“That’s right, sir—that’s right—just as I wished you to feel. How time flies away. Why, Master Keene, you have been afloat nearly three years.”
“Within a month, Bob.”
“And you’re growing such a tall fellow, they won’t keep you much longer in the captain’s gig, I expect: I shall be sorry for that. So Master Tommy Dott is in another scrape.”
“How?—I heard nothing of it.”
“No, because it’s only within this half-hour that he’s got in it.”
“Tell me.”
“Why, sir, Mr Culpepper had fallen fast asleep on the gunroom table, under the skylight, which, as you know, is always open, and his head had fallen back, and his mouth was wide open: there was no other officer in the gun-room except Mr Culpepper: and Tommy Dott, who perceived him, asked Timothy Jenkins, the maintop-man, to give him a quid of tobacco; well, Jenkins takes it out of his cheek, red-hot, as you may suppose, and hands it to Master Tommy, who takes his perpendicular very accurately, and drops the quid into the purser’s open mouth.
“Mr Culpepper was almost choked, but after a terrible coughing, the quid comes up again; notwithstanding, he turns as sick as a dog, and is obliged to run to the basin in his cabin. Well, sir, as soon as he comes out again, he goes up under the half deck, and inquires of the sentry who it was that did it; and the sentry, who is that sulky fellow, Martin, instead of knowing nothing about it, says directly, it was Master Tommy; and now there’s a formal complaint made by Mr Culpepper on the quarter-deck, and Master Tommy will get it as sure as a gun.”
“He don’t know how to play a trick,” replied I; “he is always found out and punished: the great point is, not to be discovered—that’s the real pleasure in playing a trick.”
“Well, you certainly do manage well, Master Keene; but I think it’s almost time you left them off now, you’re getting an oldster. Why, you must be seventeen, sir?”