“If you’ll prove that to me,” replied Macallan, “I certainly will report you.”
“Well, I’ll prove it to you in five seconds. I’m just in that state, that if everything in the ship was to go overboard to the devil, I shouldn’t care. Now, with such a feeling of indifference, a person is not fit to be trusted with the charge of a watch.”
“That you’re not fit to be trusted with the charge of a watch, as you state it yourself, I shall not deny,” replied Macallan; “but I consider that to be a complaint for which you ought rather to be put off the list that on it.”
“Ha! ha! ha! I say, Courtenay, you know what Shakespeare says, ‘’Tis the curse of service,’ that—that—”
“All hands, ’bout ship!” now resounded through the ship as it was repeated in the variety of basses of the boatswain and his mates, at either hatchway—one of the youngsters of the watch running down at the same time to acquaint the officers, in his shrill falsetto, with that which had been roared out loud enough to startle even the deaf purser. The first-lieutenant, followed by the master, brushed by him, and was up the ladder before his supererogatory communication could be delivered.
“How cursed annoying!” cried Courtenay. “I was just feeling a little better, and now I shall be worse than ever.”
“You recollect in the ‘Tempest,’” said Price, “where Shakespeare says—”
“Forecastle, there!” roared out Captain M—, from the quarter-deck, in a voice that was distinctly heard below.
“By Jove, you’d better skip for it, or you’ll have what Captain M— says. He’s hailing your station,” said Courtenay, laughing—a piece of advice immediately acted upon by Price, who was up the ladder and on the forecastle in a few seconds.—“And I must go up too. How cursed annoying to be stationed in the waist! Nothing to do, except to stop my ears against the infernal stamp-and-go of the marines and after-guards, over my head; sweet music to a first-lieutenant, but to me discord most horrible. I could stamp with vexation.”
“Had you not better go first and stamp afterwards?” observed the surgeon, drily.