“Yes, and I expect will taste good too. However, you look after the moon, father, and leave me and the frying-pan to play our parts.”
“While I sing mine, I suppose, boy.
“The moon is up, round beauty’s shine,
Love’s pilgrims bend at vesper hour,
Earth breathes to heaven, and looks divine,
And lovers’ hearts confess her power.”
Old Tom stopped and the frying-pan frizzled on, sending forth an odour which, if not grateful to Heaven, was peculiarly so to us mortals, hungry with the fresh air.
“How do we go now, Jacob?”
“Steady, and all’s right; but we shall be met with the wind next reach, and had better brail up the mainsail.”
“Go, then, Tom, and help Jacob.”
“I can’t leave the ingons, (onions) father, not if the lighter tumbled overboard; it would bring more tears in my eyes to spoil them, now that they are frying so merrily, than they did when I was cutting them up. Besides, the liver would be as black as the bends.”
“Clap the frying-pan down on deck, Tom, and brail the sail up with Jacob, there’s a good boy. You can give it another shake or two afterwards.
“Guide on, my bark, how sweet to rove,
With such a beaming eye above!