“Don’t say ‘beggar.’”
“Well, ‘fellow.’ There was a basking shark in the offing, with its fin above the water, and a bird perching on it like a starling on the back of a sheep. The cap—the very one I wear now, sir—was between this brute and Milvaine, but no sooner had he got Raggy—cockerty-koosie, as he called it—on his shoulder, than he swam away out and seized the cap with his teeth, then handed it to Raggy. And the young monkey put it on, too. We picked him up just in time, for the sharks looked hungry, and angry as well.”
Mr Dewar helped himself to another half-tumbler full of claret.
“There is a wine-glass at your elbow,” said the captain, with a mild kind of a smile.
“Bother the wine-glass!” replied the middy. “Pardon me, sir, but I’d have to fill it so often. My dear Captain Wayland, there’s no more pith and fooshion in this stuff than there is in sour buttermilk.”
The captain laughed outright. Mr Dewar was an officer of a very old and obsolete type.
“Why, my dear sir, that is my very best claret. Claret Lagrange, Mr Dewar; I paid seventy-five shillings a dozen for it.”
“Raggy,” he added; “bring the rum, Raggy.”
“Try a drop of that, then.”
“Ah! that indeed, captain,” exclaimed Mr Dewar, with beaming eyes. “That’s a drop o’ real ship’s.”