“I tell you what it is,” said Tom Tully on the evening of Hilary’s escape, as the men were all grouped together in the forecastle enjoying a smoke and a yarn or two, “it strikes me as we’re doing a wonderful lot o’ good upon this here station. What do you say, Jack Brown?”
“Wonderful!” said the boatswain, falling into the speaker’s sarcastic vein.
“Ah!” said Chips, “we shall never get all our prize-money spent, boys.”
“No,” said the corporal of marines, “never. I say, speaking as a orsifer, oughtn’t we to have another one in place of Master Leigh?”
“No,” said Tom Tully. “We couldn’t get another like he.”
“That’s a true word, Tommy,” said Billy Waters, who did not often agree with the big sailor. “We couldn’t get another now he’s lost.”
“But that’s all werry well,” said Chips; “but it won’t do. If I lost my adze or caulking-hammer overboard, I must have another, mustn’t I?” No one answered, and he continued:
“If you lost the rammer of the big gun, Billy Waters, or the corporal here hadn’t got his bayonet, he’d want a new one; so why shouldn’t we have a new orsifer?”
“Don’t know,” said Billy Waters gruffly; and as the carpenter looked at each in turn, the men all shook their heads, and then they all smoked in silence.
“I wishes as we could find him again,” said Tom Tully; “and as he’d chuck the skipper overboard, or send him afloat in the dinghy, and command the cutter hisself, and I don’t kear who tells the luff as I said it.”