'Maybe, sir; it's so long ago since I entered, that I can't recollect dates—but this I know, that my aunt died three days before.'
'Then the question is, When did your aunt die?'
'Oh! she died about a year after my uncle.'
'And when did your uncle die?'
'I'll be hanged if I know!'
'Then, d'ye see, you've no departure to work from. However, I think you cannot have been in the service at that time. We were not quite so particular about uniform as we are now.'
'Then I think the service was all the better for it. Nowadays, in your crack ships, a mate has to go down in the hold or spirit-room, and after whipping up fifty empty casks, and breaking out twenty full ones, he is expected to come on quarter-deck as clean as if he was just come out of a bandbox.'
'Well, there's plenty of water alongside, as far as the outward man goes, and iron dust is soon brushed off. However, as you say, perhaps a little too much is expected; at least, in five of the ships in which I was first lieutenant, the captain was always hauling me over the coals about the midshipmen not dressing properly, as if I was their dry-nurse. I wonder what Captain Prigg would have said if he had seen such a turn-out as you, Mr. Smith, on his quarter-deck.'
'I should have had one turn-out more,' drawled Smith.
'With your out-at-elbows jacket, there, eh!' continued Mr. Appleboy.