“Sir to you again, sir.”
“Ever anybody ask you for a recipe for roasting coffee?”
“Milk and sugar, sir?”
The milk was another invention of the steward. It was a fresh gull’s egg, beaten and mixed with hot water, and sweetened with pure preserved milk.
On the whole, everybody did his best on board the old Walrus.
The men forward to-night were very jolly, for, being so near to the end of their exceedingly long voyage, the captain had spliced the main brace, that is, he had added one modest glass of rum to their nightly allowance. I don’t believe in rum myself, but when one is writing a sea story, one must adhere to the truth. The man who does not face realities and the naked truth, is like the fabled ostrich that hid its head in the sand when danger approached.
The men drank “sweethearts and wives,” or “wives and sweethearts,” in the real good old British fashion. The married men, you know, drank “wives and sweethearts.” The bachelors, and they were nearly all of that persuasion, put the “sweethearts” to the front.
They had mixed the grog with a good deal of hot water and sugar to make it last. But they toasted each other also; and it was, “Here’s to you, Jack;” or, “Here’s to you, Bill,” or Tom or Joe, as the case might be. And “We’ve been shipmates now more’n a year, and never a word atween us, bar a sea-boot now and then.”