"On deck. Two casks: we picked them up as we were standing off the land."
"Picked them up?—are they on board?" inquired the master, sitting upright in his bed and rubbing his eyes.
"Yes, they're on board. Won't you come on deck?"
"To be sure I will. Two puncheons of rum, you said?"—and old Thompson gained his feet, and reeled to the companion ladder, holding on by all fours, as he climbed up without his shoes.
When the master of the sloop had satisfied himself as to the contents of the casks, which he did by taking about half a tumbler of each, Newton proposed that the trunk should be opened. "Yes," replied Thompson, who had drawn off a mug of the spirits, with which he was about to descend to the cabin, "open if you like, my boy. You have made a bon prize to-day, and your share shall be the trunk; so you may keep it, and the things that are stowed away in it, for your trouble; but don't forget to secure the casks till we can stow them away below. We can't break bulk now; but the sooner they are down the better; or we shall have some quill-driving rascal on board, with his flotsam and jetsam, for the Lord knows who;" and Thompson, to use his own expression, went down again "to lay his soul in soak."
Reader, do you know the meaning of flotsam and jetsam? None but a lawyer can, for it is old law language. Now, there is a slight difference between language in general and law language. The first was invented to enable us to explain our own meaning, and comprehend the ideas of others; whereas the second was invented with the view that we should not be able to understand a word about it. In former times, when all law, except club law, was in its infancy, and practitioners not so erudite, or so thriving as at present, it was thought advisable to render it unintelligible by inventing a sort of lingo, compounded of bad French, grafted upon worse Latin, forming a mongrel and incomprehensible race of words, with French heads and Latin tails, which answered the purpose intended—that of mystification.—Flotsam and jetsam are of this breed. Flot, derived from the French flottant, floating; and jet from the verb jeter, to throw up; both used in seignoral rights, granted by kings to favourites, empowering them to take possession of the property of any man who might happen to be unfortunate, which was in those times tantamount to being guilty. I daresay, if one could see the deed thus empowering them to confiscate the goods and chattels of others for their own use, according to the wording of the learned clerks in those days, it would run thus:—"Omnium quod flotsam et jetsam, et everything else-um, quod findetes;" in plain English, "Everything floating or thrown up, and everything else you may pick up." Now, the admiral of the coast had this piratical privilege: and as, in former days, sextants and chronometers were unknown, seafaring men incurred more risk than they do at present, and the wrecks which strewed the coast were of very great value. I had a proof the other day that this right is still exacted; that is, as far as regards property unclaimed. I had arrived at Plymouth from the Western Islands. When we hove up our anchor at St Michael's, we found another anchor and cable hooked most lovingly to our own, to the great joy of the first lieutenant, who proposed buying silk handkerchiefs for every man in the ship, and expending the residue in paint. But we had not been at anchor in Plymouth Sound more than twenty-four hours, and he hardly had time to communicate with the gentlemen-dealers in marine stores, when I received a notification from some lynx-eyed agent of the present admiral of the coast (who is a lawyer, I believe), requesting the immediate delivery of the anchor and cable, upon the plea of his seignoral rights of flotsam and jetsam. Now, the idea was as preposterous as the demand was impudent. We had picked up the anchor in the roadside of a foreign power, about fifteen hundred miles distant from the English coast.
We are all lawyers, now, on board ship; so I gave him one of my legal answers, "that, in the first place, flotsam meant floating, and anchors did not float; in the second place, that jetsam meant thrown up, and anchors never were thrown up; in the third and last place, I'd see him d—d first!"
My arguments were unanswerable. Counsel for the plaintiff (I presume) threw up his brief, for we heard no more of "Mr Flotsam and Jetsam."
But to proceed:—The man and boy, who, with Newton, composed the whole crew, seemed perfectly to acquiesce in the distribution made by the master of the sloop; taking it for granted that their silence, as to the liquor being on board, would be purchased by a share of it, as long as it lasted.
They repaired forward with a pannikin from the cask, with which they regaled themselves, while Newton stood at the helm. In half an hour Newton called the boy aft to steer the vessel, and lifted the trunk into the cabin below, where he found that Thompson had finished the major part of the contents of the mug, and was lying in a state of drunken stupefaction.