THROUGH THE HAWSE HOLE
To the Temple of Varieties in the city of Sidney went one evening the young and rather girlish-faced marine officer, Surgeon McTavish, and Lieutenant Guilford all from the Breezy, in order to hear a good song. Only in mufti were they of course, but Mac's mufti was the Highland dress and a grand appearance it gave this bold and scientific Scot.
Indeed Mac's servant was a Scot, Sandie Reid was his name, and whenever the doctor told him to lay out his mufti it was the kilt and sporran he got ready.
"I meant English mufti," said the doctor to him one evening.
"You'll hae that or damn the thing else?" replied Sandie with the determination of a Scottish servant who loved his master. "You're no' goin to give Sandie Reid a red face by seein' his master's bonnie Hielan legs rammed into leathern drain-pipes. If ye do, ye'll hae to seek an English servant."
The first day that the surgeon put on the Highland garb to go on shore in was at St. Helena. The officers going on shore were waiting on the quarterdeck for the boat and talking and laughing, when little Sneyd the A.P. with the door-knocker countenance came up from below.
Now Sneyd was sometimes in a nasty temper and when he was so he was apt to be a little offensive.
He had got out of his bunk that day at the wrong side perhaps, but when he saw McTavish arrayed in the tartan of his clan, he pretended to be startled, stepped back a pace or two and looked at him up and down.
"Is this the twentieth century?" he cried, "and do you mean to say that the captain will allow one of his officers to go on shore dressed in that uncivilized semi-savage costume?"
Then suddenly pretending to be heroic, "Oh, I forgot the romance of Walter Scott," he said.