“Yes, sir,” replied Mr Appleboy, tossing the contents of the tumbler in the boy’s face, “salt-water. Very well, sir,—very well!”
“It warn’t me, sir,” replied the boy, making up a piteous look.
“No, sir, but you said the cook was sober.”
“He was not so very much disguised, sir,” replied Jem.
“Oh! Very well—never mind. Mr Tomkins, in case I should forget it, do me the favour to put the kettle of salt-water down in the report. The scoundrel! I’m very sorry, gentlemen, but there’s no means of having any more gin-toddy. But never mind, we’ll see to this to-morrow. Two can play at this; and if I don’t salt-water their grog, and make them drink it too, I have been twenty years a first-lieutenant for nothing, that’s all. Good night, gentlemen; and,” continued the lieutenant, in a severe tone, “you’ll keep a sharp look-out, Mr Smith—do you hear, sir?”
“Yes,” drawled Smith, “but it’s not my watch: it was my first watch: and, just now, it struck one bell.”
“You’ll keep the middle watch, then, Mr Smith,” said Mr Appleboy, who was not a little put out; “and, Mr Tomkins, let me know as soon as it’s daylight. Boy, get my bed made. Salt-water, by all that’s blue! However, we’ll see to that to-morrow morning.”
Mr Appleboy then turned in; so did Mr Tomkins; and so did Mr Smith, who had no idea of keeping the middle watch because the cook was drunk and had filled up the kettle with salt-water. As for what happened in ninety-three or ninety-four, I really would inform the reader if I knew; but I am afraid that that most curious story is never to be handed down to posterity.
The next morning Mr Tomkins, as usual, forgot to report the cook, the jar of butter and the kettle of salt-water; and Mr Appleboy’s wrath had long been appeased before he remembered them. At daylight, the lieutenant came on deck, having only slept away half of the sixteen, and a taste of the seventeenth salt-water glass of gin-toddy. He rubbed his grey eyes, that he might peer through the grey of the morning; the fresh breeze blew about his grizzly locks, and cooled his rubicund nose. The revenue-cutter, whose name was the Active, cast off from the buoy, and, with a fresh breeze, steered her course for the Needles’ passage.