended within the space of the last twenty-four hours. My depressed spirits were raised with the stimulus, and for a time I got rid of the eternal current of thought which pressed upon my brain.
“I wonder what your old gentleman, the Dominie, as you call him, thought, after he got on shore again,” said old Tom. “He seemed to be mighty cut up. I suppose you’ll give him a hail, Jacob?”
“No,” replied I, “I shall not go near him, nor any one else, if I can help it. Mr Drummond may think I wish to make it up again. I’ve done with the shore. I only wish I knew what is to become of me; for you know I am not to serve in the lighter with you.”
“Suppose Tom and I look out for another craft, Jacob? I care nothing for Mr Drummond. He said t’other day I was a drunken old swab—for which, with my sarvice to him, he lies. A drunken fellow is one who can’t, for the soul of him, keep from liquor when he can get it, and who’s overtaken before he is aware of it. Now that’s not the case with me; I keep sober when there’s work to be done; and when I knows that everything is safe under hatches, and no fear of nothing, why then I gets drunk like a rational being, with my eyes open—’cause why?—’cause I chooses.”
“That’s exactly my notion of the thing,” observed Tom, draining his pannikin, and handing it over to his father for a fresh supply.
“Mind you keep to that notion, Tom, when you gets in the king’s sarvice, that’s all; or you’ll be sure to have your back scratched, which I understand is no joke after all. Yet I do remember once, in a ship I was in, when half-a-dozen fellows were all fighting who should be flogged.”
“Pray give us that yarn, father; but before you begin just fill my pannikin. I shoved it over half-an-hour ago, just by way of a hint.”
“Well then,” said old Tom, pouring out some spirits into Tom’s pannikin, “it was just as follows. It was when the ship was lying at anchor in Bermuda harbour, that the purser sent a breaker of spirits on shore to be taken up to some lady’s house whom he was very anxious to splice, and I suppose that he found a glass of grog helped the matter. Now, there were about twenty of the men who had liberty to go on shore, to stretch their limbs—little else could they do, poor fellows for the first lieutenant looked sharp after their kits to see that they did not sell any of their rigging; and as for money, we had been five years without touching a farthing of pay, and I don’t suppose there was a matter of threepence among the men before the mast. However, liberty’s liberty after all; and if they couldn’t go ashore and get glorious, rather than not go on shore at all, they went ashore and kept sober perforce. I do think, myself, it’s a very bad thing to keep the seamen without a farthing for so long—for you see a man who will be very honest with a few shillings in his pocket is often tempted to help himself, just for the sake of getting a glass or two of grog, and the temptation’s very great, that’s sartain, ’ticularly in a hot climate, when the sun scorches you, and the very ground itself is so heated that you can hardly bear the naked foot to it. (This has been corrected; the men have for some time received a portion of their pay on foreign stations, and this portion has been greatly increased during Sir James Graham’s administration.) But to go on. The yawl was ordered on shore for the liberty men, and the purser gives this breaker, which was at least half full, and I dare say there might be three gallons in it, under my charge as coxswain, to deliver to madam at the house. Well, as soon as we landed, I shoulders the breaker, and starts with it up the hill.
“‘What have you there, Tom?’ said Bill Short.
“‘What I wish I could share with you, Bill,’ says I; ‘it’s some of old Nipcheese’s eights, that he has sent on shore to bowse his jib up with, with his sweetheart.’